Billy Sunday Essays - Christian Fundamentalism,

Billy Sunday Billy Sunday For almost a quarter century Billy Sunday was a household name in the United States. Between 1902 when he first made the pages of the New York Times and 1935 when the paper covered his death and memorial service in detail, people who knew anything about current events had heard of the former major league baseball player who was preaching sin and salvation to large crowds all over America. Not everyone who knew of the famous evangelist liked him. Plenty of outspoken critics spoke of his flashy style and criticized his conservative doctrines. But he had hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of loyal defenders, and they were just as loud in their praise as the critics were in their criticism. Whether people stood for or against the Reverend William A. Sunday, they all agreed that it was difficult to be indifferent toward him. The religious leader was so extraordinarily popular, opinionated, and vocal that indifference was the last thing that he would get from people. His most loyal admirers were confident that this rural-breed preacher was Gods mouthpiece, calling Americans to repentance. Sundays critics said that at best he was a well-meaning buffoon whose sermons vulgarized and trivialized the Christian message and at worst he was a disgrace to the name of Christ (Dorsett 2). There are elements of truth in both of these views. He was often guilty of oversimplifying biblical truths, and at times he spoke more out of ignorance than a heavenly viewpoint. He was also a man with numerous flaws. He spoiled his children, giving them everything that they asked for. He put enormous responsibility on his wife, burdening her with many aspects of his ministry. He always noticeably sought the Oswalt / 2 applause of the crowd for his own praise. He often confused the will of God with his own social and political agenda. He even sometimes compared the gospel of Jesus Christ with special interest and American foreign policy. Nevertheless, Billy Sunday was a sincere man whose life was fundamentally changed by his response to an evangelists call to repent of his sins, to believe that Jesus Christ died in his place for those sins, and to follow Christ in thanksgiving by worshiping and obeying him. Following this spiritual rebirth, the convert became deeply devoted to Jesus Christ. A devotion manifested in living out many of the teachings of Christ as found in the New Testaments four Gospels. The professional baseball player became a regular churchgoer. He also studied Scripture and became unusually generous toward the needy. Furthermore, Sunday was constrained by an obsession to tell others how he had finally found inner peace and a more purposeful life. At first through lectures and then in sermons, he related how Jesus Christ gave him a new life of meaning, peace, and hope. This same gospel, he said, would similarly transform others. The evidence is overwhelmingly that it did. If Billy Sunday was sincere devoted, and motivated, he was also a product of his times and an example of the culture and morals of middle America. On the other hand, Sunday took many stands against popular beliefs, and he persuaded multitudes to join him in a war against many of the modernistic ideas of the time that he saw as evil. As he once summarized his opinion so well, What this world needs is a tidal wave of reform (Sunday Satan 24). Oswalt / 3 It is true that Sunday was a showman who craved an audience and loved applause. But he also touched the lives of countless men and women of all social classes, helping them escape various forms of personal bondage and find freedom in the gospel. And if he did not convert all of urban America to his brand of Christianity, he at least played a major role in helping to keep conservative biblical Christianity alive in this century (Dorsett 3). To understand fully why he thought, lived, preached, and teached the way he did, we should look at his upbringing and conversion experience. William Ashley Sunday was born on November 19, 1862. His father, a union private, would die of pneumonia just five weeks later, three days before Christmas, in a cold, damp