X-Nico

11 unusual facts about Billy Sunday


A. B. MacDonald

After he was assigned to interview evangelist Billy Sunday, he took a leave from the Star to go to New York to work as Sunday's publicity agent.

Alcohol during and after prohibition

Upon ratification of the amendment, the famous evangelist Billy Sunday said that "The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs." (Compare Christianity and alcohol.) Since alcohol was to be banned and since it was seen as the cause of most, if not all, crime, some communities sold their jails.

B. D. Ackley

In 1907, he joined Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver, an evangelist team, as secretary-pianist, and traveled with them for eight years.

Chautauqua, Illinois

Arriving first by packet boat, and later by automobile or the trains that ran by as often as six times a day, the vacationers were entertained, educated, and inspired by such luminaries like William Jennings Bryan, evangelists Sam Jones, Billy Sunday and Gypsy Smith, the Swiss Bell Ringers, John Philip Sousa’s band and "Sunny Jim," reputed to be one of the Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

John Wilbur Chapman

Among Chapman's disciples on the evangelistic circuit was Billy Sunday.

Lucy Page Gaston

After the war, with alcohol prohibition in place, some felt (e.g. evangelist Billy Sunday) that tobacco prohibition would soon follow.

Melbourne Beach, Florida

Homer Rodeheaver, music arranger for Billy Sunday; later formed a subdivision in town, "Christian Colony," for retired evangelists

National League

Billy Sunday, a prominent outfielder in the 1880s, became so disgusted with the behavior of teammates that he quit playing in 1891 to become one of America's most famous evangelical Christian preachers.

Rum-running in Windsor

These figures included Billy Sunday who offered a Booze Sermon in hope of inspiring the "water wagon".

Social issues of the 1920s

Broadly, the case reflected a collision of traditional views and values with more modern ones: It was a time of evangelism by figures such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday against forces, including jazz, sexual permissiveness, and racy Hollywood movies, which they thought were undermining the authority of the Bible and Christian morals in society.

Winona Lake, Indiana

It is also the home of Grace College and Grace Theological Seminary and the home of former preacher and professional baseball player Billy Sunday.


Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home

Major League Baseball player Billy Sunday transferred from another orphanage to the Home in 1872 when he was twelve, and musician Wayne King entered the Home in 1908 at the age of seven, though neither of them were actually orphans.

The Sword of the Lord

It also publishes sermons from a wider spectrum of evangelicals of past generations (not all of whom were Independent Baptist), including Hyman Appelman, Harry A. Ironside, Bob Jones, Sr., R. A. Torrey, Robert G. Lee, Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, T. De Witt Talmage, and George Truett.