Sawdust Trail Preacher: The Story of Billy Sunday

What do we know of Billy Sunday? That, in the words of the song, he could not "shut down" Chicago, That as William Ashley Sunday he endured a difficult youth and displayed a temper always hard to manage. He also played pretty fair baseball for the Chicago Whitesockings and other major league teams. One season he batted .359. And he could run like a deer. Before his conversion, he cussed, drank and was a battler, taking no guff from anyone. Young Sunday came to his Lord in Chicago and never looked back. He understudied evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman from 1893 to 1895. He then became his own man, first as a lay preacher and after 1903 as an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church. He evolved his own style as a preacher, acting out skits on stage during his revivals, using simple slang-filled language, sliding across the stage as if stealing a base. By general consensus he had, before his death on November 6, 1935, persuaded more than a million men and women to commit themselves in writing to God. Billy Sunday's theology was short, simple and appealing: "With Christ you are saved; without Him you are lost." A leading ethical opinion of his was that "whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell." But Sunday also believed that God meant Christians to be happy, even merry. He innovated in the craft of evangelical and revival preaching, with emphasis on careful planning, attention to finance, and erection of inexpensive but safe temporary wooden buildings with sawdust strewn on the floors to hold down the noise. This led to the phrase "hitting the sawdust trail," used of persons who came forward during a revival, walking down a sawdust covered aisle to declare themselves for Christ. SAWDUST TRAIL PREACHER: BILLY SUNDAY is a little gem, only 93 pages long. It covers Billy Sunday's life in more than adequate detail for an introductory biography. It is a model for what its author means to do. And Billy Sunday left his mark on America and many, many individuals and families.