Tag: 20th century revivalism

“Why the Church Is Weak”: Billy Sunday’s Blunt Message to Kansas City (1916)

When Billy Sunday preached in Kansas City during his 1916 revival campaign, his sermons often struck directly at the spiritual condition of the church itself. One message, reported by the The Kansas City Star, carried a sharp and revealing title: “Why the Church Is Weak.”

Sunday did not begin by blaming society, politics, or culture. Instead, he argued that the church’s weakness came from within.

“The sermon by Billy Sunday this afternoon had for its subject this verse from Judges xvi, 20: ‘He wist not that the spirit of the Lord had departed from him.’”

Drawing from the story of Samson, Sunday warned that the modern church could lose its spiritual power without even realizing it. In his view, the problem was not a lack of organization, buildings, or membership.

“Nothing in the world can substitute for the spirit of God.”

For Sunday, the church had become timid. Instead of confronting sin, it had grown cautious and respectable. He charged that many congregations had traded spiritual authority for social approval.

“The church is afraid of men and women; we are to be in the world, but not of the world.”

The evangelist insisted that the church had gradually surrendered its moral courage. Leaders often hesitated to rebuke wrongdoing among their members, even when it was obvious.

“Leading church members lead in nothing but card parties and society functions.”

To Sunday, such compromises drained the church of its influence. A church that tolerated worldliness could no longer confront it.

He argued that the true strength of Christianity had never been found in numbers or wealth. The early church, he reminded his audience, possessed little of either.

“God’s church has not increased correspondingly in power as it has in numbers… it has decreased in spiritual power.”

Sunday contrasted the modern church with the first believers described in the book of Acts. They had no impressive buildings, no social prestige, and little money. Yet they possessed something far greater—spiritual conviction.

“There was a time when the church had more members than she has today; there never was a time when she had more money than she has today… but there was a time when she had more spiritual power than she has today.”

Another cause of weakness, Sunday argued, was the church’s tendency to accommodate fashionable society. Rather than confronting sin, some congregations had become comfortable with it.

“That is why many a preacher is a failure today; he is a compromiser.”

Sunday spoke especially bluntly about moral compromise among church members. When churches tolerated behavior they should have challenged, they undermined their own witness.

“We have lost our power because we have compromised.”

But the evangelist did not end his message with criticism. He pointed his listeners toward the remedy: a return to genuine spiritual life. The church needed renewed faith, repentance, and courage.

He concluded with a simple but urgent appeal. If the church wanted to regain its strength, it needed to return to prayer and dependence upon God.

“If there’s anything the church of God needs it is to climb the stairs and get in an upper room.”

In the packed tabernacle that afternoon, Sunday’s message was unmistakable. The problem facing the church was not outside pressure or hostile culture. It was the quiet erosion of conviction within.

And until the church rediscovered the spiritual power that marked its earliest days, Sunday warned, its influence would continue to fade.

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.