Category: Baltimore, MD

How did Billy’s Baltimore revival sermons compare to his Trenton campaign (both in 1916)?

From Trenton to Baltimore: How Billy Sunday’s Preaching Evolved in 1916

When Billy Sunday concluded his revival campaign in Trenton, New Jersey, in February 1916, he had already delivered an extraordinary number of sermons in just a few winter weeks. Soon afterward he moved south to begin what would become an even larger campaign in Baltimore, Maryland.

A comparison of the sermon lists from the two cities reveals something fascinating about Sunday’s preaching strategy. While the evangelist was famous for repeating certain signature sermons from city to city, the Baltimore campaign shows a noticeable shift in emphasis and structure compared with Trenton.

The Baltimore Tabernacle

The Trenton Campaign: Classic Revival Preaching

The Trenton sermons follow the pattern of a traditional evangelistic revival. Many of the titles focus directly on conversion, repentance, and the urgency of salvation. Messages such as What Must I Do to Be Saved?, After Death, Judgment, Rich Young Ruler, and What Shall the End Be? formed the backbone of Sunday’s preaching.

These sermons were part of Sunday’s well-known revival repertoire. In Trenton he rotated them rapidly, returning to the themes of judgment, repentance, and personal decision again and again. Titles like Backsliding, Get Right, Choose Ye This Day, and Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out show how directly he pressed the audience toward a response.

This approach reflected the classic revival method: present the danger of sin, call for repentance, and invite listeners to make a public decision.

Baltimore: A Broader and More Structured Campaign

When Sunday arrived in Baltimore later in February, the preaching program became noticeably broader. While the evangelistic messages remained, the sermon list shows a wider range of topics and a more deliberate sequence of themes.

Several sermons addressed revival within the church itself, including The Need of Revivals, Revive Thy Work, and The Restoration of the Church. Others focused on Christian living, such as Following Christ, Positive and Negative Religion, and Show Thyself a Man.

New Sermons Appear

The Baltimore list also introduces several sermons that do not appear in the Trenton campaign. Messages such as The Authenticity of the Bible, God’s Battle Line, The Temptation of Christ, Love Your Enemies, and The Incarnation of Christ reveal a more doctrinal dimension to the preaching.

In other words, Baltimore was not only about winning converts. It also included teaching aimed at strengthening believers and encouraging churches.

The Core Sermons Remained

Despite these differences, Sunday’s core sermons appear in both campaigns. Titles such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Fig Tree, Samson, The Atonement, Choose Ye This Day, and What Must I Do to Be Saved? were staples of his preaching for years.

These messages formed the foundation of Sunday’s evangelistic ministry, and he carried them from city to city with remarkable consistency.

A Larger Revival

The Baltimore campaign also dwarfed Trenton in size. By the time the meetings ended in April, reported attendance had reached 1,376,000 people across the entire series of services.

Such a large audience may explain the broader range of sermons. A major metropolitan revival like Baltimore required not only evangelistic appeals but also teaching, church renewal, and special meetings addressing different audiences.

Two Cities, One Evangelist

Taken together, the Trenton and Baltimore sermon lists provide a revealing glimpse into Billy Sunday’s methods. Trenton shows the evangelist operating in his classic revival mode—pressing the claims of the gospel with urgency and repetition. Baltimore shows him expanding that message into a wider program of preaching that addressed both unbelievers and the church itself.

In both cities, however, the heart of the message remained the same. Whether speaking in a smaller industrial city like Trenton or in a large urban center like Baltimore, Billy Sunday continued to deliver the message that had defined his ministry from the beginning: a call to repentance, faith, and a transformed life.

How did Billy Sunday sum up his own theology (c.1916)?

“My theology is really summed up in four letters: H-e-l-p. I am here to do my best to help the people in this old world live better, and to show them the way to do it. Some people can see no way out for the sinner except through the police court or the potter’s field. I have come to tell you there is another way—through repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Some people have put their trust in government, but there is no salvation through government. They all have failed to suppress vice and develop virtue, America as well as the rest. Others put their trust in education. You can dot every hill with a schoolhouse and put a university in every block and it will save no one unless it is combined with virtue and faith.

Source: April 13, 1916. Baltimore Sun (p.6)

When the Union Veterans Marched Up the Sawdust Trail, Maryland (c.1916)

Baltimore, April 1916

During Billy Sunday’s great revival in Baltimore in the spring of 1916, one evening at the tabernacle took on a distinctly historic tone. The sawdust aisles—normally filled with businessmen, laborers, and curious citizens—were suddenly occupied by a different kind of procession. A body of Union veterans of the Civil War, many gray with age but still proud of their service, marched forward together into the meeting.

1915 Civil War veterans, source unknown

According to the Baltimore Sun, nearly 500 veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) attended the revival that night. The GAR, the powerful national organization of Union veterans, was still an important presence in American civic life in the early twentieth century. Though the war had ended more than fifty years earlier, the men who had fought to preserve the Union remained symbols of sacrifice and national memory.

The veterans were led by James E. Van Sant, commander of the Maryland Department of the GAR, along with E. R. Monfort of Iowa, who at the time served as Commander-in-Chief of the national organization. When they entered the tabernacle they were warmly received, and the crowd greeted them with enthusiastic applause.

The occasion had the character of both a patriotic ceremony and a revival meeting. The veterans arrived with a brass band, and when the musicians began to play familiar airs the audience responded with equal fervor. The strains of “Maryland, My Maryland” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” rang through the building, followed by old martial tunes such as “Yankee Doodle” and “Dixie.” The building reportedly shook with applause as the music echoed beneath the great wooden roof of the tabernacle.

The veterans also presented Billy Sunday with a gift—a ceremonial Old Glory mounted on an elaborately wrought brass standard. It was a gesture that connected the evangelist’s message with the patriotic ideals the veterans had fought to defend half a century earlier.

The evening was opened with prayer by Rev. B. F. Clarkson, chaplain of the Maryland GAR. Both Billy Sunday and his music director Homer Rodeheaver spoke warmly of the veterans and the sacrifices they had made for the nation. Rodeheaver added to the patriotic atmosphere by playing martial music and bugle calls on his trombone.

For the aging soldiers, the gathering was more than a nostalgic reunion. Many of them walked the same sawdust aisles as the younger men and women attending the revival. Their presence reminded the audience that the Civil War generation was rapidly passing from the scene. These men had once marched into battle for the Union; now they marched into a revival meeting in search of spiritual renewal.

By 1916, the Civil War was already receding into history, but its memory still held powerful emotional force. That night in Baltimore, the veterans’ appearance created a striking moment where patriotism, memory, and revival religion met under one roof.

The sight of those aged soldiers marching forward—flags waving, band playing, and the crowd cheering—must have been unforgettable. For one evening at least, the old warriors of the Union once again marched together, not onto a battlefield, but down the sawdust trail of Billy Sunday’s revival.

Billy hosted a revival campaign in Baltimore, February 2-April 23, 1916

This picture hangs in the Billy Sunday home in Winona Lake. Billy and Ma Sunday are in the center.

It is colorized.

Picture credit: The Billy Sunday Home, Winona Lake, Indiana. Colorized by the author.