Billy Sunday
Billy Sunday was a man unique among American preachers. He was born in Ames, Iowa in 1862, the son of
a Civil War soldier who died of pneumonia on the field five weeks after his
birth. His mother had a very difficult
time raising her children – so much difficulty that she sent her children away
to live in a Soldiers’ Orphans Home.
Billy’s love of sports is what kept him sane in the
orphanage, and he became very proficient at baseball. He was eventually signed to the Chicago White
Stockings in 1883, at age 20, and later played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and
the Philadelphia Athletics. He was an
average batter and a decent outfielder, but was mostly known as a base-runner. Billy Sunday was literally clocked as the
fastest man in baseball in his day, with the first-ever feat of being able to
run the bases in 14 seconds! He was
quite the showman, sometimes doing a somersault on the field while stealing a
base. In one game he batted a single
then, on the three subsequent pitches, stole second, third, and home!
In his youth, the liquor industry was predatory. Americans at this time drank tremendous
amounts of alcohol, more than at any time in American history – the equivalent
of four shots of alcohol per person, per day.
Billy began drinking and it affected his performance on the field, as
well as his personal life. He tells in
his testimony that he was with some fellow ball-players, very famous men like
himself, and they were “pretty tanked up.”
They sat outside of the saloon on a curb in Chicago, where they could
hear a small band playing. The band was
from the Pacific Garden Mission and they were playing hymns he could remember
from his boyhood. As inebriated as he
was, he responded to the invitation of the band when they invited them down to
the mission.
The mission cleaned him up and sobered him up and they
introduced him to Christ. Billy Sunday
accepted Him and never looked back. As a
baseball player, Billy earned about $400 per month, in an era where the average
wage was about $480 per year. He left
baseball and worked at the Chicago YMCA for less that a third of his previous
salary. He began revival work, initially
under the tutelage of famous evangelist J Wilbur Chapman, who was himself the
successor to D L Moody. When Chapman
stepped aside from his evangelistic work, Billy Sunday accepted the mantle.
As a traveling evangelist, he was without equal. He drew quite a crowd, both from his initial
fame as a baseball player and from his theatrics on stage. He would pantomime boxing the devil and he
would debate “Mr Booze.” Billy would run
back and forth across the stage, sometimes smashing chairs to
make a point. He used harsh, salty
language at times. He said of this, “I
want to preach the Gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and
not bring a dictionary.”
He was the master of one-liners, including the following:
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The church gives people what they need; the
theater gives them what they want.
-
Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what God and your wife know
about you.
-
It is everybody’s business how you live.
-
I believe that cards and dancing are doing more
to damn the spiritual life of the Church than the grog-shops – though you can’t
accuse me of being a friend of that stinking, dirty, rotten, hell-soaked
business.
-
Churches don’t need new members half as much as
they need the old bunch made over.
-
You will not have power until there is nothing
questionable in your life.
-
Whiskey is all right in its place – but its
place is in hell.
-
Some people pray like a jack-rabbit eating
cabbage.
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No man has any business to be in a bad business.
-
When you quit living like the devil, I will quit
preaching that way.
-
The reason you don’t like the Bible, you old
sinner, is because it knows all about you.
-
Going to church doesn’t make a man a Christian
any more than going to the garage makes him an automobile.
-
If you want milk and honey on your bread, then
you’ll have to go into the land of the giants.
-
What have you given the world it never possessed
before you came?
As one formerly affected by ‘booze’, Billy Sunday was one
of the driving forces of the temperance movement. He often preached what probably his most
famous sermon, “Get on the Water Wagon.”
In it, he forcefully denounced the predatory nature of the liquor
industry, in addition to other vices such as gambling, prostitution, and the
theater. He often liked to say, “I’m
against sin. I’ll fight it as long as
I’ve got a fist, I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll bite is as
long as I’ve got a tooth. And, when I’m
old and fistless and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it ‘till I go home to
glory and it goes home to perdition!”
Billy, unusually for his day, supported other social issues
of his day, including womens’ suffrage and against racial segregation, purposely
including blacks in his revivals – even in the deep south. He also spoke against child labor, and
advocated for laws preventing the exploitation of children in this way.
Billy Sunday was a solid American, raising a great deal
of money to support the effort of World War I.
He was often seen preaching to troops before they embarked to Europe.
In his day, he preached to more people than any person
ever had in history. In giving his
testimony as part of his invitation, he often alluded to his past career as an
athlete. Teams had initially courted him
after he started preaching, even offering him more than double his previous
salary to come back and play. He
considered that a temptation from the devil and kept to his evangelistic
circuit. He spoke of some of his
previous friends from baseball, names most of the people would have known. He spoke of their lives and the money they
made – and sometimes of the ridicule he faced for not going back to playing
ball. Billy would then tell what
happened to those same men he was drinking with the night he got saved: one
died in a saloon in his own vomit on a pool table, another jailed for
neglecting his family, etc. He would
tell of a few of these men, then he would ask the crowd in conclusion:
“Friends, did they win the game of life, or did I?”
Famous Conversions, Kerr, Hugh T. and Mulder, John
M. Wm B Eerdmans Publishers, 1994
reprint.
“Billy” Sunday – The Man and His Message, Ellis,
William T. LL.D., L. T. Myers Publishing, 1914.
