Category: Biographical

Billy Sunday as an Actor: How a Kansas City Newspaper Explained His Method (1916)

When Billy Sunday arrived in Kansas City during his 1916 revival campaign, reporters tried to explain what made his preaching so electrifying. One article in the The Kansas City Star offered an unusual perspective. Rather than describing Sunday simply as a preacher, the writer analyzed him as something closer to a dramatic performer.

The article was titled “Billy Sunday as an Actor,” and it attempted to dissect the evangelist’s method from a theatrical standpoint. What the reporter saw was not merely a sermon but a kind of living drama unfolding on the sawdust platform.

According to the writer, Sunday had the ability to bring invisible scenes vividly to life:

“Mr. Sunday, erect and eloquent, is addressing some jury which is corporeally invisible, but which instantly lives before the eyes.”

In other words, Sunday’s sermons created mental pictures so vivid that listeners could almost see the courtroom of heaven forming before them. The preacher might begin by placing his audience before the bar of divine judgment, describing the sinner standing before God.

But the sermon did not stay in one place for long. Sunday constantly shifted roles, turning the message into a dramatic sequence of scenes. One moment he might portray a bartender leaning over a counter; the next he was the drunken customer staggering through the gutter.

The article described these rapid transitions with striking clarity:

“Then he becomes a barkeeper… And in another instant he is the drunkard—‘a dirty rum guzzler’—cringing, broken, swaying to the gutter.”

Through pantomime, gestures, and changes in voice, Sunday acted out moral situations that his audience immediately recognized.

The reporter concluded that Sunday’s preaching relied heavily on what he called melodrama. But the word was not meant as criticism so much as explanation. Melodrama, the article observed, was easy for ordinary people to understand because it dealt in clear moral conflict.

“Melodrama has nothing to do with character and is easy to understand,” the writer noted. “It is the drama of situation.”

That description captures something essential about Billy Sunday’s preaching. His sermons did not revolve around abstract theological debates. Instead, they focused on recognizable human stories: the drunkard, the wandering son, the sinner facing judgment.

Another feature the reporter noticed was Sunday’s physical intensity. The evangelist rarely stood still. He ran, leaped, stamped his foot, pointed accusingly, and pounded the pulpit for emphasis. The effect, the article suggested, was almost like watching an athlete or dancer.

One colorful comparison even likened him to the famed ballet performer Vaslav Nijinsky—an extraordinary metaphor for a revival preacher.

Perhaps the most perceptive observation in the article concerned the simplicity of Sunday’s language. The reporter noted that his words were blunt, Anglo-Saxon, and forceful:

“Short, pungent… Saxon derivatives of English… packed full of powerful stimulus.”

This plainspoken style, filled with vivid phrases and sharp imagery, helped Sunday communicate with audiences drawn from every social class.

In the end, the Kansas City writer recognized something that many critics missed. Billy Sunday’s sermons were not merely lectures about religion. They were dramatic moral confrontations, staged in front of thousands of listeners each night.

On the bare platform of a temporary tabernacle, without scenery or props, Sunday created entire scenes through voice, motion, and imagination. His preaching was not simply heard—it was seen and felt.

And that, the reporter concluded, was the secret of his remarkable power over a crowd.

Adapted from: The Kansas City Star. May 4, 1916:2.

Billy Sunday as a man of prayer?

“In regard to the personality of the man I would say first that he is fundamentally a man of prayer. Let the mistaken critic of Sunday rid himself at once of the notion that his meetings are merely big displays of the powers of advertising and organized enthusiasm and the product of a man who is called “a great salesman”. The life of the man and the activities of a campaign are shot through and through with prayer. In every place where he holds a meeting he chooses a secluded spot from whence he storms heaven. This place becomes a Bethel to him. In prayer he is natural. His prayers are not long but to the point and usually open with “and now Jesus” from whence he proceeds in his peculiar manner to pray for all the matters pertaining to the success of the meetings. Without prayer he believes he would be as Samson shorn of his strength. He makes no decision or takes no step without first taking the matter to the Lord.”

“Life and Labors of William A. Sunday,” Soltman. 1921
Morgan Library, Grace College.

Billy Sunday New York City campaign, c. 1917

“New York City gave me $120,485, Mr. Sunday said, and I turned over every cent for the work that I had said I would. I went to Chicago, and the city gave me $65,000 and I gave the sum to the Pacific Garden mission. I give away a tenth of my income. And that is all right. I do not advertise all the things I do with my money. I do not tell all the world the things that I pay off. You follow me around, some of you, and I will make you dizzy with the money I give away. But I don’t have to tell anyone. It is written down above so that is all that matters.”
As reported by The Richmond Item. Fri, May 26, 1922 ·

Billy’s New York Tribune editorial
The letter was typed on the back of Richmond January 1919 letterhead

New York Tribune
New York City N.Y.

For ten weeks in New York, I went the limit of my strength preaching Christ and Him crucified, explaining as plainly as I could the plan of Salvation as revealed in the Bible. Hundreds of thousands flocked to the old Tabernacle at One Hundred and sixty-eighth street and Broadway (the dearest spot in little old New York to me) and tens of thousands publicly expressed their faith in His atoning blood, proving beyond question of a doubt that people are willing and eager to go hear the Bible explained but will not go to hear it explained away.

There is no Christianity without the deity of Christ, there is no Salvation without faith in the atonement of Christ on Calvary. The doctrine that God is the father of us all and that “self-sacrifice is the key to Heaven” is religious bunk. The fountain head of this horrible war that has drenched the world with blood you will find was in that infamous hellish theology made in Germany. It is now showing its fangs in Russia.

The future existence of our government and its institutions depend in a large measure upon the class of people who will soon be called upon to assist in solving the grave problems that lie just ahead of us. It has been well said that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Therefore, it can rise no higher than the plane of its citizenship. Christianity is the only weapon with which we may successfully contend against extreme Socialism, Bolshevism, I.W. Wism and Anarchy.

When I pronounced the benediction the last night in New York my responsibility for the work there ended. I’ve never yet been satisfied with the results of any campaign I have ever conducted. No business house does as much business as it would like to do. No newspaper ever has as large a circulation as the owner would like to have. No doctor saves as many lives as he would like to save. I have never seen as many people accept Christ as I would like to see but I do my utmost in every campaign.

In a city where I held a campaign there was a church four squares from the Tabernacle. The pastor did not openly oppose the meeting, but he did not encourage his people to help. He had no ushers from his church in the aisles, no singers in the choir, no personal workers in the building, nobody on the committees. Neither he nor his church made any special investment of time energy or money. A few weeks after the meeting closed, he published a statement that though his church was scarcely more than a stone’s throw from the Tabernacle there were no results, and the campaign was a failure.

In the same city another pastor, whose church was seven miles away, entered actively into the campaign. His men were ushers, his singers were in the choir, his workers zealous and untiring in their efforts to win others. He and his people invested largely in time, strength and money and within two weeks after the campaign closed nearly one hundred persons united with his church on profession of faith. And this pastor published a statement that the campaign was a great success. To the one object failure – to the other, a triumphant success. One used a hammer, the other a saw, draw your own conclusions.

As long as God gives me strength I will keep pounding away at the fortifications of sin and pointing men to Jesus Christ as the only way of Salvation, no matter who knocks.

Don’t worry about old John Barleycorn. He has been tried, convicted, sentenced by forty states and today he sits strapped in the chair waiting for the executioner to pull the lever. His time is about up. I’ve given him a few uppercuts myself during the past twenty-five years and you can write it down in your blue book that I’m getting ready to preach his funeral sermon and close with the doxology.

W.A. Sunday

Faith in the Efficacy of Prayer, April 1917 – importance of prayer

The Kansas City Star. Sun, Apr 01, 1917 ·Page 41

The first important thing was to get the whole Christian population of the city to praying for the success of the campaign. Prayer is the one great secret of Billy Sunday’s success, he says himself. He prays without ceasing. The members of his party pray always. Every difficulty that arises is a subject of prayer. If some preacher declines to take part in the revival they pray for him and keep on praying. They pray for little things and big things. Billy catches cold; the whole party prays for him. His voice gets husky; they all begin praying. There is indecision as to which city the next campaign would better be held in; Billy and his party begin praying to be led aright. It is prayer, prayer, prayer, constantly.

And so, great maps of New York were hung upon the wall at headquarters. Each church and school was marked with a tack, a redheaded tack denoting a Methodist church, a blue tack a Baptist church, and so on. Then all of Greater New York was divided into districts and the work of prayer began.

An executive committee was named with twenty-seven men on it, each one a hustler. John D. Rockefeller jr. and William Jay Schieffelin, two of the richest men in New York, are on the committee, and both are actively working.

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.

Billy is for the women; sure, give them a vote, 1918

In 1918, Billy Sunday stepped into one of America’s most divisive debates — women’s suffrage. What drove him? What can we learn from that boldness?

A century later, his words still challenge us to consider what moral courage looks like in public life today.

This original 1918 newspaper article captures Billy Sunday’s public support for women’s right to vote. At a time when the nation was debating suffrage, Sunday’s words reveal both his moral clarity and his ability to speak into civic life with conviction and wit.

The Washington Herald. Jan 9

Evangelist Says He Favored Proposition Long Before It Became a Fad. To Open Suffrage Session With Prayer.

With the vote on the suffrage amendment coming tomorrow, Rev. William A. Sunday is another prominent individual who is taking the opportunity to reiterate his faith in “votes for women.”

In a signed statement which “Billy” Sunday gave Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, of the National Woman’s Party, last night, the evangelist says:

“It is nothing new for me to favor woman suffrage. I have been advocating it for years, even before it became popular. We are living today in a new era. If she is good enough to be our mother and our wife, good enough to preside over our home, to care for us in times of sickness and to share our joys and our sorrows, why should she be denied the privilege of voting?

“Today, more nearly than ever before, she bears equally with men the world’s burdens. What would the nations of the earth do without her aid, either in times of peace or war? Women are sharing equally with men the burdens and the sacrifices of this war.

“They are in the munitions factories and in the fields of agriculture and in all other departments of war service. Without their co-operation the war could not be waged to a successful conclusion. As they share in the burdens they should also share in the responsibilities of government.

“I see no reason why the men and women of the nation should not walk side by side in the matters of law enactment as well as in the home and social life.”

Mr. Sunday will offer the prayer at the opening of the House tomorrow when the suffrage vote is take.

<End of newspaper article>

Sunday’s endorsement came just months before Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919. His statement offers a glimpse into how revivalists connected moral reform with public policy—a reminder that faith and social conscience have always been intertwined in the American story.

Billy’s debt to J. Wilbur Chapman, in his own words

I owe more to Dr. Chapman than to any other man that I ever became a preacher. I traveled with him for two years as an assistant. He picked me up out of the corn rows of Illinois. We went to a town up in Kansas one time to conduct a series of meetings. We were accustomed to have union meetings, but in that place, when we arrived on the scene, we found that they could have had a union meeting had it not been for a quarrel with the Presbyterian church. They had had a fuss and there were a few people live and awake, up-to-date, who said they’d withdraw. So they went down to the bank of the river and they built a church, they had a good live-wire preacher there who was going at a good gait all the time on high gear, while the other fellow had the brakes set.

The Atlanta Constitution. Wed, Nov 07, 1917 ·Page 12

This picture of Chapman hangs on Billy’s wall in his Winona Lake home. It is inscribed with the date 1917.

The Forgotten Mentor: Rev. Rhys Rees Lloyd and the Making of Billy Sunday

“All I am under God, I owe to the Rev. Mr. Chapman and to Prof. R. R. Lloyd of Berkeley, California, with whom I privately studied.”
– Cynon Valley Leader. Sat, Dec 27, 1924 ·Page 2

When historians tell the story of Billy Sunday—the baseball-player-turned-revivalist who shook America from 1900 to 1925—certain names always rise to the surface: William and Nell Sunday, Wilbur Chapman, perhaps John Wilbur Chapman’s evangelistic team.

Yet tucked in old newspaper columns and long-out-of-print yearbooks lies the story of a man whose quiet influence helped shape Sunday’s fiery ministry: Rev. Rhys Rees Lloyd, D.D.

Rev. Rhys Rees Lloyd’s quiet investment in Sunday reminds us that God often does His greatest work through those content to remain unseen.

A Welsh Beginning

Rhys Rees Lloyd was a full-blooded Welshman, born in North Wales to a distinguished minister father and a mother, Miss Williams, from the mining village of Hirwaun, Glamorgan.

His family history read like a hymn to Welsh Nonconformity: his grandfather helped found the local chapel where young Rhys grew in the faith, and the family remained pillars of that congregation for generations.

The old Welsh anthem he loved to quote—Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn anwyl i mi (“The land of my fathers is dear to me”)—captured a devotion to heritage that he never lost.

Educated at the University of Wales, Lloyd excelled in the classical and biblical studies that would become the foundation of a lifelong ministry of preaching, teaching, and mentoring.

Across the Atlantic

In the 1870s Lloyd crossed the ocean, newly married, and settled in Chicago.
There he entered the Chicago Theological Seminary while simultaneously pastoring a city church.

His five and a half years in that pulpit were so fruitful that fellow ministers urged him to train future pastors.

He heeded the call, completing a two-year postgraduate program in New Testament studies.

Before long the West beckoned: Lloyd accepted a chair as Professor of New Testament Greek and Interpretation at Pacific Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California.

For ten years he combined academic rigor with an itinerant ministry of preaching and lecturing that took him across the United States.

A Providential Meeting in Chicago

Meanwhile, in 1886, a young Chicago White Stockings outfielder named Billy Sunday had an encounter that would change his life.

After a street-corner gospel team stirred memories of his devout mother, Billy walked into the Pacific Garden Mission and trusted Christ as Savior.

The next morning, as Sunday headed to the YMCA to begin work as Religious Director, a mutual friend introduced him to Rev. Rhys Lloyd.

The two men could hardly have been more different—one a rough-edged ballplayer with little formal schooling, the other a classically trained theologian steeped in Greek and Hebrew.

Yet in that brief conversation Lloyd quietly offered to help the new believer “whenever he desired.”

Billy accepted.

For more than a decade, usually in the margins of busy schedules, Lloyd tutored Sunday in Scripture, doctrine, and the art of interpretation.

He even helped him with Greek so that Sunday could wrestle directly with the New Testament.

Lloyd asked that the arrangement remain private during his lifetime, but Sunday, brimming with gratitude, often told the story anyway.

More Than a Footnote

A 1914 Scranton Truth article already recognized Lloyd as one of Sunday’s “religious preceptors,” but a richer picture emerged a decade later in a 1924 Cynon Valley Leader profile.

That account celebrated Lloyd’s Welsh roots and confirmed that Billy “spoke of it often and forcibly,” crediting the professor’s ten-year investment in his biblical education.

The article also revealed a life of broad influence:

  • friendships with prominent figures such as General Charles G. Dawes (later U.S. Vice President),
  • lectures across the nation on the results of his biblical research,
  • and quiet philanthropy—helping at least twenty-five young men secure an education.

Mentor of the Evangelist

Lloyd’s mentorship offers a pattern modern ministry often forgets: growth through relationship, formation before fame, discipleship before platform.

It would be easy to blur the lines and call Lloyd “the man who converted Billy Sunday,” as some hometown admirers claimed.

But history is clear: Billy’s conversion took place at the Pacific Garden Mission.
Lloyd’s gift was different and no less vital: he discipled and educated the man who would become America’s most famous evangelist.

Through Rhys Lloyd’s steady hand, Billy Sunday gained:

  • Doctrinal Stability – a grounding in Reformed theology and confidence in the authority of Scripture.
  • Biblical Literacy – enough Greek and interpretive skill to handle Scripture faithfully despite scant formal schooling.
  • Spiritual Example – a model of integrity and intellectual devotion that shaped Sunday’s own passion for the Bible.

A Legacy Worth Remembering

By the early 1920s Lloyd was semi-retired in Chicago, recovering from a long illness, still working on publishing the results of his lifelong biblical studies.
He never sought fame, but his imprint is indelible.

Every time Billy Sunday thundered a sermon before thousands, the careful tutelage of a Welsh professor echoed beneath the sawdust trail.

In the grand narrative of American revivalism, Rev. Rhys Rees Lloyd remains largely unsung—a scholar-pastor whose quiet faithfulness equipped a headline evangelist to shake a nation.

History rarely celebrates the mentors whose quiet faithfulness builds the giants. Yet Lloyd’s story invites us to ask: who shaped us? And who might we be called to shape? Every generation needs its unseen professors who teach others to thunder for God.

Sources: 1914 Scranton Truth, May 4, 1914, p.2; 1924 Cynon Valley Leader, Dec 27, 1924, p.2; contemporary Presbyterian records and Billy Sunday’s own reminiscences.*

“BILLY” SUNDAY FLIES IN AIRSHIP, 1911

“BILLY” SUNDAY FLIES IN AIRSHIP

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.