Tag: 20th century revivalism

Billy Sunday preached 95 times during his Richmond, Indiana campaign in 1922

Billy Sunday preached 75 times in the tabernacle during the six weeks of his Richmond campaign (April 16 – June 4), and at least another 15 times outside the tabernacle, in surrounding towns close to Richmond. He sometimes preached four times in one day.

As reported in The Richmond Item. Sun, May 28, 1922 · age 7:

NINETY SERMONS TO LAST NIGHT

Old Man Statistics Gives Some Interesting Figures to The Item Reporters

Old Man Statistics dropped into The Item press box, yesterday, and when the reporters were not there, left a bundle of facts. He said Billy Sunday would preach his ninetieth sermon Saturday night, since the day he arrived at Richmond.

That seemed rather too many for the reporter who checked up on it. Yep! Old Man Statistics was all right, it appeared. With the sermon last night Mr. Sunday, has preached 90 at the tabernacle, if one counted the afternoon that Mr. Sunday spoke to the children when the Sunday school convention was held there.

To bring the total to 90, Old Man Statistics, mentioned two sermons at the country club, others at the high school, Earlham college or at the Pennsylvania shops. Then came trips to Portland, Anderson, Greenville, Bradford, O., and the morning sermons each day this week, at Liberty, Hagerstown, Spiceland and Cambridge City.

Billy Sunday donated the equivalent of almost $4 million to Pacific Garden Mission, the Y.M.C.A, and the Red Cross.

As reported by The Richmond Item. Fri, May 26, 1922 ·Page 7.

SUNDAY DONATES SUM OF $120,485

Then on Top of That he Gives $65,000 to Pacific Garden Mission of Chicago

Those who call Billy Sunday a grafter were asked yesterday afternoon to hear a little of some past donations of the evangelist. He told his tabernacle audience that when he was in New York City (c. 1917) he told the people coming to the tabernacle to give him all they were able to and he would give it all to the Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A., for their war work.

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.

No Guarantee

When Mr. Sunday promised to come to Richmond, he was guaranteed nothing, and all that was to go to him was the free-will offerings the last day of the campaign. He exclaimed, I wonder whether any circus would come to your city on that basis just take up a collection. I wonder whether your county or city officials would collect its taxes on that basis take up a collection. I wonder whether they would let you go to the movies and then take up a collection. No collection for Dempsey when he stood ten minutes in the ring and received $300,000. Oh! no. If I got some of you pay more for your gasoline each year than you do for your church. Oh. it makes me mad when I see you putting God on a five and ten cent basis.

Little

Like one old bird who was always at prayer meeting giving testimony and telling of all he did when he had more on tobacco than he gave to the church in 13 years.

Mr. Sunday preached on God So Loved the World. The Rev. Alford of Columbus, O., made opening prayer. Messrs Mathews and Rodeheaver sang a duet. Mr. Rodeheaver sang My Wonderful Dream. following the sermon, Mr. Sunday gave the invitation and six persons responded.

had found the sheep that was lost. He took her tenderly, and in his shepherd’s plaid he carried her to the fold. One, two, three, four, five, six ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine and one hundred. He locked the fold and entered the cabin and she had fallen exhausted on the floor.

She was lying there panting and at the sound of his voice and footsteps she staggered to her knees, reeling and fell dead.

That Jesus Christ should come to this old world to give us a chance to be saved, to try and find us, cursed and scarred and bruised with sin. That is God’s message to us. He so loved the world, that he gave his only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Once, years ago in New York I was told there lived a wealthy Christian merchant. He married a beautiful woman, gave her a bank account and unknown to him she drank. She used to go away and visit friends on pretence of visiting relatives. She kept it up and at last fell into a life of sin and shame.

One night he came home and found a note telling him that she had gone away never to return. That her life could not merit his true, Christian character and life. He hired detectives and they searched every where and they could not find her.

Copies of her pictures were left with the police and with undertakers around the country and he said, If you run across her body, use the best clothes that money can buy, buy the finest casket, etc.; bank it with flowers and send for me.

Three years went by when the phone rang and a voice said, We have found her.

And he went to the undertaking establishment and as he looked through the glass upon her face, he cried, Oh, Mary, if you only knew how I loved you, you would have come back.

He stood weeping as if his heart would break and he said, Bury her.

And he erected a costly monument and said to the undertaker, Put on it one word: Forgiven.

That is God’s message to us. He forgives our transgressions, and I am glad that I have a God and that I have a Salvation like that to preach to you.

New song introduced at May 1922 Richmond campaign for attendees

  1. Oh, happy day when Billy came,
    To teach us faith in Jesus name
    He taught us how to work and pray,
    And live more closely every day.
    Chorus:Happy day, happy day
    When Billy came for a six weeks’ stay.
  2. Oh, happy day when “Rodie” came
    And with his smile put gloom to shame,
    He taught us how to laugh and sing,
    And go home blessing every thing.
    Chorus:Happy day, happy day
    When “Rodie” came for a six weeks stay.
  3. Oh, happy day when Mrs. Asher came,
    To sing the praises of our King.
    There’s Bob and Pete, Miss Kinney too
    Who teach us how to chase the blues.
    Chorus:Happy day, happy day
    When Rapp signed up for this six weeks stay.

Cited in: Palladium-Item. Thu, May 18, 1922 ·Page 1

Billy Sunday in action at Richmond, May 1922

The Richmond Item. Wed, May 17, 1922 ·Page 1


Hot Grounders From the Bat of Billy Sunday on the Tabernacle Diamond

Palladium-Item. Thu, May 18, 1922 ·Page 7
“Billy”I am trying my level best to please God,” says Billy Sunday
Palladium-Item. Fri, May 19, 1922 ·Page 15
Palladium-Item. Mon, May 22, 1922 ·Page 7

Local female Bible teacher – Florence Kinney – teaches at the Richmond campaign (1022), newspaper account

Miss F. Kinney Arraigns

“Key to the Scriptures”

Miss Florence Kinney, member of the Sunday party, spent about three quarters of an hour yesterday afternoon on Mr. Sunday’s platform and went after Christian Science without mercy and by the time she had ended, the cult was ready for the junk heap from the standpoint of the lecturer.

Taking for her subject “Christian Science Compared to the Bible,” Miss Kinney placed the writings of Mrs. Eddy against the side of the Bible and the latter triumphed, according to the plaudits of the audience who were clearly on the side of Miss Kinney and the Word of God.

“Christian Science is neither christian or scientific,” Miss Kinney declared. “Mrs. Eddy says ‘matter is non-existent. All is mind.’ In other words if you are walking down the street and a ball hits you—well it would not be the ball. It was an idea that hit you.

“There is no such thing as a material world, according to Mrs. Eddy. All right. Then if there is no material world. Miss Kinney replied in answer to that and if matter is nonexistent as Mrs. Eddy says, then you and I are myths so there must not be such a thing as humanity. There is nothing to observe. Nothing to observe with, for we are all myths says Christian Science.

“Christian science is not scientific, because Mrs. Eddy denies what she says is not there. It is not difficult to prove that Christian Science is not Christian because Mrs. Eddy denies all the fundamentals of the christian religion.”

Miss Kinney took up the tenets of Christian Science reading passage after passage from Mrs. Eddy’s “Key to the Scriptures” claiming them all wrong and backed up her arguments with verse after verse from the Bible, repeatedly asking her audience which side they would take and always for herself declaring that she was going to stand upon the Word of God. Miss Kinney attacked Christian Science from a score of angles, arraigned it upon Holy Writ and left it a quivering mass.

Mrs. Eddy denies the personality of God, putting in His place an impersonal being, Miss Kinney said. Other denials she enumerated in the following arraignment:

Denial of the personality of the devil; denies reality of sin; denies the conception; denies the atonement; denies the death of Christ and the resurrection; denies the second coming of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit; denies prayer, declaring that it will lead people into temptation; denies death; denies that children are the fruit of the body.

Mrs. Eddy’s idea of the devil is that it is an error of the mortal mind, Miss Kinney said and to show that the thought is wrong for the glory of God,” and other passages from the Bible to combat the writings of Christian Science. “Sin is just an illusion of the mind,” Mrs. Eddy says, according to Miss Kinney.

Commenting on Mrs. Eddy’s denial of the conception, Miss Kinney says Mrs. Eddy claims that “Jesus was the result of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God and that Jesus is the human man and that Christ is the divine idea. Jesus Christ was not the one and the same person.

In contradiction to that Miss Kinney quoted God’s own words at the Saviour’s baptism. “This is my beloved Son.”

The atonement was held up. Mrs. Eddy’s definition on it and what the Bible says was read.

Jesus didn’t die, Mrs. Eddy says, was the next arraignment of Miss Kinney, like a lawyer before the bar of justice. According to Mrs. Eddy, He was in the tomb perfecting Christian Science. When He had perfected it then He came out. Mrs. Eddy says, charged the speaker.

The Christian Science idea of the resurrection, Miss Kinney said, is that the Master reappeared the third day of his “ascending thought.” This ascending thought is Christian Science, according to Mrs. Eddy, Miss Kinney said.

What the second coming of Christ means to the Christian Scientist is the awakening of the truth of Christian Science, Miss Kinney said.

What the coming of the Holy Ghost means to the Christian Scientist, according to their teaching, Miss Kinney declared, is the development of divine life and mean; Christian Science.

As Miss Kinney gave the Christian Science doctrine, she replied to them with a battery of Bible quotations that denied the statements as read from the “Key to the Scriptures.”

Although Mrs. Eddy will not accept the Old Testament as being inspired, declaring that it is part fables,” Miss Kinney said, the first verse in the Bible, “In the Beginning God,” Mrs. Eddy has changed it to, “In the beginning Christian Science.

The lecture was delivered in a cool dispassionate manner; there were no fiery utterances against Mrs. Eddy. Flowery phrases for anyone, but the cold recital of facts as the lecturer saw them. The exact words of Mrs. Eddy was quoted and the sequence built up upon logical thoughtful ground delivered by a thoughtful student. The combating evidence was the reading of the Scriptures, so that the lecture was exactly what its title said it was. It was the Bible against the “Key to the Scriptures” of Mrs. Eddy.

Cited in: The Richmond Item. Wed, May 17, 1922 ·Page 6

Editor: Miss Kinney may have lived at 22 South Fourteenth street; Miss Florence Kinney.

What happened to the ‘Richmond’ Billy Sunday tabernacle after the campaign ended in early June 1922?

Tabernacle Sold

Earlham College trustees yesterday paid $2,200 for the [Richmond] tabernacle as it stands at South Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets. The check was paid to Ed Wilson, treasurer of the Sunday campaign and chairman of the salvage committee, which committee closed the deal.

It will be removed after the campaign closes. The Charleston, W. Va. tabernacle was sold for $1,000 and the money divided among the members of the Sunday party.

When the Charleston tabernacle was razed, men and boys spent days turning over the sawdust and many dollars in nickels, dimes, pennies and quarters were found.

Cited in: The Richmond Item. Tue, May 16, 1922 ·Page 1

Helen ‘Ma” Sunday was a powerful force in Billy Sunday’s camapigns.

MA SUNDAY’S POWER SEEN IN CAMPAIGN

Her Judgment Determines Many Policies and Helps Evangelist in Work to Save Souls.

Palladium-Item. Tue, May 16, 1922 ·Page 7

TAKES ACTIVE INTEREST

The balance wheel of the Sunday party, they call her.

Born of sturdy Scotch stock, Mrs. William A. Sunday uses all of the solidity and far-seeing qualities of her ancestry in matching the impetuous, quick action of Billy Sunday, and keeping the whole Sunday organization running in perfect trim.

As devoted to her husband as he is to her, she has been with him on most of his travels, and within between revivals and conferences the care of a family of four, and a home at Winona Lake.

‘Nell’s not much on looks,’ Sunday has told his Richmond audience, ‘but she has more horse sense than any other woman that I have ever seen, and every time I go against her judgment I get in bad.’

Energetic Personality

But Sunday’s own picture of her lacks one of her most forceful characteristics, her physical energy.

To follow a man of Sunday’s vitality on a revival campaign, and at the same time to rear four children, and care for a home requires more than ordinary physical endurance. But on top of it all Mrs. Sunday has continued to keep pace that has been set, and now not only takes care of the home at Winona Lake but is a general as the landscape gardener for their home town.

At the present time she is devoting her time to beautifying Winona Lake and keeping the home there in readiness for the week or two that Sunday pays there.

Knows How to Work

When Mrs. Sunday starts out on anything, she usually accomplished it. She has been known to work in the garden, and then go on a long trip herself. She has even been known to work in the garden when no one else could be found to do it.

Work in the garden is one of the diversions of Mrs. Sunday, and she often have found her hard at it, working among the flowers and shrubs that have fallen to her lot, but in the days when Mr. Sunday was a struggling evangelist barely making enough from town to town to pay the expenses of reaching the next place, Mrs. Sunday did all the work at home, cared for the children, and part of the time traveled with him, keeping the children in school at what ever place they were for the time.

The story of the courtship of Billy Sunday and Helen A. Thompson has been told many times, but it never loses its interest.

The two met just after Sunday’s conversion at the prayer meeting of the Jefferson Park Presbyterian church. ‘Nell is a Presbyterian, that is why I am one,’ Sunday said one night at the tabernacle.

Father Objected

Objections to a professional ball player on the part of the elder Thompson for a time made meetings between them difficult, but Mr. Thompson has said that since Sunday’s route to the ball park lay past his house, that Helen wore all the paint off the front porch by sweeping it while he passed.

While Sunday was with the Philadelphia team, Helen married him, and the honeymoon traveling was with the team.

Mrs. Sunday’s father was William Thompson, one of the pioneer manufacturers of Chicago, and was a soldier in the Civil war like Sunday’s father also.

Both of her parents were full Scotch, and she herself was born at Dundee, Illinois.

Cited in: Palladium-Item. Tue, May 09, 1922 ·Page 1

Sunday’isms from May 9, 1922 Richmond campaign

CAUGHT ON THE FLY

The God-forsaken dance in the schools is—I’ll knock hell out of that here. And you taxpayers have to go down and pay the bill for immorality. It’s an outrage.

Faith is a mightier force than dynamite.

You can’t hurt the Bible any more than you can stop an ocean’s wave by blowing against it with a tin whistle.

This tabernacle represents God and Christianity.

We depend too little on God and too much on the soup kitchen. There are more full stomachs than bended knees in the church.

There’s no use to go after a skunk with cologne water.

Some of us are so slightly acquainted with God that we are afraid to trust Him.

Faith takes God at His word without an IF.

When you have done your best you can trust God with the consequences.

You can pass the buck to God any time you want to if you have done your part.

God will damn any church that will run a dance.

If you want to see a dead town wake up, do something out of the ordinary.

A preacher that can’t preach as though he had authority from God, is no success. He just jimmied his way into the pulpit or had a pull somewhere.

If some preachers would talk plain to sinners in the front pews, how soon the old ice house would thaw out.

If Bible results are expected then Bible preaching must be given to the people.

There is constant disappointment in the preacher who tries to shoot bear with bird shot.

A knowledge of the Bible without education is better than education without the Bible.

The man that God sends is always the right man.

The preacher who is afraid to speak the truth is as weak as Samson was with his hair cut.

When God calls a man to preach he expects him to be as natural as when he sneezes or snores.

A safe and sane ministry is a good deal like a horse—well, one that any woman can drive.

Eternity writes no wrinkles on the brow of time.

There are some people who laugh at other people’s misfortunes. There are a few fools like that in the world.

They haven’t got through shouting up there yet since Moody swept through the gates.

Nobody ever goes to hell that he isn’t warned by God.

I am not discounting the value of education. It draws out virtues and attractions that do not appear otherwise. Education alone can not make character. Education alone can not save a soul.

I am a Christian because God said so. God’s word is the last word. I know I am a Christian.

I am not an infidel because I am not a fool.

I can’t understand your indifference to God’s love.

No rattlesnake will crawl over a rope.

Hell must be an awful place if God Almighty loved us enough to give His Son to keep us out of there.

I don’t think any man does the right thing by his family if he does not prepare for his wife and her little brood after he’s gone. I carry thousands of dollars worth of insurance.

If you are not willing to serve God, you are a God-forsaken, black-hearted ingrate and you are a fool.

Salvation belongs to God and God states the terms by which you may have it.

If you want to come to God you must come through faith in Jesus Christ.

I challenge you Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Christians, United Brethren, to show me that I don’t preach the truth. I hurl it into your teeth.

God never taught me to beat a retreat.

Some fellows will go fishing and stand in the water up to their waists all day, and watch the bobber and never get a bite and say they are having a good time. But if the preacher happens to trespass five minutes over time on Sunday morning those same birds will pull their watches and begin to fidget.

It’s a waste of time to pray to the wrong God.

If you want God’s purity in Richmond, build up the broken down altars.

What we need in the church is less pie and more piety.

You can’t wait three weeks, Richmond, Ind., to get your crop.

Before you can pray right, you’ve got to do right.

O Richmond, God’s warriors have first got to be His worshippers.

Some people are married to the church or the choir or the organ.

The stone that’s in the foundation of a building is more important than the flag staff on the roof, although the stone is not so much in evidence.