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| Billy Sunday preaching, George Bellows, Metropolitan Magazine, May 1915 |
The passing this week of the venerable Billy Graham brought to mind Iowa's own Preacher Billy --- Billy Sunday --- as much if not more of a celebrity on his "sawdust trail" during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as his inadvertent namesake was on the airwaves of the later 20th.
Born during 1862 near Ames, left fatherless by the Civil War and raised partially in orphanages, Sunday switched from professional baseball to protestant evangelism as a young man and launched his independent career as a soul-saver in Hancock County during 1896.
It is estimated that during the next 40 years he preached face-to-face to as many as 100 million people during a career that continued until his death at age 73 in 1935 and "saved" --- as many protestant Christians understand the term --- as many as 1.25 million souls.
Sunday never made it to Chariton, but he did come close during the early summer of 1907 while conducting a four-week series of meetings in Knoxville. The local columns of The Herald, Patriot and Leader were sprinkled with reports of Lucas Countyans headed north to attend one or more of his preaching sessions.
These Knoxville meetings were held at a pivotal time for Sunday. A rising star regionally, his huge canvas tent --- a necessity at the time for a traveling evangelist --- had been destroyed in Colorado during a late October snowstorm. Rather than buy a new one, Sunday discovered that he had enough reputational leverage to demand in the future that host cities construct at their own expense temporary wooden "tabernacles" capable of seating several thousand if they hoped to gain the spiritual --- and economic --- advantages of one of his crusades. The Knoxville tabernacle was one of the first. From then forward through the 1920s he would become a nationwide sensation.
On May 15, 1907, The Des Moines Register sent a reporter down to Knoxville to hear Sunday preach and published the following report the next day. Sunday was known for his "athletic" preaching and his outspokenness, which sometimes bordered on crudity.
Some of the references are difficult to decipher today. By "race suicide" Sunday was preaching against birth control --- a preoccupation among those who feared white Americans would become a racial minority unless they continued to reproduce enthusiastically; "infanticide" refers to abortion. The Corey scandal, which had transfixed America between 1905 and 1907, involved U.S. Steel President and multi-millionaire William Ellis Corey who had paid out $3 million in a divorce settlement in order to marry actress Maybelle Gilman.
Here's the Register report, published under a four-deck headline, "Sunday Grills Eastern Society; Washington Set Scored to a Finish at Knoxville; Corey Wedding 'Damnable'; The Officiating Clergyman is Called Disgrace to Cloth; Evangelist Conducting Revival Services Excoriates Race Suicide and Talks With Great Plainness."
"KNOXVILLE, Ia., May 15 --- Special: 'So-called high society in Washington is characterized by common worship, whisky-drinking and licentiousness,' said Billy Sunday to an audience of 1,800 people here tonight. 'Their conduct is disgrace, a crying disgrace to the American nation. And they are not alone --- look at New York! Think of the Corey wedding. That is the most damnable episode in recent history. The preacher who married them disgraced his ministry, his manhood and his decency. Why I would crawl naked to heaven before I would marry a divorced person so long as one of the parties was living. when it comes to divorce, I am a Roman Catholic from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.'
"Talks Plainly On Infanticide
"From divorce Sunday passed to murder and grew intensely dramatic on the theme of race suicide and infanticide, discussing with a plainness not permissible to public print.
"Next gossiping women engaged his attention and he declared that the average gossip is a 'hatchet faced, gimblet eyed, lantern jawed, grim visaged, carrion peddler and scavenger vendor'
"Beginning his address tonight with a word picture, remarkably vivid, of Belshazzar's feast, he then passed on to a discussion of the violation of the ten commandments, referring to the subject indicated above incidentally, but at times lengthily, and always with fervor.
"When talking about excessive drinking in Washington, he suddenly changed to Knoxville and said:
" 'Booze is doing Knoxville just as great harm as it is in Washington high life. You could not get your booze, if the Knoxville Christians would stand up against the express companies. You old drunken sots. Your name is on the church record anyhow.'
"Profanity was his next theme. 'A man is never so low as when he swears. But the worst is the man who in church says "Our Father who art in Heaven" and then goes out on the streets and damns God and curses.'
"Shows Audience Up
"When Sunday was concluding tonight he suddenly said: 'How many of you have been violating God's commandments? Stand up, you sinners! Stand up!' Ninety-five percent of the congregation immediately arose, the other five sitting tight, some of them grinning at those risen, but some looking sheepish.
"The music was a feature of tonight's meeting. Chorister Fisher sang a solo with great effect and the choir of 150 voices rendered several hymns with great skill. Robert Matthews of Des Moines played two piano accompaniments."
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Although disappointed at the amount dropped into collection plates during the Knoxville meetings, Sunday and his sponsors declared themselves satisfied with the result. An estimated 1,000 souls had been saved. There were, however, some less than desirable outcomes.
The Marshalltown Times-Republican, for example, reported on July 9 a sad case under the headline, "Pleasantville Youth Deranged After Hearing Sunday Preach."
"Knoxville, July 9 --- Found by the board of insane commissioners to be demented over religion after hearing Rev. William Sunday, William Kubil, a young man living near Pleasantville, has been sent to the asylum at Mount Pleasant as a result. the youth, who is 27 years old, lived alone with his mother. When the evangelist came to Knoxville he began attending the meetings, and it was not long before he was one of Sunday's most enthusiastic converts.
"It was not until Sunday left town that he began to manifest his hallucinations. He heard voices condemning him and insisted always that he was the only orator on earth to deliver the wicked from their sins. He became violent and was brought to Knoxville after he attempted to hang himself, and was sent to the insane, hospital."
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| Billy Sunday at the White House, 1922 |
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