4,994
edits
Changes
no edit summary
He was also financially successful, a point which his critics noted. It was his practice to keep the proceeds of the last day of his campaigns; in 1914, the his eight-week campaign in Philadelphia yielded $35,000<ref>"Billy Sunday Gets $35,000. Revivalist's Share of Pittsburgh Receipts a Free-Will Offering." ''The New York Times,'' February 23, 1914, p. 16</ref> (equivalent to over $600,000 in 2006 dollars<ref>[http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ The Inflation Calculator]</ref>. In 1920 Dun and Bradstreet estimated his worth at $1.4 million ($16 million today).
He was also financially successful, a point which his critics noted. It was his practice to keep the proceeds of the last day of his campaigns; in 1914, the his eight-week campaign in Philadelphia yielded $35,000<ref>"Billy Sunday Gets $35,000. Revivalist's Share of Pittsburgh Receipts a Free-Will Offering." ''The New York Times,'' February 23, 1914, p. 16</ref> (equivalent to over $600,000 in 2006 dollars<ref>[http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ The Inflation Calculator]</ref>. In 1920 Dun and Bradstreet estimated his worth at $1.4 million ($16 million today).
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, [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.
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.