Billy Sunday once said “Let’s quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ. ” This wasn’t Billy Sunday’s mindset his whole life, he wasn’t even a christian until his older adult life. Billy Sunday is an extraordinary muckraker and christian evangelists, even best know as one of the best evangelists of all time. Before Billy Sunday turned into an evangelist he was an even greater baseball player.
It may not seem like Billy Sunday did much to greater the world but he actually he did, he helped many people convert to christianity, he helped argue against alcohol, which led to the prohibition, he helped young catholic men, and set a single season record of stolen bases in Major League Baseball. Billy’s father unfortunately passed away in 1862 when Billy was only one month old. After the death of his father, Billy and his family went to live with his grandparents for a couple of years. Billy and his older brother were sent to live in an orphanage in Davenport Iowa.
At this time in Billy’s life is when he began to realize that he had a major talent playing baseball. At young age Billy had a very hard work ethic which stuck with him for the rest of his life. At the age of fourteen he started to work for a man named Colonel John Scott. Scott and his family cared deeply for Billy, after a few months Scott’s family adopted Billy. Billy started to work even harder on the baseball field, with major talent, many professional baseball team started to tune into Billy’s baseball career.
One of the first teams that recognized Billy’s talent was the Chicago White Stockings. The Chicago White Stockings later went on to draft Billy, but Billy only played as a part time player (Billy Sunday Biography). Billys childhood shaped him into the life that everybody knows him as. Billy didn’t have the greatest childhood, even though he didn’t have a good childhood he grew up to be an astonishing person. Once Billy started his baseball career he played on the Chicago White Stockings before being traded from team to team.
Even though Billy kept getting traded to different teams, he was still one of the greatest baseball players doing that time. One of Billy’s greatest achievements while playing in the MLB was when he broke the single season record for the most bases stolen, Billy recorded 92 steals. Billy experienced a conversion to christianity when he attend a christian service and from that time in his life he knew that he need to be more like a christian figure. According to Billy Sunday’s biography “During his time as a baseball player he would drink, gamble and swear. After this service Billy decided that it was time for him to give up drinking, gambling, and swearing and from that time on he strived to become a better man.
After many years in the Major League Baseball Billy realised that playing baseball wasn’t what he was called to be doing anymore. After Billy decided to leave the Major League Baseball he got right to work working with YMCA (Young Men’s Catholic Association). The Library of Congress even said “Sunday turned down a 3000 dollar baseball contract to work with the YMCA for 80 dollars a week. Sunday began to work alongside another great evangelist, J Wilbur Chapman. Chapman taught Billy everything that Billy knew. As long as working with Wilbur Chapman, Billy started and researched the catholic religion extensively until he was ordained a presbyterian minister in 1903. Once Billy was ordained a minister he began to give sermons and preach to hundreds of people. As he began to give sermons his popularity start to rise, and quickly. Billy Sunday’s career was on the rise and at that point in time his career was barely starting.
His career was beginning quickly when he started to give sermons around the country. He started expanding his range by going further and further away from his home town. In his first years of giving sermons “He regularly conducted meetings in relatively smaller cities in the United States. However, in the next five years, he moved his meetings to the more commercial cities of the country including Boston, Buffalo, Detroit and even New York City” (Billy Sunday Biography). One of the best things Billy did was speak out against the consumption of alcohol and bootlegging.
Billy used to drink alcohol but once he converted to christianity it all changed for him which made him be against alcohol. Billy Sunday said this “I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command. ” Billy Sunday was a big part in the creation the 18th Amendment, he supported the making and transportation of alcohol illegal. One of the best things that Billy said was this “Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell” (Billy Sunday).
After the 18th Amendment was passed in 1919, he let up on all the prohibition talk until the public turned against the prohibition. Even after the repeal of the 18th Amendment, Sunday didn’t give up on the prohibition and even wanted to reintroduce the 18th Amendment but failed. The country of England got word of Sundays great speeches about the prohibition and England even wanted Billy to come to England and give speeches. England wanted him to talk to the citizens of the country because they wanted to do the same things as the United States did with the prohibition.
Probably the most important, the most recognizable, the most memorable thing that Billy Sunday was known for was his sermons given to hundreds of thousands of people about the christian religion and how the devil is bad and God is good. Billy Sunday sermons gained attention from very famous people, these famous people included Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Both of these men even invited Sunday to many different types of events. Billy Sunday thought that the only good thing in life was to strive to be exactly like a saint. According to Billy Sunday Biography “throughout his evangelistic career, Sunday preached about 20,000 sermons.
That is a lot of sermons, spoken to a lot of different people, and in a lot of different places around the United States. In 15 of Sundays biggest sermons it was recorded that he made 167,036 people convert to the christian religion. They were as follows “Pittsburgh, 26,601: Steubenville, 7888: Columbia, 18137: Newcastle 6683: Youngstown, 5915: South Bend, 5398” and the other eight cities had over 5,000 conversions each (Billy Sunday Biography). Billy Sunday spent most of his life going around the country speaking to anyone that would come to his sermons.
During his career he said many remarkable quotes about how we as humans have to be a better catholic, and do everything in our power to resist the devil. Billy’s said some of the greatest quotes about religion, for example “Going to church doesn’t make you a christian any more than going to a garage makes you and automobile” (Billy Sunday) or “If you are a stranger to prayer, you are stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings” (Billy Sunday). Billy Sunday’s career lasted well throughout World War 1 and all the way up to the 1930’s before his death in 1935.
When the great depression started in 1929 Billy was able to get large amounts of people to come to his sermons. Sundays amazing and very successful career started to weaken when his health began to diminish. Nobody is really sure how many people convert to christianity because of Sunday but it’s for sure a very large number of people. Sunday left the impression on the world, that anything to do with alcohol is bad, and that the devil is in alcohol. Billy Sunday an extraordinary muckraker and evangelist left many people thinking about religion and alcohol.
Sunday’s greatest accomplishments were converting hundreds of thousands of people to christianity, speaking out against the consumption, making, and bootlegging of alcohol and breaking the number of stolen bases in a single season. Billy Sunday traveled the country giving sermons to people about the christian faith. Every time he stepped up to the podium he tried his hardest to get every listener to convert to christianity. Sunday believed that if we didn’t have God, we did not have the greatest power that humans can have. And that power is the power of God.