COOPERATION 831COMMENTARY
William Ashley (Billy) Sunday, born in 1868 in Ames, Iowa, grew up in an
orphanage, worked as a janitor while in high school, and in 1883 became
a professional baseball player with the Chicago White Sox.
In 1886 it was through "the psychological effect of the song service" at the
Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago that Sunday became a born-again Christian.
He later declined a $400 monthly baseball contract in favor of becoming a
YMCA secretary, eventually accepted an assistant ministry position paying $84
a month, and in 1896 became an evangelical preacher himself.
In his twenty years of preaching throughout America, Sunday's following
was in the millions, with hundreds of thousands of converts, and at his Detroit
revival there were five thousand singers in the choir.
Billy Sunday was not only active but virtually acrobatic in his fire-and-
brimstone preachings. His moralistic revival meetings condemned, among other
"sins, " birth control and liquor, and Sunday campaigned passionately for the
passage of prohibition laws. Henry Ford is said to have told him that if the
law were enacted in Michigan, the breweries could be converted to produce
denatured alcohol as fuel for Ford's automobiles.
By the time prohibition ended in 1934, Sunday's following had declined
dramatically. Billy Sunday died in 1936.If church attendance had nothing else to recommend it except the
psychological effect of the song service, that would be sufficient, for
no one can join in the singing of a beautiful hymn without feeling
better for it.
For many years I have observed that I could write more effectively
after having participated in a song service. Prove my statement to
your own satisfaction by going to church and participating in the
song service with all the Enthusiasm at your command.
During the war I helped to devise ways and means of speeding
production in industrial plants that were engaged in manufacturing