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Open Air Meeting - Part 1
Billy Sunday
William Ashley “Billy” Sunday (1862–1935). Born on November 19, 1862, in Story County, Iowa, to a poor farming family, Billy Sunday rose from a hardscrabble childhood to become America’s most famous evangelist of the early 20th century. Orphaned at 10 after his father’s Civil War death and mother’s remarriage, he worked odd jobs before excelling as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings (1883–1890), known for speed despite a .248 batting average. Converted in 1886 at Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission, he left baseball in 1891 to work with the YMCA and study briefly at Evanston Academy. Mentored by evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, Sunday began preaching in 1896, holding over 300 revival campaigns across the U.S., drawing millions with theatrical, plainspoken sermons on sin, salvation, and prohibition. His tabernacles, like those in New York (1917), packed thousands nightly, reportedly leading to a million conversions. He authored no major books but shaped evangelicalism, supporting World War I and opposing evolution in schools. Married to Helen “Nell” Thompson in 1888, they had four children, though three sons’ scandals marred his later years. Sunday died of a heart attack on November 6, 1935, in Chicago, saying, “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist.”
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Sermon Summary
This sermon by Mr. Kelly Sunday focuses on the Christian support of Prohibition, highlighting the attempt to bind the American people to profit-driven industries like breweries and distilleries. He emphasizes the superiority of Prohibition over the evils of alcohol consumption and criticizes the corruption and political evils associated with anti-Prohibition sentiments. Mr. Sunday urges individuals to stand firm in supporting the nation's amendment for Prohibition, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility and national integrity.
Sermon Transcription
Lectures were not invented until 20 years afterwards. By that time, he was no longer the handsome young man of the spectacular campaign. But in this rare film, we can still catch a glimpse of his style of preaching and his way with an audience as he presents his reasons for the Christian support of Prohibition. We present to all of you just friends today, Mr. Kelly Sunday, the man who has spoken to more people than any other man who has ever lived, and we invite you to join with this great crowd here in Winona in this great day we're having. Mr. Sunday. Folks, I'm going to talk to you a little while this afternoon on the 18th of May. The 14th of May is the most popular day, my friends, in the American of Asia. What means this is all against the 18th of May? Listen, the Constitution. It's an attempt on the part of the old brewers and the old distilleries and the old food keepers and the old bartenders and the wispy politicians and newspapers to bind and rivet, my friends, the breweries around the neck of the American people again for their own profit. Their arguments against Prohibition are as weak as teeth. They're not as stout as a stick in a sawmill. When you compare Prohibition at its worst with the pollutant at its best, Prohibition's a million times better. And the ills you would fly to by routine vacation in England are a thousand times worse than the ones you'd fly from by leaving it, my friend, after this. Oh, I know that, folks. Anti-Prohibition barricades in the United States, aroused in direction by the enemies of Prohibition and Americanism, is bombing forth this political labyrinth of corruption in a current that's broad and deep and wide and speaking with spitefulness not to leave our land. And it is fair to leave no office, shop, store, factory, farm, school or college that is not scarred by a damnable blight. Why, why do you put it forth like the demons of hell are the political evil? All the inferiority of those that bears this damnable blight. I may be coerced by it, but vow to it I never will. Oh, history tells me many cheap companies have lost their livelihoods. America may need courage. It should doubt my proudest votes will be not that I was the last to desert it, but that I never deserted it. There's no neutral ground in this trap. War for the life and life to be killed. I absolutely refuse to vote for any man, for mayor, for governor, for representative, for senator, or for president, who is hostile to and will not openly support the nation's amendment or any other amendment, no matter what political party he may belong to, and will not openly support the nation's amendment or any other amendment of the Constitution. Someone said to me the other day, oh, salvation interferes with my personal liberty. Certainly, every law in the statute book interferes with the liberty of the crook that wants to break it. It don't interfere with my liberty because I say that. The separate pairs that keep the wolf away from the throne of the sheep are which the sheep are thankful. And then the wolf complains against the shepherd for interfering with his personal liberty. That was said to me the other day. Oh, the world is responsible for the depression. Oh, the world, it's worldwide. And if it's worldwide, what caused it in the other nations? What caused the depression in Germany? What caused it in me? When it had two million men on goal, everything's a war. And America's the only dry nation in the world. It's because the world has been inherited from the war. Why? Why?
Open Air Meeting - Part 1
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William Ashley “Billy” Sunday (1862–1935). Born on November 19, 1862, in Story County, Iowa, to a poor farming family, Billy Sunday rose from a hardscrabble childhood to become America’s most famous evangelist of the early 20th century. Orphaned at 10 after his father’s Civil War death and mother’s remarriage, he worked odd jobs before excelling as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings (1883–1890), known for speed despite a .248 batting average. Converted in 1886 at Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission, he left baseball in 1891 to work with the YMCA and study briefly at Evanston Academy. Mentored by evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, Sunday began preaching in 1896, holding over 300 revival campaigns across the U.S., drawing millions with theatrical, plainspoken sermons on sin, salvation, and prohibition. His tabernacles, like those in New York (1917), packed thousands nightly, reportedly leading to a million conversions. He authored no major books but shaped evangelicalism, supporting World War I and opposing evolution in schools. Married to Helen “Nell” Thompson in 1888, they had four children, though three sons’ scandals marred his later years. Sunday died of a heart attack on November 6, 1935, in Chicago, saying, “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist.”