Black Churches and Blue-Eyed Jesuses: This Article Is Adapted from Chapter Five of the Author's 2011 Book, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, And the Values Wars‪.‬

THE FIRST FEW minutes of the revival movement film Elmer Gantry (1960) are a paean to the spit and gleam of Burt Lancaster's Klieg-light teeth. Dancing shamelessly like a character unto themselves, they tell you everything you need to know about twentieth-century divinity and the meteoric rise of the evangelical shaman as an American idol. Based on Sinclair Lewis's satirical 1927 novel of the same name, the film chronicles a midwestern rogue's pursuit of Jesus, Inc., represented by a beatific revivalist preacher by the name of Sister Sharon Falconer (played by Jean Simmons). Lancaster tears into the title role with lupine brio. Barely ten minutes into the film, a dirty and disreputable Gantry, freshly sprung from a hobo brawl on a musty boxcar, lands at a Negro church. Gantry's own brand of religion marches lockstep with sex, lies, moonshine, and doe-eyed indolence. Before his date with destiny he staggers around, selling cheap vacuum cleaners, toasters, and any other sundry fare he can get his hands on. He's desperate for a quick fix, a ticket out of obscurity. Is there no better place for a miscreant white man to jam his foot in the door of redemption than a Negro church?