THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120607
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Most people who pass the southeast corner of Granby and 20th streets today probably have no idea that it was once the site of a huge wooden tabernacle in which the Rev. Ashley (``Billy'') Sunday (1862-1935) conducted a spectacular two-month evangelical revival in 1920.
At the time, the Norfolk area hadn't experienced such a wave of mass piety since the Rev. Dwight L. Moody and singer Ira D. Sankey preached and sang salvation in a railroad warehouse on Water Street in 1886. They touched sinners' hearts with hymns like ``The Ninety and Nine'' and ``Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight?''
But Moody and Sankey's performances were staid compared with Billy Sunday's fiery pulpit oratory and antics. And anyone who witnessed them would have had a hard time forgetting the experience.
Sunday, an ex-baseball player who became an evangelist when he was 25 after being converted in a Chicago mission, headed a skillfully run religious organization. With trombone player Homer A. Rodeheaver as his song leader, Sunday preached a hellfire-and-brimstone version of Christianity that caused thousands of sinners to ``hit the sawdust trail'' - his phrase for conversion.
Even before Sunday swept into town, a wooden tabernacle at 20th Street extending backward from Granby Street to Monticello Avenue had been erected for him at a cost of $28,000. One of his aides had also organized a Billy Sunday Club with more than 15,000 members to spread the news of Sunday's advent. Meanwhile, the local press got on the bandwagon, and for the two months of Sunday's stay they trumpeted the revival with purple prose.
On Jan. 4, 1920, the first day of the revival, the Virginian-Pilot ran a two-line streamer proclaiming, ``Billy Sunday Will Fire Opening Gun Against Cussedness at Tabernacle This Morning.'' When Sunday rushed on the platform where the mayors or Norfolk and Portsmouth waited to greet him, the throng packing the tabernacle applauded wildly.
His sermon was titled ``Have you received Holy Ghost?''
``The Holy Spirit,'' Sunday thundered, ``couldn't come down here and live and work with the crowd some of you work with and call good and get back to Heaven without taking a bath in lye and formaldehyde.'' The worshipers loved it and while they raised a hymn ending with the refrain ``Saved! Saved! Saved!'' ushers passed tin dishpans for the collection. This was so liberal, the Pilot reported, it filled a big suitcase and four men were required to take it to the Trust Company of Norfolk.
Sunday preached in Norfolk until Feb. 29, 1920, during which he hailed the coming of Prohibition by holding a mock funeral for John Barleycorn. He had an effigy of Barleycorn laid out in a 20-foot coffin on the rostrum with him. As he nailed the lid the congregation chanted ``Goodby, John. You were God's worst enemy. You were Hell's best friend.'' After that, the coffin was carted away in a horse-drawn hearse.
On Feb. 22, 1920, Sunday introduced Gen. John J. Pershing, just returned from World War I in France, to a packed audience with the words, ``Let's not forget God's part in winning the battle. God was never on the other side of the Hindenburg Line.''
By the time Sunday left for other evangelical fields, it was estimated that at least 600,000 people had heard him. After the expenses of the revival had been paid, Sunday's take amounted to around $40,000. As a parting word he said, ``A revival is temporary, they tell me. So is a bath, but it does you good.''
But the Pilot topped that quip in an editorial tribute on March 1, 1920, when it praised Sunday's efforts thus: ``We have watched pop-eyed while you grabbed Bellzebub by the back of the neck and slammed him over the head in the manner hallowed by strip cartoons. We have marveled at the easy democracy that marks your direct approach to God. We have gasped at the rephrasing of the hallowed formulas in the argot of the sports writer, and we have thrilled at the penitential climaxes of the sawdust trail! It was a short order gospel which took our breath away with the manner of its serving, but we are better men and women for having heard it.'' by CNB