Here’s to the devil of pejorative noises, rustic with goodness and polemical pen, who’d blow a trumpet without remorse though we trusted him. He’s American, Christian, slick as a specimen dish. Today he’s Joel Osteen, but he’s always a roulette pronouncement. Elmer Gantry, Billy Sunday, Jimmy Swaggart. All of them knew how to take your money. People on the left think these fellows are exploiters of crude hate—but I’ve always seen them differently as the thieves of goodness for they steal from their largely illiterate or alliterate followers in the name of a Christ their laity can scarcely know and surely can’t understand. This makes the American Public Preacher-hood the most cynical sect of all. Tawdry, lurid, greedy, smug—and I think it says a lot to note they’re less trustworthy than auto salesmen.
Planet of the Blind 