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: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, [http://books.google.com/books?id=dGgAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA537&dq=%22billy+sunday%22&as_brr=1#PPA537,M1 p. 537]</ref>  

: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, [http://books.google.com/books?id=dGgAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA537&dq=%22billy+sunday%22&as_brr=1#PPA537,M1 p. 537]</ref>  

Sunday fascinated the liberal intelligentsia of the time, who often made him a target of their mockery. [[Sinclair Lewis]]' novel [[Babbitt]] includes a character named Mike Monday, "the distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America.... As a prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been more profitable." In his novel, a visit by Monday is opposed by "certain Episcopalian and Congregationalist ministers," whom Monday calls "a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, a gang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants and more hair on their skinny old chests." Later, Lewis was to write [[Elmer Gantry]], a novel about an evangelical preacher with resemblances to Sunday. C. E. S. Wood in ''Heavenly Discourse'' depicts Billy Sunday as going to Heaven, addressing St. Michael and God as "Hello, Mike. Howdy, Pardner," and offering to conduct a revival there: "If you'll come up with the dough, I'll wake up this old morgue and put it on the map. Make it pay, too. I can pack heaven so tight the fleas will squeal, and all I want is the gate-receipts for the last performance."  

Sunday fascinated the liberal intelligentsia of the time, who often made him a target of their mockery. [[Sinclair Lewis]]' novel [[Babbitt]] includes a character named Mike Monday, "the distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America.... As a prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been more profitable." In his novel, a visit by Monday is opposed by "certain Episcopalian and Congregationalist ministers," whom Monday calls "a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, a gang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants and more hair on their skinny old chests." Later, Lewis was to write [[Elmer Gantry]], a novel about an evangelical preacher with resemblances to Sunday. C. E. S. Wood in ''Heavenly Discourse'' depicts Billy Sunday as going to Heaven, addressing St. Michael and God as "Hello, Mike. Howdy, Pardner," and offering to conduct a revival there: "I can pack heaven so tight the fleas will squeal, and all I want is the gate-receipts for the last performance."  

==Notes and references==

==Notes and references==

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