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Open Air Meeting - Part 2
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 addresses the presence of bootleggers, moonshiners, and moral decay in society, emphasizing the importance of upholding moral values and the role of faith in God and Jesus Christ in maintaining civilization. It calls for the enforcement of laws and the preservation of American values, urging individuals to embrace the principles of citizenship and loyalty to the nation.
Sermon Transcription
...or told me to make bootleggers and long-runners and get moonshiners. Oh, we had bootleggers and moonshiners when we were under the British flag. For 155 years, the stars we flagged have waved over America. We've had bootleggers, and we have them now. Like a fellow wrote to a doctor, he said, Dear doctor, I had a wart on my face, and it weighed a pound and a half. After taking 12 bottles of your medicine, my face is gone, but the world is there yet. Well, the saloons are gone, the breweries are gone, the distilleries are gone, but the bootleggers and the moonshiners, my friends, we very often see. Some are saying, well, we're drinking more whiskey than can do it. If so, why is the death rate in America is less than ever been in the history of any of the United States of America? Oh, will dryers and thawings and thickoats cause a wheat field to produce more and better wheat? Is a bed of a variety of good nourishment for a staple? Will a lightning bolt pull the tree in more delicate furniture? Is fire excellent for a friend to increase the aroma and the beauty of a friend of the Lord? Well, they don't keep them, we'll repeal it. All right, then, repeal the 18th of the Ten Commandments. They don't keep the Ten Commandments. They lie, they steal, they commit adultery, they murder, and yet you know without the Ten Commandments there'd be no civilization. You know that society's civilization rests on morals, morals rests on religion, religion rests on faith in God and in Jesus Christ. Oh, well, the Mexican border, 1,500 miles long, and the Canadian border, 3,000 miles long, and the Atlantic and the Pacific border, 5,000 miles long, and Tudor and Bermuda, yadda yadda yadda, and the most thoroughly organized gang of thugs in the cutthroat, on hunger this side of hell, it's no easy job, I want to tell you. I'm even learning, you told me so the other day, that 90% of the run runners, the highjackers, the bootleggers, mufflers, and the riffraff here, they are born of foreign parents, and that 70% of them will never be misnaturalized. I say, decert every unnaturalized law firm. Don't take away the citizenship, they say, from every man that's been naturalized when he shows himself at court. And on second offense, decert him also. America's going to be run by American cops, but it will. And whenever a man, I accept offense, and stand with open arms, welcome any man from any country, but when they leave the foreign land and come to America, to build homes, and rear their families, and live on the protection poles of the Stars and Stripes, in order to reach down to the land of their adopters, they leave their traditional Indian ideas back across to see where they came from. America! America is no place for a defender to live in, and there's no place beneath the Stars and Stripes, for the arms and will of the native, and for a weapon of the heart that doesn't love it. In the world, no.
Open Air Meeting - Part 2
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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.”