Elmer Gantry is the portrait of a silver-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church, but he is a saver of souls who lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence. The title character starts out as a greedy, shallow, philandering Baptist minister, turns to evangelism, and eventually becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Throughout the novel, Gantry encounters fellow religious hypocrites. Although he is often exposed as a fraud, Gantry is never fully discredited. Elmer Gantry is considered a landmark in American literature and one of the most penetrating studies of hypocrisy in modern literature. The novel also represents the evangelistic religious activity and the attitudes of Americans in the 1920s toward it.