by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The two-month revival held in September and October 1917 by evangelist Billy Sunday at a massive temporary wooden “tabernacle” erected on the grounds of Fiesta Park in Los Angeles occurred following one in New York City that, according to some accounts, represented the pinnacle of the preacher’s career spanning some four decades from the mid-1890s until his death in 1935.
The structure, built in just about a month and covering some 66,000 square feet with seating for 12,000 and room for another 4,000, is the subject of the featured artifact from the Museum’s collection for this post, which is shown here, with the view being from the intersection of 12th and Hope streets looking to the southwest.
Note, incidentally, in the background is a portion of the Morrison Hotel, built three years earlier, memorialized on the cover of the 1970 album of the same name by the rock group, The Doors, and tragically consumed in a fire a year ago amid plans by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to renovate it, though the shell of the structure remains.
Shortly after construction commenced on the edifice, publicity for the revival by the former professional baseball player went into full swing, including occasional “Tabernacle Hot Shot!” pieces, with an inset of Sunday holding his hands at his mouth to vociferously declaim his colorful, pointed messages, issued by the Los Angeles Express.
The 11 June edition, for example, quoted one of Sunday’s sermons in which “Billy Sunday Wallops Booze” and he railed that “the saloonkeeper and the devil are pulling on the same rope” and that “we’re the worst bughouse bunch in the world to let this saloon game run the year around” and bellowed “we should shut off the supply!” and “stop the supply and then clean house!”
The next day was an alliterative feast in the title “Sin Sexless, Says Sunday” as he insisted on “a single standard for men and women” and then graphically proclaimed that, when it came to drink, “your wife has as much right to go down and hang out with the bunch and come home staggering to vomit in your arms as you men have!” He decried the idea that men and women should be seen in alternate virtuous universes and then addressed the latter:
Some of you women go to church and promise to renounce the devil and in twenty-four hours you’re down in some tango cabaret with a lizard squeezing the spiritual and physical life out of you!
The Los Angeles Record saw opportunity in the Sunday revival to boost its subscription total as it offered a coupon under the heading of “Billy Sunday’s Coming to Town” and informed readers “out at Twelfth St. and Grand Ave. stands the mammoth tabernacle, awaiting for him to come.” There were to be a baker’s dozen of services a week, three on Sunday and twice daily, save Monday and it was asserted that the paper would there with comprehensive coverage, reminding that, while a reader might attend, they surely would want to read the sermons, as would “that friend back home.” For just a half dollar, the paper could be delivered for the two-month campaign, payable with a check, money order or stamps.
Under the headline of “Billy Sunday With Energetic English Opens Drive On Satan In Los Angeles,” the Express of 3 September reported that the evangelist drew 45,000 persons for those opening trio of services and it summarized that “the sins of modern society drew the fire of the evangelist’s wrath and denunciation last night in his most topical of the three addresses” and in which “the frailties, vices and weaknesses of a modernized, cynical world were pilloried and held up to scorn in vitriolic language.”
While Sunday expounded on love in the Gospel, he also claimed to have spoken recently to someone who claimed that Christianity failed, to which the preacher tartly replied, “you are a liar,” and then made a distinction between Christianity and “Churchanity,” as “some of the greatest devils this side of perdition are in the church.” As for charitable works, he offered “a lot of you preachers are going daffy about social service,” but the only ones for Sunday were those that “had Christ in it, but as for the Christless kind, none for mind.”
Other choice commentaries included this take on the First World War and religion: “Don’t you dare stand up and say God has nothing to do with wars. How do you know God doesn’t mean for the Allies to punish Germany for the miserable heresy the crawled out of Leipsic and Heidelberg?” He also inquired how anyone would know that the Lord intended for the Germans to punish Russia for pogroms against Jews or France for the destruction of monasteries.
Sunday also told the crowd “I don’t believe in the union of church and state. No, sir!” and added “I don’t believe it will ever be done in America. Never!” He also devoted time to attacking “the hags of iniquity” who “roll in wealth and ease” including “society women of today [who] are selfish, priggish, contented in their comfortable quarters” but whose “lives are perfectly meaningless.” He invoked the eruption of Vesuvius and propounded the preference for a purifying pestilence to sweep away these useless members of society.
Moreover, the virulent preacher presented typical archetypes:
The daughter of a society woman is a penciled-eyebrow, painted, frizzy-haired nothing, who chews gum, plays ragtime, flirts, and if you kiss her you are in danger of dying with the painter’s colic [lead poisoning, presumably from makeup] . . .
The son of the average millionaire has not brains enough to interest a playful kitten or pup. About all he does is splutter and swagger and spends his daddy’s fortune. He engaged in four hours’ conversation and never uses a sensible sentence the entire time.
As for politics, despite the quote about the separation of church and state, Sunday remarked that “men ought to carry their religion into politics as much as anywhere else in the world” and offered that “the trouble with us today is we have no God in our politics.” What did exist, he bristled, was “we got a gang of cutthroats; we got a gang that don’t believe in the sanctity of marriage, that don’t believe in the sanctity of property rights.”
Sunday longed for the days of Lincoln, Clay, Douglas, Webster and other heroes of the early to mid 19th century, apparently believing that American politics was cleaner and purer than in 1917, as he claimed that their “type of American citizen has been supplanted by the good-for-nothing, God-forsaken, lickspittle, peanut-head, weasel-eyed, whisky-soaked guzzlers, rum guzzlers, gin guzzlers, politicians of our day.”
The Los Angeles Times of the 12th provided a concise collection of “Billy Sunday’s High Balls” offered during his sermons, including these no-holds-barred samples:
I wouldn’t give 10 cents for the biggest bunch of people on earth if no devils were cast out. Some of the preachers are as crazy after sensations as the yellowest journal you can find, and that is one reason why the ministry is degraded by a lot of as nonsensical clap-trap as exists outside the insane asylum. If all the preachers would preach the truth, the devil would have to work harder than he does for what he gets.
If the angels in heaven can see what’s going on down here on earth, they must marvel and wonder at the patience of God with the people on earth. And I want to say right here that, of all things that smell of hell, it’s a church quarrel. Pough! I’ve got more respect for a booze-hister than a church member who puffs himself up and won’t speak to some other member.
I say a man that will keep his store open on Sunday is, in my opinion, an anarchist, and he can’t have a dollar of my money. He trampled God’s law beneath his feet.
Some of you folks did amount to something before you came to Los Angeles, but now you’re nothing but rotten codfish. All right, come back to God and be some of the Lord’s speckled trout and not the devil’s codfish.
It may be that musical director and master of ceremonies Homer Rodeheaver was something of the yin to Sunday’s yang, especially because the uplifting gospel tunes presented by the choir of some 2,000 was the light to the evangelist’s shade during these revivals. This included Rodeheaver’s exhortations to the crowds, as reported in the Los Angeles Tribune of 8 September, to “speed up to California time” rather than sing by a standard that was “all right for Philadelphia.”
During the mass singing of “We’re Marching to Zion,” the musician added, “say, I’ve heard a lot of fine things about this crowd out here. I heard that you could beat everybody in everything. Now show me that you can outsing everybody.” A cartoon in the paper nearly two weeks later emphasized the “Wit of Rody” and his “slip horn,” or trombone, that was a central feature of his portion of the Sunday campaigns.
In addition to collections at each service to provide the funds paid over directly to the evangelist, there were regular reports on conversions, with the term “trail hitters” used to denote the expectation that those “ready to begin a new life for Jesus Christ” would be active on the “sawdust trail” in spreading the good word. The Tribune of 15 September reported that half of the number of the day before became “trail hitters,” involving just over 650 persons compared to nearly 1,240, and this meant “young and old, black and white, singly and in pairs and in groups.” The paper observed that,
Some came down in a business-like manner, some came down with their faces aglow, but many of the persons who last night accepted the challenge of the evangelist to “show their colors for Christ” did so with tears streaming down their faces.
It was noted that there were many organized groups attending services, including 1,000 employees of the Barker Brothers Furniture Company, of whom 20% “hit the trail when Sunday gave them the invitation,” while there were others from towns and cities in the region, church classes, and workers in other firms. At the end of September, however, controversy arose when the Record reported, with a blaring headline of “Billy Sunday Ruled From Schools,” that the Los Angeles school superintendent, having received complains from parents with children at two campuses, issued a ban on teachers encouraging students during class-time to attend the revival.
Superintendent Albert Shiels provided a statement in which he warned,
Teachers must not recommend sectarian meetings to their scholars. This point is covered by state law. Such an act is subject to criticism and complaint by persons of other sects.
I would think advice to pupils to hear Sunday preach would be resented by people of some faiths whose children are in our schools.
The paper added that “strong opposition to allowing children to attend Sunday sermons,” though babies in the arms of their mothers was expressly forbidden because the evangelist was often disturbed by the cries and noises of little ones in his assemblies, “has been expressed in hundreds of letters to the editor of The Record.” One wrote that a school mate of her son was heard telling children in their neighborhood to “go to hell and be damned” and repeated other comments made by Sunday in his addresses.
In its edition of 19 October, the Times remarked that, in a pair of “for women only” services the prior day, “SUNDAY FLAYS WOMAN’S SINS TO WOMEN ONLY” and referred to his “terrific philipic [bitter attack or denunciation).” It continued that “scathingly did Mr. Sunday denounce the women who are guilty of taking unnatural or criminal means to escape the cross of maternity” amid a general “terrible arraignment of the sins and vices of the women of today.”
The evangelist claimed that “there are married women who shrink from maternity because they love ease, because they love fine garments and [the] ability to flit like a butterfly at social functions” and that the over-reliance on abortion meant that “hands are stained with blood and that very crime has made France the charnel house of the world.” As he pontificated on the myriad sins of women, Sunday told his female audience, despite his statement above about a uniform moral standard for both sexes,
Women touch the limit both ways. A good woman is the best thing this side of heaven. A bad woman is the worse thing this side of hell. Women do not realize their power. There is enough power in this tabernacle to damn Los Angeles or to save it.
As the campaign came to a close with the end of October, there was plenty of praise for the preacher regarding his two-month revival. A farewell cartoon published in the Times on the 29th, with a message of “Godspeed to You,” featured Sunday’s smiling visage, showed him in a daily ritual of shaking hands with the thousands who came to see and hear him, while also displaying the abundant collection of money to be presented to the evangelist. In one corner, sporting a top hat and formal wear, Beelzebub, hauling a suitcase, placed a sign on his “L.A. Branch” reading “Back Oct. 29.”
The paper reported that the revival ended “amidst lively and emotional scenes” as “a farewell song was sung, Billy offered the farewell prayer and benediction, and then a mighty cheer arose from the 16,000 persons there assembled.” The Express quoted Sunday as emphasizing the promise and rewards of service to the Lord, while also warning the assembled that “Christian life is a warfare, not a picnic. It is a fight, a battle for God, and don’t think that the devil will let you alone, either.” He added, “I have been in the thick of the fight. I have been on the firing line for you when I have thought I was the only one standing for God’s truth.”
Sunday mused “I don’t know what the power of the ministers who have served in Los Angeles has been” or “what the power of the men you have here now is,” but he admonished his hearers to utilize the power of prayer to galvanize “man’s power for Jesus Christ.” He then thundered, “but a lot of you will go to church and sit there and grumble and growl and go home and pick the preacher and his sermon as dry as you do the chicken” for dinner that day “and then wonder why your church doesn’t grow.” To this, the preacher railed, “I wonder why it doesn’t seek into hell, with a prayerless, beer-drinking, dancing, card-playing crowd like many of them here.”
He assumed that those attending his revivals agreed with him “that I’m not a crank” and he focused on the core questions that animated his work: “Are you saved? Are you lost? Going to heaven? Going to hell?” Sunday then addressed his many critics, though there were plenty of admirers, including quotes from local ministers:
I know what some people in Los Angeles think about revivals and about revivalists, and especially about me. I know all about that, but I want to tell you that I’ll not carry with me one bit of hatred in my heart against anybody.
I have fought furiously and haven’t dipped my colors to anybody; haven’t bowed to anybody in Los Angeles, rich or poor, white or black.
The Express observed that, as the Sundays left for Chicago with a week before the Atlanta revival was to commence, “tears glistened in the eyes” of the couple and a crowd sang “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” as the train pulled away. In addition to bearing gifts of cake, candy, flowers and other items, as well as the monetary donation from the collections, the chair of the local campaign committee informed Sunday that a devotee offered a house in Los Angeles for the couple. The tabernacle was quickly and unceremoniously dismantled and Fiesta Park soon disappeared to gave way to development.
The two ended up living part-time in the City of Angels, where their three sons also resided for periods, though each, as noted above, had problems with alcohol, finances, marital relations and more. Sunday’s ministry entered into a decline after the World War I years and his health worsened, due principally to heart trouble, though he continued to preach until his death in 1935.
While he was both revered and reviled (the poet Carl Sandburg colorfully called Sunday “a bunkshooter”), Olive-Lillian Yoder, a native of Garden Grove, recent graduate in history from Stanford University and a teacher, wrote a farewell poem, “Goodby, Billy!,” appearing in the 27 October 1917 number of the Express (she had a few published of a patriotic fervor during the war) that was, no doubt, reflective of the views of many a true believer, with this excerpt exclaiming:
Los Angeles today is not the city that it was
When Billy came to town eight weeks ago
He gave the devil round for round until he knocked him out,
And leaves the ring the victor of his foe.
Billy Sunday—here’s our thanks,
Goodby!
Society has raised a notch—is just a little more
Inclined to be of use to all mankind.
There’s something deeper than a dressed-up passing fashion show
To social life that Billy leaves behind.
Billy Sunday—here’s our thanks,
Goodby!
The preacher talks a little more about the Christ who died,
The nagging member wears a sunny smile,
And lots of folks who never went now step around to church,
‘Cause Billy was among us for awhile.
Billy Sunday—here’s our thanks,
Goodby!
The Billy Sunday revival campaign of September and October 1917 is notable for its occurring in the context of the phenomenal growth of Los Angeles and its region, taking place during a national transformation from rural to urban population shifts, growing industrialization and economic might as well as the anxieties and concerns accompanying all of this change.
Lastly, it was no accident that evangelism grew by leaps and bounds during the early 20th century and Sunday’s role in that expansion throughout America was significant, much as Aimee Semple McPherson and others became prominent in the Angel City just after this period and at the end of the Homestead’s interpretive period of 1830 to 1930.