“Chicago, Chicago, that toddling town…
Chicago, Chicago, the town that Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down”
In Forest Home Cemetery lies Billy Sunday, the spirited, controversial, and incredibly popular evangelical preacher of the early 20th century. It was said that during his life, Sunday spoke to more Americans than any other person. He claimed to have preached to over one hundred million people and was instrumental in bringing about Prohibition.
Born into poverty in Iowa in 1862, Sunday was less than two months old when his father died serving in the Union Army. His widowed mother struggled financially, eventually placing Sunday and his older brother in an orphanage. While he never graduated high school, Sunday received a good education at the facility.
Sunday became known for his physical abilities, particularly his speed and agility. By the time he was 18, Sunday was playing baseball for the town of Marshalltown, Iowa. Three years later, he was recruited for the Chicago White Stockings team in the National League. (The team would go on to become the Chicago Cubs.) Sunday was outgoing and a crowd favorite. He was exciting to watch, dramatically diving to catch balls and stealing bases. His record of bases stolen in one season was an astounding 96. His speed was legendary. After four seasons with the White Stockings, he played for other teams, including the Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the Philadelphia Phillies.
According to Sunday, during either the 1886 or ‘87 season, he was walking down a street in Chicago, near the Pacific Garden Mission, when he heard singing. He said that the hymns reminded him of his mother, so he started attending meetings. Sunday was moved by what he witnessed at Pacific Gardens — everyday people professing their faith — and had an epiphany. He would dedicate his life to serving God. Sunday joined the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church (then at the corner of Adams and Throop Street). It was there that he met his future wife Helen (who went by Nell). Sunday joined the Presbyterian church because of Nell, saying “She was a Presbyterian, so I am a Presbyterian. Had she been a Catholic, I would have been a Catholic, because I was hot on the trail of Nell.” Sunday eventually stopped playing baseball professionally in 1890 to take a job at the YMCA.
Sunday apprenticed under evangelist Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman, and in 1896, headed out on his own to preach. Sunday held revivals in small Midwestern towns on what he referred to as the “kerosene circuit” – a string of communities that did not have electricity. Sunday spoke to large crowds without amplification, sometimes using a sounding board – a piece of wood hung behind him to bounce his voice to the crowd.
In 1903, Sunday was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, even though he hadn’t attended seminary school. At first, his revivals were not well organized, but once his wife joined him on the road (leaving their four children in the care of a nanny), his touring campaign expanded greatly. At his peak, Billy employed 20-23 full-time staff members. Advance teams would visit cities weeks before the revival to publicize and make arrangements. Musicians, led by Homer Rodeheaver and his trombone, played at the beginning of services. Crowds joined in on religious songs like Onward Christian Soldier and patriotic tunes like My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.
Sunday and his crew would stay in towns for extended periods of time, sometimes holding three meetings a day. Folks came in droves, some attending more than once. Sunday had a knack for publicity and promotion. Local newspapers printed his sermons along with the news.
Sunday toured many American cities, first in a tent, and then later in “tabernacles” that towns were required to build before his arrival. In New York, in 1917, a tabernacle was built to hold 20,000 people. The floors of the tents and tabernacles were covered with sawdust, both to dampen noise and to keep dust down. When Sunday called people to come down the aisle to the front of the pulpit to be saved, they were said to be walking the “sawdust trail.”
Sunday had unconventional methods of preaching. He spoke in a staccato, rapid-fire manner. He was pugilistic, embodying “muscular Christianity.” He capitalized on his baseball background, shouting and running back and forth across the stage, sometimes sliding “into home.” He smashed chairs, gestured and postured broadly. He would mime throwing “a fastball to the devil.” He prided himself on using “rough” speech saying, “I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring a dictionary.”
He railed against what he considered societal ills: the teaching of evolution, dancing, flirting, holding hands, intellectuals, card-playing, theater, liberalism, socialism and, during World War I, Germans. (“If Hell could be turned upside down, you would find stamped on the bottom ‘Made in Germany.’”)
He would segregate his audiences in cities that were segregated. He never denounced the Ku Klux Klan, and, in fact, accepted donations from them. But he also disagreed with eugenics (the false theory that the human race can be improved through selective breeding), and child-labor. He also supported a woman’s right to vote.
By far and away, the cause Sunday is most remembered for was his fight against alcohol. He famously said, “Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.” And “We don’t need more grog, we need more God!” He denounced drinking and encouraged crowds to vote their towns dry (banning the sale of alcohol). He is widely credited with getting the 18th Amendment passed in 1919. The night before Prohibition became law, while many in the country were downing their “last call” of legal spirits, Sunday held a funeral for alcohol in Virginia complete with a “corpse” and casket. It was attended by 10,000 ecstatic people. During the service he delivered a eulogy, saying, “You were God’s worst enemy; you were hell’s best friend. I hate you with perfect hatred. I love to hate you.”
Sunday’s popularity dropped off in the 1920s as more entertainment options became available for Americans. He still held revivals, but with a reduced staff and presence. Sunday was deeply disappointed when Prohibition was repealed by the 21st amendment in 1933. He continued to “fight the saloon” saying “I’ll punch it as long as I have a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I have head…”
Billy controversially charged admission to his revivals and sold publications and recordings of his sermons. This fundamentally changed the way faith was viewed; it could now be seen as a commodity, setting the template for future evangelists. The Sundays became wealthy, but while they dressed and lived well, they did not flaunt their wealth. They built a 2,500-square-foot bungalow in Indiana and a ranch in Oregon – not a sprawling mansion in a big city. Sunday also made a point of giving funds back to the community. For instance, during the 1917 New York visit, he gave $60,000 to the Red Cross from the proceeds. When in Chicago, he provided substantial funds to the Pacific Garden Mission.
The Sunday’s adult children all had difficulties, particularly his sons who, ironically, struggled with drinking. The parents routinely paid blackmailers to keep scandals about their sons out of the press. Against the orders of his doctor, Sunday kept preaching after he suffered a heart attack in early 1935. He was preaching up until a week before his death on Nov. 6, 1935. When he died, Nell (or “Ma” as she was referred to) said, “I know a man who saved a million souls will have no trouble getting into heaven.”
An obituary in the Buffalo News said, “Possibly no Christian figure of his day was the object of more extremely contrasting praise and blame.” Some called him “a slangy, sordid vulgarian; a vaudeville comic who made an illegitimate livelihood out of the church,” while others said he was “an unsurpassed spiritual leader and awakener.”
If his life story sounds like the plot of a movie, that could be because at least one work of fiction, Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis, was loosely based on the career of Sunday.
The Sundays are buried under a tall monument carved to resemble a church window. It is engraved with an open Bible and the words: “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. II Tim. 4:7.”
In an interesting turn of events, once Waldheim and Forest Home Cemeteries merged in 1969, Sunday is now buried in the same cemetery as Emma Goldman. Sunday famously raged against radicals and foreigners like the anarchist Goldman, saying that anarchism is “the murderer of the world.” Emma herself denounced Sunday. She once snuck into one of his meetings and called him a “modern clown of religion.” It’s amusing to imagine what they would say about being buried so close to each other for eternity.
References: Ames History Museum, Belling History with the Good Time Girls Podcast, Bowery Boys Podcast, Britanica, Society for American Baseball Research, The Buffalo News, Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Living My Life by Emma Goldman, Our Christian Heritage, Networth Information, New York Herald, New York Times, Religion Unplugged, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Who Built America.