![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Billy-Sundays-Tabernacle-4760-202-0.jpg\")
<\/a>Billy Sunday, America’s \u201cgreatest high-pressure and mass-conversion” evangelical preacher, operated twice daily in this tabernacle, January into March. In all, more than 1.8 million turned out for Sunday\u2019s 147 sermons. And more than 44,000 found themselves inspired to walk the \u201cSawdust Trails,” confirming their faith in a handshake with Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the front was a 10-foot wooden platform with a small, steel-reinforced pulpit that Sunday would regularly climb to emphasize a point in his sermon. Sunday had played professional baseball before ending his athletic career in Philadelphia in the early 1890s and his continued athleticism marked him as “the acrobatic dervish of evangelism.\u201d His traveling entourage always included a trainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hours before the start of each service, hawkers fanned out for blocks, barking \u201cGit yer hymn-book here! Git yer only authorized life of Billy Sunday!” As packed trolley cars approached 19th<\/sup> and Vine, conductors announced: \u201cBacksliders get out here.\u201d One visitor compared the atmosphere to that of a circus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside, a choir of 1,800 voices started with “Stand Up For Jesus” followed by \u201cBrighten the Corner Where You Are.\u201d Then Sunday walked on stage, charmed the audience, and launched into an animated sermon against the evils of a modern, open society, the \u201cwhiskey kings, the German warlords, slackers, suffragettes or the local ministry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He begins to dance like a shadow boxer,\u201d observed journalist John Reed. \u201cHe slaps his hands together with a report like a broken electric lamp. He poses on one foot like a fastball pitcher winding up. He jumps up on a chair. In the stress of his routine he may stand with one foot in the chair and another on the lectern.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sunday\u2019s whole sermonizing scheme is worked out to science,\u201d reported The<\/em> Public Ledger<\/em>. \u201cHe half hypnotizes his congregation with his booming demonic roars, which reached the furthest corner of the squat-roofed structure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘Come on,’ he shouts. ‘Come on, now.'” “Say ‘Yes’ to God. That\u2019s all. He wants you; you want him! You\u2019re going to hell! Come on, come on to him! Don\u2019t sit there like fools. Hurry up! Come!!!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the choirmaster started \u201can old time hymn, plaintive and soft, and a woman, sobbing, wavers down the aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre you coming?” yells Sunday, looking right at you or seeming to. \u201cJesus is here.” “And then the rush begins and finishes in a near fight for salvation. It seems so easy to be saved, so absurd to remain wicked. The rough Sunday charm “refers to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as if he rooms with them or had just bought them lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u201cHe was red in the face now,\u201d noted Reed, “and the sweat was pouring from him” as he climbed onto the pulpit, “sliding from one end of the platform to the other, crouching like a runner, leaping, crouching, every movement as graceful as a wolf\u2019s.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He shakes his fist \u2026 and cries: ‘Christ is in this city! He has seen every stone laid in Philadelphia. He has heard every lie; seen every false vote; known every vicious thought; every sneer at high and holy things; every yielding to low ideals; Every corrupt practice, every oath, every theft.'” \u201cDo you know anybody you want to be saved? Stand up! Have you a husband, wife, children, that you would like to see converted?\u201d Throughout the tabernacle they rose by hundreds. \u201cBrother!” they shouted. \u201cSister!” \u201cMy babies! “My husband!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “God will take you all! \u201ccried Sunday. “Who is coming to Jesus Christ!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the climax,” observed Reed, “the willing and the indifferent hit the \u2018Sawdust Trail\u2019 together. The willing came with the merest prompting, fluttering in emotional states of tears of joy, to shake the hands of the evangelist and to sign the convert\u2019s card. The indifferent were usually locked in the arms of one or more herders, experts who discharged their duties in the task of swelling the ranks of those who came forward, whether they signed up or not.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sunday described those eleven weeks in Philadelphia as the \u201cJim-Dandiest\u201d campaign of his preaching career.\u201d Souvenir-seeking followers agreed. \u00a0As the tabernacle emptied out for the last time, \u201cMen and women pulled down signs from the tabernacle posts and carried them away. They scooped up big handfuls of sawdust from the shadow of the pulpit, filled their pockets and their handkerchiefs with it and carried it home. They took the tin pans which have gathered the tabernacle offerings. They tore the bunting and flags from the rostrum, the flowers from the pulpit; they carried away everything loose that could serve as mementos of the campaign.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the weeks after Sunday\u2019s departure, thousands of his converts swelled the church pews of Philadelphia. Ministers of all denominations estimated an increase of as many as 80,000 new members. But would they last? And, more to Alba Johnson’s hope, had Billy Sunday reformed even a single soul? And whatever would become of the idea for “civic reform”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Sources: “Find inspiration in \u201cBilly\u201d Sunday: Rev. J. H. Jackson tells of visit to Philadelphia tabernacle,\u201d The Hartford Current<\/em>, February 15, 1915; “Billy Sunday has preached to nearly 2,000,000 persons in Philadelphia,\u201d The Washington Post,<\/em> March 9, 1915;”Billy Sunday closes record campaign in Philadelphia,\u201d Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em>, March 21, 1915 (Originally published in The Public Ledger<\/em>.); \u201cBilly Sunday saves 41,724; get $51,136.\u201d Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em>, March 22, 1915; “The end of Billie Sunday\u2019s Philadelphia campaign,\u201d The Sun<\/em>, March 22, 1915; “Statistics of the Rev. Billy Sunday\u2018s great campaign in Philadelphia,\u201d The Washington Post,<\/em> March 23, 1915; \u201cBack of Billy Sunday,\u201d<\/a> by John Reed. \u202fMetropolitan<\/em>, v. 42, May 1915; “Billy Sunday dies; evangelist was 71\u201d, The New York Times<\/em>, November 7, 1935.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alba Johnson, president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, believed Philadelphia was due for \u201ca moral awakening.\u201d Citizens had drifted away from \u201cthe virtues which made the American people what they are: purity, modesty, contentment and thrift.\u201d An obsession with material things, which Johnson characterized as \u201cthe universal craze for riches,\u201d sapped the city’s \u201cmoral strength.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Bill-Sunday-Bellows-FLP.png\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Sunda-FLP-Christ-in-PHILA.jpg\")
<\/a>
“Sunday suddenly flung himself across the platform like a baseball player sliding for second.” “‘It\u2019s too late, Philadelphia! . . . It\u2019s too late! Come to Jesus!'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n