BASEBALL EVANGELIST SPARKS REVIVAL THAT LASTED FOR DECADES

Cape Girardeau has been visited by a few well-known religious leaders through the years, including the daughter of the Salvation Army's founder, and a Roman Catholic cardinal. But in 1926 a man known as "the baseball evangelist" sparked a religious revival in the city that lasted decades.

It was the Roaring '20s, a time of flappers and bathtub gin. Some in the city of 10,000 were concerned about its moral compass. The Cape Girardeau Ministerial Alliance, in league with the Southeast Missourian, invited Billy Sunday here to help set things straight.

The plain-speaking Sunday, the Billy Graham of his day, shared the bedrock beliefs of the people who flocked to his revival services.

He grew up poor in an Iowa log cabin and never knew his father, a Union Army soldier who died of pneumonia in 1862, four months before Billy was born. Before long, he and his brother were in an orphanage.

A talent for baseball was his salvation at first. He played for the Chicago White Stockings and other teams from 1883 to 1890. Sunday was converted to Christianity in 1888, and he began preaching at YMCA meetings while mending from an injury. He had a talent for preaching too.

By the time he came to Cape Girardeau, Sunday he had been a preacher for 30 years.

He was against card-playing and movie-going, and not fond of the fashion of the day either.

"It's a damnable insult some of the rigs a lot of fool women are wearing up and down our streets," he said.

"No man with good, rich red blood in his veins can look at them with prayer meeting thoughts."

Sunday and his entourage spent five weeks in Cape Girardeau during the spring of 1926. Because he insisted that tents were unsafe, the city fathers collected $6,000 to erect a tabernacle at the corner of Bellevue and Middle streets.

It was rough-hewn but safe, was warmed by six furnaces and could accommodate 5,000 worshipers. The building contained a hospital room, a lost-and-found department, a library and a nursery.

Over the five weeks, the services were attended by an estimated 250,000 people. By the end, 1,319 adults and 53-28 children were converted, and 1,482 church members were reconsecrated.

Along with his speaking ability, Sunday is credited with being a master organizer. His aides fanned out across the city during the five weeks, dividing it into districts of a few blocks each. Prayer meetings were held daily in each district, preferably in the house of a non-Christian.

During the lunch hour, meetings were held at schools and factories and with society women.

At his special "women only" meetings, Sunday criticized birth control and certain lovemaking techniques, and predicted that schools someday would have to teach students about sexual hygiene.

On Easter, his last day in town, Sunday preached four sermons to a total of 20,000 people. Another 2,000 people stood outside the tabernacle while he preached, and thousands were turned away.

Someone once told Sunday revivals don't last. "No, and neither does a bath," he responded, "but you had better take a bath occasionally and be clean for a little while."

But Sunday's stay here did have a lasting effect. He was credited with giving the city's 20-some churches a shot in the arm. They added 1,156 members that year. As a result, many churches were renovated or added onto, and some were built in a boom that lasted until World War II.

Sunday's expenses were paid by a finance committee headed by M.E. Leming, and Sunday received the take from the last week's donations.

When Sunday and his wife left Cape Girardeau, their next appointment was with President Calvin Coolidge. The tabernacle was torn down, and the lumber used to erect the first Houck Field House.

Sunday returned to the city once more for a two-week stay in 1933, two years before he died, known as "the man who saved a million souls."

Cardinal Bernard Law, the current archbishop of Boston, is another top church official who has spent time in Cape Girardeau. As the bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, he was a frequent visitor before his elevation to archbishop of Boston in 1984, and to cardinal in 1985.

He returned to his former diocese in May 1986, presiding over a mass at St. Mary's Cathedral.

And in 1940, with America on the brink of World War II, Gen. Evangeline Booth, retired commander of the Salvation Army, spoke at the newly constructed Arena Building.

About 1,500 people turned out in heavy rain to hear the speech, the first public address in the building.

Booth was the daughter of Gen. William Booth, who founded the Salvation Army in London in 1865.

She sang one of her own compositions, "I Give My Heart," and promised that the war would not last. People desire peace, and their love for God is growing stronger every day, she said.

The images of both Booth and Sunday are in the mural on the east side of the Southeast Missourian.