Billy Refuses to Help “Make Circus of Religion”

The Washington Herald. January 7, 1918

Billy Sunday told about 9,000 persons who attended his afternoon meeting in the Tabernacle how the “movie” people had offered him a cold $1,000,000 to pose for a film serial. And he told them how he had replied to their offer in this fashion:

“You can’t commercialize my mug for $10,000,000; you’re not going to get any help from me to make a circus of God’s religion. Not on your tintype.”

The “movie” reference was injected into Billy’s remarks through the presence of several “movie” cameramen at the Tabernacle just before he came into the building. They tried hard to “slip one over” on Billy and catch him as he got out of his limousine and started for the Tabernacle door. “Ma” Sunday, who was with Billy, protected the evangelist from the pointed cameras and pushed him inside the big building.

“Big Hand” for Billy.

The crowd cheered Billy to the echo. On the platform was Mrs. Marshall Field, widow of the noted Chicago merchant, with a party of friends from the Windy City. They, too, cheered Billy’s references to the “movie men.”

Billy’s afternoon sermon was chuck full of patriotic references and of slambang punches at “old Kaiser Bill.” And just before he finished it, he asked all those in the big audience who would pledge themselves to give undivided support to the national government in “its hour of need” to stand up. And the entire audience arose. Then he asked for a “Chautauqua salute,” and thousands of handkerchiefs waved over the great auditorium.

Billy took a hard slam at the “knocker,” who, he said, “is always going up and down the land, shouting that we are not prepared and that we should have done so and so long ago.”

“You folks ought to remember,” shouted Billy, “that we have a whale of a job on our hands. But we’ve got a whale of a country and we’re going to put it over. And we don’t propose to unsheath the sword until we have that gang on its knees pleading with Uncle Sam to call off the war.”

In his sermon Billy spoke of the drummer boy in Napoleon’s army who refused to beat a “retreat” when ordered by his commander. He looked squarely into the eyes of about 100 soldiers who were in the Tabernacle and declared loudly: “We don’t know how to beat a retreat either, do we boys? You bet your life we don’t! But we can beat a charge that can dig a grave so deep for that bunch of Kaiser Bill’s hot dogs that they won’t even hear the Angel Gabriel’s horn on the last day.”

The soldiers cheered Billy and the big crowd joined in. Billy emphasized that “we’ve got to scrap as well as play” and he declared that with such a fine army and such a navy as Uncle Sam boasts, there “isn’t a power anywhere in the world that can stand up against it, much less that bunch of cut-throats who would drag their Hohenzollern teachings into the land of the free.”

Billy took a hard rap at the Industrial Workers of the World and declared that if he had anything to do with “that bunch,” they all “would have faced the firing squad long ago.” His sermon was a likening of the Christian workers of the world to the grenadiers of old and the point he emphasized was that Christians everywhere are “fighters for the cause of Christ” in just as much the same sense as are the soldiers fighting now the cause of the allies.