Does The Great Gatsby promote anti-Christian values or does it have value for all students?

The Great Gatsby does not promote Christian values per se: in fact, the issue of Christianity only comes up peripherally in the book. However, many of the moral values encouraged in the book are congruent with Christian values.

The book, for example, can be read as a critique of unchristian living in not being charitable towards one neighbor and in putting money ahead of people. Tom and Daisy, for example, show the wreckage the rich can cause when they are careless of human life.

Tom takes advantage of Myrtle's poverty to have an affair with her, trading what his money can offer, such as an apartment in New York, clothes, and a puppy, for sex with her. Yet he treats her callously, for example by "breaking" or hitting her nose when she says things he does not like. Tom is also dismissive of her husband, George, stringing him along with the idea that he will sell him a car, while he is only using that as a ruse to see Myrtle. Tom lies to George, telling him that Gatsby's car is his own, and then directs him to shoot Gatsby as the one responsible for Myrtle's death when he knows it is Daisy who ran her over.

For Tom, the "little people" are tools to be used, not full humans. This runs counter to the Christian ideal that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, regardless of their social position. In fact, the entire valley of the ashes can be read as Fitzgerald's indictment of an unchristian American society in which the wealthy live in comfort at the expense of the poor.

It could also be argued that the infidelities in the book come to a bad end. Christianity teaches faithfulness to one's spouse, and the book shows the disasters that can occur when adultery begins. Things end badly for Gatsby for getting involved with the married Daisy—he cannot set back the clock and start over—and for Tom for sleeping with Myrtle. In the end, while Daisy and Tom seem to escape punishment, Nick feels contempt for them and describes them as "foul dust": these selfish, unchristian people are not portrayed as admirable human beings.

Does The Great Gatsby promote anti-Christian values?

The Great Gatsby doesn’t promote anti-Christian values as much as portray people who don’t seem to be leading Christian lives. As these people ultimately suffer, it’s difficult to argue that the novel promotes the values imputed to many of the characters.

In Galatians 5:22–23, Paul enumerates some of the values that he feels are associated with Christianity. These values include love, peace, joy, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. It’s reasonable to contend that the key characters in The Great Gatsby lack these values. The extravagant parties and insidious romantic affairs are neither gentle nor loving. They don’t lead to peace and joy but tragedy, with Myrtle and Gatsby experiencing ignominious deaths. By the end of the novel, Nick condemns the gilded milieu when he tells Gatsby, “They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

The absence of a happy ending indicates that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel isn’t celebrating the behavior and priorities of these people but using them to critique a materialistic, status-obsessed American way of life. In a sense, one could claim that The Great Gatsby promotes Christian values by demonstrating what happens to people who stray from them.