William ashley billy sunday biography diversity

Associated with J. Wilbur Chapman from to An evangelist from tohe made an attack on liquor the mainstay of his campaigns. His father, a Civil War soldier, died a month later. Poverty, hard work, and orphans' homes all figured in Sunday's early life. By the age of 14 he was on his own, drifting from job to job, even serving as janitor in a high school so that he could attend classes.

While clerking in Marshalltown, Iowa, Sunday began to play baseball on the local team; this led ultimately to his employment with the Chicago White Sox and later the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia teams. During these years Sunday married and embraced Christianity. Before his departure from baseball inhe was widely known as a Christian ballplayer in a game not then noted for the high moral character of all its participants.

Wilbur Chapman, and in embarked on his own ministerial career. He was licensed to preach in and ordained by the Chicago Presbytery in Combining musical spectacle with harsh rebukes to sinners and backsliders, Sunday rapidly became famous as he induced tens of thousands to "hit the sawdust trail" walk down the sawdust-strewn aisles of his tabernacle, publicly declaring themselves for Christ.

He especially captivated his audiences with his baseball allusions, such as throwing an imaginary baseball at the congregation while exhorting them to "put it over the plate for Jesus. Fundamentalist in outlook, Sunday viewed Sabbath-breaking and alcohol as the gravest social problems besetting modern society. Among his other achievements, he was significant in bringing about prohibition.

The peak of his career came between and as he staged massive rallies in cities across the nation, spread his message in such works as Burning Truths from Billy's Bat and Great Love Stories of the Bible and Their Lessons for Todayand reportedly amassed a fortune. Less idolized in the s, he lived out his declining years in Winona Lake, Ind.

On Nov. He had stirred the religious enthusiasm of thousands of Americans and had buttressed the conservative religious and social attitudes of many fundamentalists. William C. A contemporary account is William T. Sunday also took advantage of his reputation as a baseball player to generate advertising for his meetings. In in Fairfield, IowaSunday organized local businesses into two baseball teams and scheduled a game between them.

Sunday came dressed in his professional uniform and played on both sides. Although baseball was his primary means of publicity, Sunday also once hired a circus giant to serve as an usher. When Sunday began to attract crowds larger than could be accommodated in rural churches or town halls, he pitched rented canvas tents. Again, Sunday did much of the physical work of putting them up, manipulating ropes during storms, and seeing to their security by sleeping in them at night.

Not until was he well-off enough to hire his own advance man. Inan October snowstorm in Salida, Coloradodestroyed Sunday's tent — a special disaster because revivalists were typically paid with a freewill offering at the end of their meetings. Thereafter he insisted that towns build him temporary wooden tabernacles at their expense.

The tabernacles were comparatively costly to william ashley billy sunday biography diversity although most of the lumber could be salvaged and resold at the end of the williams ashley billy sunday biography diversityand locals had to put up the money for them in advance. This change in Sunday's operation began to push the finances of the campaign to the fore.

At least at first, raising tabernacles provided good public relations for the coming meetings as townspeople joined in what was effectively a giant barnraising. Sunday built rapport by participating in the process, and the tabernacles were also a status symbol, because they had previously been built only for major evangelists such as Chapman. Eleven years into Sunday's evangelistic career, both he and his wife had been pushed to their emotional limits.

Long separations had exacerbated his natural feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. For her part, Nell found it increasingly difficult to handle household responsibilities, the needs of four children including a newbornand the long-distance emotional welfare of her husband. His ministry was also expanding, and he needed an administrator. Inthe Sundays decided to entrust their children to a nanny so that Nell could manage the revival campaigns.

Nell Sunday transformed her husband's out-of-the-back-pocket organization into a "nationally renowned phenomenon. There were musicians, custodians, and advance men; but the Sundays also hired Bible teachers of both genders, who among other responsibilities, held daytime meetings at schools and shops and encouraged their audiences to attend the main tabernacle services in the evenings.

The most significant of these new staff members were Homer Rodeheaveran exceptional song leader and music director who worked with the Sundays for almost twenty years beginning in[ 35 ] and Virginia Healey Asherwho besides regularly singing duets with Rodeheaver directed the women's ministries, especially the evangelization of young working women.

With his wife administering the campaign organization, Sunday was free to compose and deliver colloquial sermons. Typically, Homer Rodeheaver would first warm up the crowd with congregational singing that alternated with numbers from gigantic choirs and music performed by the staff. When Sunday felt the moment right, he would launch into his message.

Sunday gyrated, stood on the pulpit, ran from one end of the platform to the other, and dove across the stage, pretending to slide into home plate. Sometimes he even smashed chairs to emphasize his points. His sermon notes had to be printed in large letters so that he could catch a glimpse of them as he raced by the pulpit. In messages attacking sexual sin to groups of men only, Sunday could be graphic for the era.

Many of the things said and done bordered upon things prohibited in decent society. The sermon on amusements was preached three times, to mixed audience of men and women, boys and girls. If the sermons to women had been preached to married women, if the sermons to men had been preached to mature men, if the sermon on amusements had been preached to grown folks, there might have been an excuse for them, and perhaps good from them.

But an experienced newspaper reporter told me that the sermon on amusements was "the rawest thing ever put over in Syracuse. Sunday's sermon on the sex question was raw and disgusting. He also heard the famous sermons on amusements and booze. He saw people carried out who had fainted under that awful definition of sensuality and depravity.

Homer Rodeheaver said that "One of these sermons, until he tempered it down a little, had one ten-minute period in it where from two to twelve men fainted and had to be carried out every time I heard him preach it. Injournalist Lindsay Denison complained that Sunday preached "the old, old doctrine of damnation". Denison wrote, "In spite of his conviction that the truly religious man should take his religion joyfully, he gets his results by inspiring fear and gloom in the hearts of sinners.

The fear of death, with torment beyond it—intensified by examples of the frightful deathbeds of those who have carelessly or obdurately put off salvation until it is too late—it is with this mighty menace that he drives sinners into the fold. Crowd noise, especially coughing and crying babies, was a significant impediment to Sunday's preaching because the wooden tabernacles were so acoustically live.

During his preliminaries, Rodeheaver often instructed audiences about how to muffle their coughs. Nurseries were always provided, infants forbidden, and Sunday sometimes appeared rude in his haste to rid the hall of noisy children who had slipped through the ushers. Tabernacle floors were covered with sawdust to dampen the noise of shuffling feet as well as for its pleasant smell and its ability to hold down the dust of dirt floorsand walking to the front at the preacher's invitation became known as "hitting the sawdust trail.

Apparently, "hitting the sawdust trail" had first been used by loggers in the Pacific Northwest to describe following home a trail of previously dropped sawdust through an uncut forest — described by Nell Sunday as a metaphor for coming from "a lost condition to a saved condition. Newspapers often printed his sermons in full, and during World War I, local coverage of his campaigns often surpassed that of the war.

Sunday was the subject of over sixty articles in major periodicals, and he was a staple of the religious press regardless of denomination. Over the course of his career, Sunday probably preached to more than one hundred million people face-to-face—and, to the great majority, without electronic amplification. Vast numbers "hit the sawdust trail.

Before his death, Sunday estimated that he had preached nearly 20, sermons, an average of 42 per month from to During his heyday, when he was preaching more than twenty times each week, his crowds were often huge. Even inwell into the period of his decline,people attended the 79 meetings of the six-week Columbia, South Carolinacampaign — 23 times the white population of Columbia.

Nevertheless,"trail hitters" were not necessarily conversions or even "reconsecrations" to Christianity. Sometimes whole groups of club members came forward en masse at Sunday's prodding. ByRodeheaver was complaining that Sunday's invitations had become so general that they were meaningless. Large crowds and an efficient organization meant that Sunday was soon netting hefty offerings.

The first questions about Sunday's income were apparently raised during the Columbus, Ohiocampaign at the turn of — Sunday was welcomed into the circle of the social, economic, and political elite. He counted among his neighbors and acquaintances several prominent businessmen. Rockefeller Jr. The Sundays enjoyed dressing well and dressing their children well; the family sported expensive but tasteful coats, boots, and jewelry.

Nell Sunday also bought land as an investment. Inthe Sundays bought an apple orchard in Hood River, Oregonwhere they vacationed for several years. Although the property sported only a rustic cabin, reporters called it a "ranch.

William ashley billy sunday biography diversity

Although Sunday enjoyed driving, the couple never owned a car. Inthe Sundays moved to Winona Lake, Indianaand built an American Craftsman -style bungalow, which they called "Mount Hood", probably as a reminder of their Oregon vacation cabin. The bungalowfurnished in the popular Arts and Crafts style, had two porches and a terraced garden but only nine rooms, 2, square feet m 2 of living space, and no garage.

Sunday was a conservative evangelical who accepted fundamentalist doctrines. He affirmed and preached the biblical inerrancythe virgin birth of Jesusthe doctrine of substitutionary atonementthe bodily resurrection of Jesusa literal devil and helland the imminent return of Jesus Christ. At the turn of the 20th century, most Protestant church members, regardless of denomination, gave assent to these doctrines.

Sunday refused to hold meetings in cities where he was not welcomed by the vast majority of the Protestant churches and their clergy. Sunday was not a separationist as were many Protestants of his era. He went out of his way to avoid criticizing the Roman Catholic Church and even met with Cardinal Gibbons during his Baltimore campaign.

Also, cards filled out by "trail hitters" were faithfully returned to the church or denomination that the writers had indicated as their choice, including Catholic and Unitarian. Although Sunday was ordained by the Presbyterian Church inhis ministry was nondenominational and he was not a strict Calvinist. He preached that individuals were, at least in part, responsible for their own salvation.

Sunday never attended seminary and made no pretense of being a theologian or an intellectual, but he had a thorough knowledge of the Bible and was well read on religious and social issues of his day. His surviving Winona Lake library of six hundred books gives evidence of heavy use, including underscoring and reader's notes in his characteristic all-caps printing.

Some of Sunday's books were even those of religious opponents. He was once charged with plagiarizing a Decoration Day speech given by the noted agnostic Robert Ingersoll. Sunday's homespun preaching had a wide appeal to his audiences, who were "entertained, reproached, exhorted, and astonished. Sunday's theology, although sometimes denigrated as simplistic, was situated within the mainstream Protestantism of his time.

Sunday was a lifelong Republicanand he espoused the mainstream political and social views of his native Midwest: individualism, competitiveness, personal discipline, and opposition to government regulation. Tichenor[ 65 ] and John Reed attacked Sunday as a tool of big business, and poet Carl Sandburg called him a " four-flusher " and a "bunkshooter.

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