[[Image:Billysundaypose.jpg|right]]
Sunday was unabashedly uneducated and spoke in the plain speech of ordinary people, a marked contrast to the dignified style of other [[minister]]s. This was unusual, even shocking at the time. [[School]]s trained students in elocution and [[rhetoric]]. Ministers and public speakers were expected to use formal, educated [[English]]. A 1920 book for English teachers bracketed Sunday with a humorist famous for introducing [[slang]] into written English:
:...all of us enjoy baseball slang, and George Ade and his rival in slang, Billy Sunday, are popular because they use these picturesque shortcuts that in many instances are destined to become the main paths of verbal expression.<ref>Hall-Quest, Albert Law (1920) ''The Textbook: How to Use and Judge it'', Macmillan, [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=a3bfVRnNovwC&pg=PA159&dq=%22billy+sunday%22+%22george+ade%22 p. 22]</ref>
A 1907 profile tells of him retelling [[New Testament]] stories in his own style:
:"Oh, but the [[Devil]] is a smooth guy! ... So the devil went out in the wilderness after the Saviour. Now, Christ was a man. He had all the attributes of a man. He was tired, he was hungry, he was lonely, just the way you and I would have been. And the Devil walks up to him and says—" [Here the preacher drew himself into ... a personification of the sneering arrogance of [[Mephistopheles]]...] "He says, 'Son of God, hey?'"
The commentator notes that at the first meetings, local ministers had "looked at each other and were horrified," but were won over, and quotes one as saying
:"The man has trampled all over me and my [[theology]]. He has kicked my teachings up and down that platform like a [[football]]. He has outraged every ideal I have had regarding my sacred profession. But what does that count, as against the results he has accomplished? My congregation will be increased by hundreds. I didn't do it. Sunday did it. It is for me to humble myself and thank God for his help. He is doing God's work. That I know."<ref>Denison, Lindsay (1907), "The Rev. Billy Sunday and his War on the Devil." ''The American Magazine'' '''64'''(5), September 1907, [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=8eYvAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA451-IA2&dq=%22billy+sunday%22#PPA454,M1 p. 454]</ref>
Billy Sunday gave his speech vigorous physical accompaniment. Sunday's "tabernacles" held audiences of about fifteen thousand people, to whom he spoke without any sound equipment. To one observer, his platform manners recalled those of the [[Broadway]] performer [[George M. Cohan]], and with good reason:
:Needing to arrest the attention of an incredibly large number of people, he adopts various evolutions that have a genuine emphatic value. It is a physical language... Sunday gives to his words a drive that makes you tense in your seat. Whipping like a flash from one side of the table to the other, he makes your mind keep unison with his body."<ref name=tnr>"Billy Sunday," ''The New Republic,'' March 20, 1915, from ''The New Republic Book,'' [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=x7IiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&as_brr=1#PPA183,M1 p. 183]</ref>
A 1917 biographer referred to his "acrobatic preaching," saying "Sunday is a physical sermon. In a unique sense he glorifies [[God]] with his body."<ref name=ellis>Ellis, WIlliam T. (1917), [http://www.archive.org/details/billysundaymanan00ellirich Billy Sunday: The Man and His Message]; online text at archive.org</ref> A description of him in action says
:He begins to dance like a [[shadow boxing|shadow-boxer]]. He slaps his hands together with a report like a broken electric lamp. He poses on one foot like a fast ball pitcher winding up. He jumps upon a chair. In the stress of his routine he may stand with one foot in the chair and another on the lectern. All the while he is flaying the "whisky kings," the German war lords, slackers, suffragettes, or the local ministry. And, if his story of the [[sinner]] come home to salvation fits the gesture, he may emphasize the moral by throwing himself on the floor with an outstretched arm groping for the home plate like a baserunner sliding safely in with a stolen run.<ref name=nytobit/>
William T. Ellis wrote in 1914,<ref>Ellis, William T, ''Billy Sunday: The Man and His Message with His Own Words Which Have Won Thousands for Christ," John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia, 1914</ref> "Out in the Puget Sound country, where the sawdust aisles and the rough tabernacle made an especial appeal to the woodsmen, the phrase 'hitting the sawdust trail' came into use in Mr. Sunday's meetings." Ellis calls it a "luminous" substitute for "the older stereotyped phrases: 'going forward,' 'seeking the altar.'" and contrasts Sunday's approach with "the more conventional method, used by older evangelists, [of asking for] a show of hands."
The [[Encyclopedia of Evangelism]] says that Billy Sunday would "invite—more often, taunt—his auditors to 'hit the sawdust trail.'"<ref name=ee>''The Encyclopedia of Evangelism,'' 2002, Westminster John Knox Press, [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=syUupeVJOz4C&pg=PA506&dq=%22hit+the+sawdust+trail%22&as_brr=3&sig=l8C08mCLjLPKvJp68kpRRbZhhvU#PPA12,M1 Altar Call]</ref>
==Beliefs==
He favored women's right to [[vote]]. He favored sex education:<ref name=ames>[http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/residents_sunday.htm Famous Ames Residents: Billy Sunday], Ames Historical Society</ref> ("Prudery is no more a sign of virtue than a [[wig]] is of hair").
He favored [[labor union]]s, but within limits: "It would be the greatest calamity of history if [[Eugene V. Debs]] ever became [[president of the United States]].... hell would hold a jubilee and [[heaven]] would hang a crepe on her door.... I have championed the cause of the union man all my life, but I'm dead against the radical in whatever form he may appear."<ref>Karsner, David (1922), ''Talks with Debs in Terre Haute,'' New York Call; [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=m0-D2Q74BxwC&pg=PA57&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA56,M1 p. 57]</ref>
==Converts and financial success==
==Criticism==
A 1916 writer commented that
:When people who have read Billy Sunday say he is irreverent, or frivolous, or that he is a poseur, or that (as some people seem to think) he is a mere financial adventurer or speculator in sermons, the most common reply one hears from people who have heard him is, "I thought so, too, until I went and listened to him and watched him." Then for a few minutes one hears the more or less helpless [[apologist]] for Billy ... trying to explain (like explaining the flavour of a [[raspberry]] to one who won't taste one).<ref>Lee, Gerald Stanley (1916): ''We; a Confession of Faith for the American People During and After the War'', Doubleday, Page, [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=dGgAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA537&dq=%22billy+sunday%22&as_brr=1#PPA537,M1 p. 537]</ref>
Some questioned the permanence of Sunday's "conversions." Following the famous 1917 revival in New York, the [[Federal Council of Churches]] found that only 200 of the 68,000 were permanent converts.<ref name=nytobit/> In 1921, a commentator wrote:
:In spite of the thousands that have hit the sawdust trail, however, it is difficult to believe that more than a tiny proportion of his auditors are religiously affected by him. Very few give any signs of seriousness or "conversion." The great majority of those who hit the trail are merely people who want to shake his hand.... His audiences are curious to see him and hear him. He is a remarkable public entertainer, and much that he says has keen humor and verbal art and [[horse sense]]. But ... he leaves an impression of being at once violent and incommunicative, a salesman for [[Christianity]] but not a guide or friend.<ref>Hackett, Francis (1921), ''The Invisible Censor,'' B.W. Huebsch, Inc.; [httphttps://books.google.com/books?id=ln1ixFuVoUsC&pg=PA23&ots=a2iRPCJG_X&dq=%22billy+sunday%22+shaking+shake+hand&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=hNWhl_TXHcL53rx0MTSo9CUmPHs#PPA30,M1 p. 30] (of reprint)</ref>
Sunday's reply to such criticisms was "They tell me a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good."<ref>[http://www.fbbc.com/messages/billys.htm Sayings of Billy Sunday]</ref> He felt that it was the local [[clergy|clergy's]] job to retain the people he converted: "If you are too lazy to take care of the baby after it is born, don't blame the doctor."<ref name="tnr"/>