NEWS

​Many today have not heard of William A. “Billy” Sunday, but he was one of the most influential evangelical preachers of the early 20^th century. Sunday, a native of Iowa, played professional baseball for eight years with the Chicago White Sox and several other teams. Around 1887, at the age of 25, he left baseball to become an evangelical Christian, whereupon he denounced drinking, swearing, and gambling. He then began speaking in churches and YMCAs, preaching in a frenetic and colloquial style that attracted increasing numbers of followers.

In 1893, Sunday took a job as the full-time assistant advance man to J. Wilbur Chapman, one of the time’s most popular evangelists. Chapman became a mentor, helping Sunday to hone his preaching skills and encouraging him to study theology. Although self-educated, Sunday had a library of over 600 books and read extensively on theology and the Bible. Even though he lacked formal education, the Presbyterian Church ordained him in 1903.

By 1908, Sunday and his wife Helen (Nell) had four children, and it was difficult for Nell to both care for the family and give Billy the support he needed. They decided to hire a nanny for the children so that Nell could begin managing their religious campaigns. She proved to be a master organizer, and by 1910, Sunday had begun to conduct month-long meetings in small cities like Youngstown (Ohio), Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania), and South Bend (Indiana).

Starting in 1915, he began appearing in larger cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. By the time they got to New York, the organization had a paid staff of 26, including musicians, custodians, advance men, and Bible teachers who held daytime meetings at schools and shops. They also had a women’s program.

Sunday’s homespun method of preaching and his exciting delivery appealed widely to his audiences. According to historian Robert F. Martin, he claimed to be “an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion” and left his listeners “entertained, reproached…and astonished.”

Speaking without notes, he sometimes strode across the stage, Bible waving, and was known to climb up on furniture while preaching. According to Martin, his straightforward messages emphasized “a personal God, salvation through Jesus, and following the moral lessons of the Bible.”  He strongly supported the temperance movement and his preaching probably contributed to the adoption of Prohibition in 1919.

Billy Sunday delivering one of his energetic sermons (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

In November of 1923, Sunday made the decision to hold a crusade in Charlotte. In preparation, the city built a huge temporary wooden structure on the southwest corner of Tryon and Third streets to accommodate the crowds. Thousands of people from the region thronged to Charlotte to hear his message, and the air filled with the sound of enthusiastic crowds singing favorite old-time hymns.

Rev. Sunday, however, did not confine his preaching to Charlotte. He also appeared in surrounding towns like Kannapolis, Concord, and Shelby. And on February 8, near the end of his time in Charlotte, he came to Davidson. According to the February 14, 1924, edition of the Davidsonian, “Students, school children, townspeople and visitors crowded into the building (the old Presbyterian Church) to hear a speech brief and pointed and characteristic of Billy Sunday.”

The subject was education, and although it was a relatively short sermon, it was  “not lacking in quality and thoughts were hurled by the speaker with his customary speed and directness … Mr. Sunday gave the audience to understand at the beginning that he had come to speak to the students and that the old folks might listen if they pleased.”

Turning to education, he noted that “it is not alone to put facts into our minds that we come to college … but to put in determination to take a nonentity and to make a man of power. The education that fails to make a better man is a failure.”

He decried laziness and the drift into harmful habits. He noted that a college education is but the beginning and warned his audience to “keep off the merry go round of fads. Don't think the world owes you a living. You may fool your profs in college, but you won't fool the world when you leave college. It won't take the world long to find out that you are excess baggage ... There are no shortcuts to success, but you must take the long way around like everybody else.”

According to the article, he ended with a brief summary, “it is our duty to look for the best in the world, to seek to do some good in this world... It is by such living and giving that we are true to Jesus Christ that our lives are a success and that our education is complete in mind and soul.”  He also paid tribute to President Woodrow Wilson, who had attended Davidson for one year and had died three days earlier.

Sunday’s Charlotte crusade ended a few days later. On February 11, 1924, the Lincolnton Times reported that during his time in Charlotte, he spoke four times a day to thousands of people. An estimated 30,000 people heard Sunday preach on the last day. That night the audience swelled to around 9,000 people, and “stood 5 or 6 deep all around the walls and sat in the sawdust in the aisles.”

At the end of the service, Sunday was given a check for $25,000 (about $475,000 today) and an additional gift of $250 from the Ku Klux Klan.*

On February 11, the Concord Times described the impact of this last appearance: “… instead of turning and streaming away before the close of the invitation the crowds last night waited until the last note of the songs had died away before leaving the building. Seemingly loathed [sic] to desert the place that had meant so much to so many they remained until finally the platform had become deserted and hundreds were streaming down from the choir lofts before they turned towards the home(s) that have been brightened by the joyful religion they have heard during the past weeks.”

The Lincolnton Times estimated that Billy Sunday had reached 500,000 people, both from the local area and surrounding states, during his Charlotte campaign.**

The tabernacle is long gone, and there is no historical marker in Charlotte to register the event. Ironically, given his opposition to alcohol, the only reminder of Billy Sunday in Charlotte today is a cocktail bar named Billy Sunday, a franchise of a similar bar in Chicago.

*NOTE: During the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, its ideals fit in naturally with those of the evangelical church. According to historian Randall J. Stephens, “Christians in America may not like to acknowledge how influential the Klan was or how the group made strong connections between faith and racial/ethnic purity and God and country. ‘Religion remains a prominent part of the Klan,’ contends (Kelly) Baker, ‘though many would like to pretend that it’s not.’ The popular film Birth of a Nation (1915), which so inspired the second Klan, featured a concluding scene with a white, radiating Christ in Anglo-Saxon heaven. Such obvious links between white supremacy and Christianity, and others made by millions of Americans in the 1920s, cannot be wished away.

** The population of Charlotte in 1920 was around 46,000.