Former professional baseball player-turned urban evangelist. Follow this daily blog that chronicles the life and ministry of revivalist preacher William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (1862-1935)
Billy Sunday’s Toledo Campaign (April 9 – May 21, 1911)
Billy Sunday’s 1911 revival in Toledo, Ohio, was one of the most anticipated evangelistic events the city had ever seen. Running for six intense weeks—from April 9 to May 21—the campaign opened with extraordinary momentum. On opening Sunday alone, more than 30,000 people attended three services, immediately signaling the citywide interest and spiritual hunger surrounding Sunday’s arrival.
The revival was held in a massive temporary tabernacle measuring 160 by 220 feet, with seating for 7,000 people, plus an additional 1,000 seats in the choir loft. Night after night, the structure filled with working men and women, families, and curious onlookers drawn by Sunday’s reputation for plainspoken preaching, moral urgency, and energetic delivery.
Organizers initially hoped for 20,000 conversions, a figure reflecting Toledo’s size and the scale of the meetings. While that expectation proved optimistic, the final results were still remarkable: 7,323 people publicly professed conversion, surpassing Sunday’s previous record at New Castle. The response confirmed Toledo as one of the strongest campaigns of his early national prominence.
Financial support from the city was equally notable. Total offerings reached $14,423.58, breaking Sunday’s earlier giving record of $10,000 at New Castle. Newspapers emphasized that these contributions came largely from people of ordinary means, underscoring the grassroots character of Sunday’s appeal and the broad civic buy-in to the revival.
By the time the campaign concluded in late May, Toledo had experienced weeks of sustained attention on spiritual renewal, personal reform, and public morality. Though it fell short of early conversion projections, the Toledo campaign stood as a record-setting and influential moment in Billy Sunday’s rise as America’s most prominent evangelist of the Progressive Era.
Thomas E. Green, well known to Chautauqua audiences published in the June 1910 issue of Hampton’s Magazine, an article on “Revivals and Revivalists.” The whole article is full of interest. Chautauqua Committees who have booked Billy Sunday will do well to secure it, as it furnishes splendid material for publicity. He quotes the following estimates of Sunday’s work in places where he has held meetings: The leading pastor in the converted city, a man of ripe judgment, said: “I looked forward to this thing with a great deal of anxiety. When the evangelist came he quite captured me. He is unique. There is only one of his class, and probably it is well that it is so, but he showed himself sincere and honest. There were 736 conversions, and in addition about 1,500 have united with the churches.”
A very hard-headed banker told me: “The cost to the city was something over $16,000. The evangelist got over $7,000, but he earned every cent of it. If a lot of preachers in this country would do as much in five years as he did in five weeks, and work half as hard, they might be entitled to as much return.”
A leading editor said: “His sermon on ‘booze’ was I believe, the greatest individual effort I ever heard from the platform. He talked to six thousand men, and held them as in the hollow of his hand. Up in our bindery I understand all the boys and girls were converted and they are sure a happy bunch.”
I know of one mid-Western manufacturing city in which a fervid revival was held by one of the greatest revivalists of the day. It was not a “bad town” in the beginning. It was a “river town,” however—a “liberal town.” The saloons had never been officially closed even under state law of the stringent anti-saloon sort. For a city of 25,000 people it was what is called “wide open.” The revivalist came, and for six weeks his work went on. At the next city election, as a direct result of the revival, the people voted out a “liberal” administration, and voted in a “closed town” administration. The saloons were closed, and the town is so well pleased they are likely to remain closed, for a long time.
I have known Billy Sunday ever since the days when he came to the old Chicago Ball Club, the days when with my athletic ardor yet unabated I was “Chaplain” of the League.
Billy played rattling good ball, championship form, and he has kept the same standard during a phenomenal career. His meetings are enormous in size and results. His “thank offerings” are the largest any evangelist has ever received.
“Drunkenness, gambling, adultery, theatre going, dancing, and card playing are damning America, and nothing can save it from ruin but a revival of religion,’ says Billy Sunday.
“You think, then, that our popular amusements and recreations are wrong?”
I know it. Dancing is nothing but a hugging match set to music. It’s the hotbed of licentiousness whether in a fashionable parlor or in a dive. More girls are ruined by it than by all other things combined. Talk about the poetry of motion! It’s just a devilish snare of souls. Let men dance with men and women with women, and the thing wouldn’t last fifteen minutes. The slum dance is better than the club dance, because they wear more clothes at it.”
“Sow bridge whist and you reap gamblers. The man who sits at a table and bets a thousand on a jack pot is no more a gambler than the society belle who plays bridge for a prize.”
That’s Billy Sunday, America’s greatest evangelist. On the platform he “plays ball.” Attitude, gestures, method—he crouches, rushes, whirls, bangs his message out, as if he were at the bat in the last inning, with two men out and the bases full. And he can go into any city in America and for six weeks talk to six thousand people twice a day, and simply turn that community inside out.
Source – the author of this article is probably the wife to Evangelist M.B. Williams.
Grace Sax joined the Sunday team in February 191. She immediately assumed the leader of the cottage prayer meetings, as well as Bible teaching and training local churches to handle the fruit of the Sunday revivals.
The Liverpool Evening Review. Wed. Sept 18, 1912:1. Grace is in the center.
This article in a 1911 newspaper gives a glimpse of the importance of prayer to Grace.
Miss Saxe then held up little blank book which is called “Answered Prayer.”
She calls it, “A Record of the Footsteps of a Prayer Hearing and Prayer Answering God.” It is divided into four blank columns headed. First, date of asking; second, the request; third, the special promise pleaded; fourth, date when answered.
In this record she puts only the prayers which to man’s eyes it seem impossible to have answered. All of her prayers, she says, have not been answered thus far—many of them have however been answered fully.
“There are conditions to fulfill if prayers are to be answered.” These seven conditions she has in the back of her “Answered Prayer”
1. Personal condition, Psalm 66:18,
2. Forgiving Spirit, Mark 11:25,
3. Spiritual Motive, James 4:3.
4. Asking, Matthew 7:7,
5. Asking in Faith, Mark 11:24,
6. Asking according to God’s will (not to interfere with His plans) 1 John 5:14,
7. Asking in Jesus name, John 16:23. “Pray so that if it were written we could ask Jesus to sign it.”
In our prayers Miss Saxe suggests that the following should be the form of approach to God: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.
Taking the first letters of these words in order, we spell the word Acts. In Genesis 32:9-12 we find that order observed in Jacob’s prayer. In conclusion Miss Saxe suggested the reading of Andrew Murray’s ‘With Christ in the School of Prayer.’—Mrs. A. R. Williams.
Source – the author of this article is probably the wife to Evangelist M.B. Williams.
The following story was printed in a paper on March 3rd, 1915:
“One of the special features of the meeting yesterday afternoon came when Miss Grace Saxe, of Sunday’s party, rushed from the platform and threw her arms around the shoulders of a woman trail hitter. Miss Saxe later explained that the woman was a relative, living in this city, and that she has been praying for her to come to the front since the opening of the campaign.”
EVANGELIST TAKES TWO-MILE RIDE OVER WINONA LAKE WITH CURTIS
Warsaw, Ind., July 14.-“Billy” Sunday and Glen H. Curtiss, two of the world’s greatest sky pflots, few tagether in the Curtiss hydro-aero. plane on Winona lake today. The evangelist, who is spending, a few days at his Winona home, accepted the aviator’s invitation at the last moment. ” He didn’t flinch as the big air craft sped over the lake a distance of at least two miles. More than 15,000 people saw the three successful flights that were – made by Curtiss.
Location South Bend & Mishawaka Wilkes-Barre, PA Columbus, OH McKeesport, PA Toledo, OH Whelling, PA Springfield, OH Newcastle, PA Erie, PA Porstmouth, OH Canton, OH Youngstown, OH Beaver Falls, PA Lima, OH East Liverpool, OH
That ye may KNOW how ye ought to ANSWER every man.—Col. 4:6.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND HINTS FOR BEGINNERS IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
And take the helmet of Salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.—Eph. 6:17.
ARRANGED BY “FRED” R. SEIBERT
Author’s Collection
Books Proving Handy.
Those who assist in the personal work at the tabernacle are finding that the little book on this line of endeavor sold by Fred Seibert to be of much value. The ex-cowboy, in addition to selling the book on personal work, handles the hymnals and has for sale two of Billy Sunday’s sermons, ‘Moral Lepers’ and ‘Three Groups.’
In early 1911, the city of Toledo, Ohio, found itself at the center of a spiritual and cultural whirlwind when Billy Sunday brought his revival campaign to town. Running from January 29 to March 12, this six-week crusade marked a significant moment not just in Sunday’s ministry, but in the broader urban revival movement sweeping America in the early 20th century.
To accommodate the expected crowds, a massive wooden tabernacle seating around 9,000 was constructed along Jefferson Avenue, near downtown. Though the city’s population at the time was just under 170,000, more than 350,000 people flooded into the tabernacle over the course of the campaign. It was not unusual for Sunday to preach three or four times a day to packed audiences, some standing in the aisles or spilling outside the structure just to hear his voice thunder through the open air.
Sunday’s preaching style in Toledo was vintage Billy—fiery, theatrical, and unforgettable. He ran across the stage, leapt onto chairs, punched the air, and peppered his sermons with vivid imagery and baseball metaphors. Among the messages he delivered were some of his most iconic: “Booze,” “Backsliding,” “If Hell is a Joke,” and “The Ten Commandments.” His attack on the saloon business in “Booze” especially struck a chord in a city known for its proliferation of taverns and political corruption. “I want to preach so plainly,” he declared, “that the man who runs may read, and that even the saloonkeeper will know that I mean him!”
The results were staggering. Over 18,000 individuals reportedly made decisions for Christ, and local churches saw a dramatic uptick in attendance and membership. The spiritual momentum didn’t stop at the altar. Sunday’s relentless promotion of Prohibition, moral reform, and church revitalization left an indelible mark on Toledo’s civic and religious landscape.
The local press—especially The Toledo Blade—covered the revival extensively, offering daily summaries and commentary. While some editorials criticized Sunday’s bluntness and emotionalism, many praised the campaign’s influence on the moral climate of the city. Business leaders, city officials, and pastors saw firsthand the social power of mass evangelism, and Sunday’s reputation as a national revivalist soared.
Toledo was more than a successful campaign—it was a turning point. It proved that Sunday could handle large urban centers with complex political, economic, and moral challenges. It set the stage for even bigger crusades in Detroit, Boston, and New York, and solidified his status as one of the most influential evangelists of his time.
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 