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Last vacation I read a small Barbour book about Billy Sunday, by Rachael Phillips. I’m curious about all the great preachers, so, I felt lucky when I saw two Barbour books for 3 dollars each. The other Barbour book is about William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army. I just began it this week.

The Billy Sunday book was quite interesting until I got near the end. The Billy Sunday in the early parts of the book is of a baseball hero who, by sheer blood, sweat, and tears, pulled himself up in the world. And he seemed genuinely to care for the down-and-out person. He prayed and cried with many of those people at religious/revival services. Obviously he had much charisma, although maybe on the rough side (as in unrefined as in Abe Lincoln).

Once Billy’s mother had to (or at least thought she had to) send Billy and his brother away to a ‘home’ of some sort for orphans and disadvantaged children. She could not feed the two growing boys. In the book, the event is quite heart-wrenching for all three. This was for 2 long years. Emotionally, however, it seems the family never drifted apart.

Billy marries, loves his wife and they have children. He must travel a lot (a la Billy Graham) so the wife must be both mother and father to the kids. It was interesting to learn that Billy’s mother married at least 3 times. Sometimes the family really had things rough and it is shown in the bio that Billy’s maternal grandfather, who clearly had the economical means to help them, often (but not always) refused to help them. Hence, Mrs. Sunday had little choice but to marry several times (My own paternal grandmother did likewise.).

At the end of the book and in Billy’s autumnal years, I see a narrow-minded Billy preacher. You know, the kind that fails to take into consideration others’ cultural differences and/or upbringing. For instance, Billy was all for, gung-ho, Prohibition, which was a law for everyone. Well, Prohibition was for everyone, but as a law and as an enforced practice, it failed to take into account the Italian or French immigrant for whom wine, at least,  was a normal and daily table drink. Then there was opposition to dancing, etc. Things like that that when added up, aren’t such little things. We think they are only when we are not affected. Here, at the end, Billy shrank instead of growing into a great spiritual leader as did someone like Mohandas Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln or Pope John XXIII (three very religious leaders of the past). The Pope was simply a love who loved others.

Was Sunday a ‘railroader’? My own father was of the ‘railroad’ tendency. We of English ancestry cannot have a world only to our liking. A society, at least in my view, is made far richer and broader, thus livable, by its diversity. A great ‘oneness’ would drive us all to kill ourselves (Where’d I put that ole liquor bottle?). Even I, yours truly, would wind up a drinker under those circumstances!