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→Preaching style
==Preaching style==
==Preaching style==
[[Image:Billysundaypose.jpg|right]]
[[Image:Billysundaypose.jpg|right]]
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>"Billy Sunday," ''The New Republic,'' March 20, 1915, from ''The New Republic Book,'' [http://books.google.com/books?id=x7IiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA183&as_brr=1#PPA183,M1 p. 183]</ref>
Sunday was unabashedly uneducated and spoke in the plain speech of ordinary people, a marked contrast to the dignified style of other ministers. This was unusual, even shocking at the time. Schools 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:
Sunday was unabashedly uneducated and spoke in the plain speech of ordinary people, a marked contrast to the dignified style of other ministers. This was unusual, even shocking at the time. Schools 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:
:...it would be interesting to study idioms and even slang. The latter may not be deemed wise by purists in English courses but 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, [http://books.google.com/books?id=a3bfVRnNovwC&pg=PA159&dq=%22billy+sunday%22+%22george+ade%22 p. 22]</ref>
:...it would be interesting to study idioms and even slang. The latter may not be deemed wise by purists in English courses but 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, [http://books.google.com/books?id=a3bfVRnNovwC&pg=PA159&dq=%22billy+sunday%22+%22george+ade%22 p. 22]</ref>