Billy Sunday

Billy Sunday (full name: William Ashley Sunday) (1862-1935) was, during his heyday—roughly 1910-20—the most famous evangelist in America. In his revival meetings hundreds of thousands of people accepted his invitation to come forward and "hit the sawdust trail" (publicly declare their commitment to Christ).

He played baseball with the Chicago White Sox from 1883-7, the Pittsburgh Alleghenies in 1888-90, and briefly with the Philadelphia Phillies. As a player he was notable (though not stellar). He set a baseball record by rounding the bases in fourteen seconds, and in 1891 he set another by stealing 90 bases in 116 games. That year, the Philadelphia Phillies offered Sunday $400/month, but he turned them down to accept an $83/month job as "Secretary of the Religious Department" at a YMCA. He hosted his first revival meeting in Iowa in 1897 and became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1903.

By 1914, he was a national celebrity, conducting campaigns in big cities which lasted many weeks and attracted tens of thousands of people. In 1917, he conducted a ten-week campaign in New York in which 98,000 people accepted Christ.. Gale's American Decades says that by 1920 he was the best-known evangelist in America.

Preaching style

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.

William T. Ellis wrote in 1914, "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."

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 as fine a personification of the sneering arrogance of Mephistopheles as ever was achieved by Sir Henry Irving.]

"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."

He gave his speech vigorous physical accompaniment:

He begins to dance like a shadow-boxer. He slaps his hands together with a report like a broken electricl 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.

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).

Beliefs

He fiercely opposed alcohol:

Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.... The saloon is the sum of all villainies. It is worse than war or pestilence. It is the crime of crimes. It is parent of crimes and the mother of sins. It is the appalling source of misery and crime in the land and the principal cause of crime. It is the source of three-fourths of the taxes to support that crime. And to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, low-down, damnable business on top of this old earth.

He considered evolution to be "bunk, junk, and poppycock."

He favored sex instruction ("Prudery is no more a sign of virtue than a wig is of hair").

Converts and financial success

He was financially successful, a point which his critics noted. It was his practice to keep the proceeds of the last day of his campaigns. He published his results measured both by numbers of converts and by dollars in thank offerings. Through 1916, he made over twenty appearances in cities ranging in size from small (Erie, Pennsylvania; Canton, Ohio) to large (Boston, Philadelphia, New York), and claimed a total of over 600,000 converts and $680,000 in donations (equivalent to about $13 million today).. In 1920 Dun and Bradstreet estimated his worth at $1.4 million ($16 million today).

Criticism

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." Carl Sandburg's poem, "To A Contemporary Bunkshooter," attacked Sunday using demotic speech similar to Sunday's own.