Background
Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger (not Burris Jenkins), pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend Leon Milton Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. Other KC ministers Lewis interviewed included Burris Jenkins, Earl Blackman, I. M. Hargett, Bert Fiske, and Robert Nelson Horatio Spencer (1877-1961), who was Rector of a large Episcopal parish, Grace and Holy Trinity Church, which is now the Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.
The character of Sharon Falconer was based on elements in the career of Aimee Semple McPherson, a Canadian-born American evangelist who founded the Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927.
Read more about this topic: Elmer Gantry
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