Sherwood Anderson... Voltaire?

After reading Sherwood Anderson's, Winesburg, Ohio I have decided that perhaps, Voltaire and Anderson share some qualities in their writing. Let's talk God in Winesburg, Ohio: the lovely, Jesse Bentley is a prime example. Jesse Bentley gets "denied" by God quite a few times in the novel. A. He prays for a son to name David who will take over his farm and do things he could have never imagined and has a daughter, Louise who is crazy and tries to kill her husband. B. When his daughter has a son, his name is David (we feel like things are coming back around) and just when Jesse Bentley feels like he's going to get what he wants he takes young David out to sacrafice a lamb. This freaks young David out to the point where he almost kills Grandpa Jesse and the relationship between them is really never the same. I believe in this example Sherwood Anderson is basically making fun of a deep believer in the Christian way. He shows prime examples where Jesse is trying to give his all to Christ and the Lord and the Lord denies him multiple times. Another example of God in Winesburg, Ohio: Reverend Curtis. So we have meek and mild little Reverend Curtis and then he sees the sultry Kate Swift. He sees her smoking in bed and he sees her "bare shoulders" and this drives him wild. He can't think straight when he tells his sermons in church and eventually he decides he's just going to look and enjoy and think what he "wants to think" and when he does this he has a revelation about his relationship with God. It's ironic. Again I feel that Anderson is making fun of this Christian figure-head by making him find God through a totally sinful woman. Kate Swift is unmarried, unchristian, she tries to have an affair with an ex-student, and yet, she inspires a minister. Anderson is trying to say: Nobody is really good. I believe he is making jokes about organized religion. Anderson feels that everyone takes the fall and nobody is really good, and trying to fake your way through Christianity and real belief just is not going to cut it. I think it is a moderaly Voltaire train of thinking. I also think it makes sense because he writes in expressionism which illustrates the meaning of being alive and the emotional experience, distorting reality for emotional effect. The emotional effect is wow being a crazy devout Christian is kind of ridiculous. Killing an innocent lamb, faking your way through ministry when you are severely tempted by your sultry neighbor. So maybe this is distortion but he is definetely getting his point across. Voltaire used a sort of distortion to get his point across as well. Candide goes through ridiculous woes and his friends never seem to actually die. This seems to be a sort of early expressionism. He uses the distortion to illustrate the severe idiocracy of philosophy and to take on a more realistic view on life. On the other hand I do not think Anderson's novel is solely based on these ideas but I think it is definetely something to be considered.