Billy Sunday Quotes

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.

The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.

The reason you don't like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows all about you.

You can't measure manhood with a tape line around his biceps.

One reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.

The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.

The Bible will always be full of things you cannot understand, as long as you will not live according to those you can understand.

Give your face to God, and He will put his shine on it.

The only way to keep a broken vessel full is to keep it always under the tap.

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

Listen, I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist, I've butt it as long as I've got a head, and I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old, fistless, footless, and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.

Yank some of the groans out of your prayers and shove in some shouts.

Louis Armstrong on Mondays, Frank Sinatra on Wednesdays, Glenn Miller on Fridays, and Mozart on Sundays. Unless it was raining. If it's raining, it's always Billie Holiday.

Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.

Consider the rose...The rose is the sweetest smelling flower of all, and it's the most beautiful because it's the most simple, right? But sometimes, you got to clip the rose. You got to cut the rose back, so something sweeter smelling and stronger, and even more beautiful, will grow in its place

Being a kind, emperor, or president is mighty small potatoes compared to being a mother. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street compared with training a boy or girl. The mother of Moses did more for the world than all the kinds that Egypt ever had. Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, then read the mothers' names in God's Hall of Fame.

They tell me that I rub the fur the wrong way. I don't; let the cat turn around.

And if Mozart is for Sundays, who do you listen to the rest of the week?" "Louis Armstrong on Mondays, Frank Sinatra on Wednesdays. And Glenn Miller on Fridays, unless it's raining. If it's raining, it's always Billie Holiday." "What about Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday?" I asked. "Those days are quiet. Unless it's raining.

There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express

O Devil, why do you hit us when we are down? Old boy, I know that you have no time for me, and I guess that you have about learned that I have no time for you. I will never apologize for anything I have ever done against you. If I have ever said anything that has does not hurt you, tell me about it, and I'll take it out of my sermon.

The kind of people who spoke mostly Yiddish, which is a combination of German and phlegm. This is a language of coughing and spitting; until I was eleven, I wore a raincoat.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

Jane Addams too knew that Chicago's blood was hustler's blood. Knowing that Chicago, like John the Baptist and Bathhouse John, like Billy Sunday and Big Bill, forever keeps two faces, one for winners and one for losers, one for hustlers and one for squares.

Thurmond—same thing. Kennedy, Eisenhower, Clinton . . . all men of power, and the power went right to their pants. Even FDR fooled around. This

By the mid-1970s, the transformation was so complete that novelist Walker Percy asserted that a southern conservative was just “Billy Graham on Sunday and Richard Nixon the rest of the week.

More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.

The great evangelist Billy Sunday once said, “Fear knocked at my door. Faith answered . . . and there was no one there.

Nonsense! Nonsense!” snorted Tasbrough. “That couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen.” “The answer to that,” suggested Doremus Jessup, “if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is ‘the hell it can’t!’ Why, there’s no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Windrip’s, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles ‘Liberty measles’? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?. . .Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?. . .Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn’t happen in America! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade—only of adults—right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!” “Well, what if they are?

The Christian faith has become a cheap faith because we too often live as if it has no value. We complain when the preacher runs over a few minutes on the Sunday sermon and consider it a great inconvenience to return to services once or twice more in the same week. No wonder so much of the world does not consider our faith relevant when we are not even willing to give of our time, much less our freedom or lives, for what we say we believe in.

There was also a deliberate exploitation of prejudiced mentalities among their listeners by revivalist preachers such as Billy Sunday. Above all, there was a feeling that Prohibition was a winning global crusade, and that those first on the wagon would be first in the promised land.” (Sinclair, 1962).

Thousands of pastors, Sunday school teachers, and Christian workers are powerless because they do not make the Word the source of their preaching or teaching.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.”—Billy Graham

Satan] invades the Sunday school, the Bible class, and even the pulpit. He even invades the church under cover of an orthodox vocabulary, emptying sacred terms of their biblical sense.

Some people think that going to church on Sunday and owning a dust-covered Bible makes a person a Christian. That is not true. A Christian is one in whom Christ dwells, and the person’s life will give evidence of this.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” ― Garrison Keillor But he got it from Billy Sunday... "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile." -- Billy Sunday Billy Sunday, William Thomas Ellis (1917). “Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ

Maggie nodded. She was more than okay. Not only was she no longer sick, she felt as if she'd just awoken from the long, safe torpor of her childhood. The night had blasted her free of that shell, and she had emerged new and raw and ready. She felt the ticket stub folded carefully in her pocket. How many kids in Bray would be able to say they'd stood just feet from Billy Corgan, that they'd been at the Metro for the "Siamese Dream" record release show, that they'd seen Lake Shore Drive on a Sunday morning through the prism of a concert comedown, the runners looking so silly with their skinny legs and their neon shorts, chugging along the footpath with their calorie counters and Gatorade?

About Donne there hangs the shadow of the impure motive ; and impure motives lend their aid to a facile success. He is a little of the religious spellbinder, the Reverend Billy Sunday of his time, the flesh-creeper, the sorcerer of emotional orgy. We emphasize this aspect to the point of the grotesque. Donne had a trained mind; but without belittling the intensity or the profundity of his experience, we can suggest that this experience was not perfectly controlled, and that he lacked spiritual discipline.

Tommy stood on a chair and made a speech of welcome; then Billy had to respond. “The war has changed us all,” he said. “I remember when people used to say the rich were put on this earth by God to rule over us lesser people.” That was greeted by scornful laughs. “Many men were cured of that delusion by fighting under the command of upper-class officers who should not have been put in charge of a Sunday school outing.” The other veterans nodded knowingly.

We will be judged according to our ability. The retired couple who count the offering every Sunday, never divulging the amount anyone in the congregation contributes, will not be tested in the same way as the millionaire who wants an inscription on the stained glass window, so everyone will know who donated it. Some of the most severe tests will be given to the [preachers] for the way in which they handled the Word of God. There will be no reward for leading others astray in lifestyle or in doctrine through false teaching.

Wait till Buzz takes charge of us. A real Fascist dictatorship!" "Nonsense! Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough. "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly! We're a country of freemen." "The answer to that," suggested Doremus Jessup, "if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is 'the hell it can't!' Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees? Could Hitler's bunch, or Windrip's, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?... Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?... Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn't happen in America! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!

Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Windrip’s, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles ‘Liberty measles’? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy? … Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution? … Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn’t happen in America! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade—only of adults—right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!

there’s no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Windrip’s, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles ‘Liberty measles’? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?. . .Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?. . .Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people

Billy ran around with a rare old crew And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew Where Billy's bones are resting now Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee And he took him down from six to five foot three Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi That copper won't be having any family Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Billy went away with a peace-keeping force 'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course Went away in an old khaki van To the banks of the River Jordan Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat And they ran like shites Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? One night Billy had a rare old time, Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line Came back to camp not looking too pretty Never even got to see the holy city Now Billy's out there in the desert sun And his mother cries when the morning comes And there's mothers crying all over this world For their poor dead darling boys and girls Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Have a Billy holiday… Born on a Monday Married on a Tuesday Drunk on a Wednesday Got plugged on a Thursday Sick on a Friday Died on a Saturday Buried on a Sunday. "Billy's Bones

In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise. Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.

But won’t political involvement distract us from the main task of preaching the Gospel? At this point someone may object that while political involvement may have some benefits and may do some good, it can so easily distract us, turn unbelievers away from the church, and cause us to neglect the main task of pointing people toward personal trust in Christ. John MacArthur writes, “When the church takes a stance that emphasizes political activism and social moralizing, it always diverts energy and resources away from evangelization.”83 Yet the proper question is not, “Does political influence take resources away from evangelism?” but, “Is political influence something God has called us to do?” If God has called some of us to some political influence, then those resources would not be blessed if we diverted them to evangelism—or to the choir, or to teaching Sunday School to children, or to any other use. In this matter, as in everything else the church does, it would be healthy for Christians to realize that God may call individual Christians to different emphases in their lives. This is because God has placed in the church “varieties of gifts” (1 Cor. 12:4) and the church is an entity that has “many members” but is still “one body” (v. 12). Therefore God might call someone to devote almost all of his or her time to the choir, someone else to youth work, someone else to evangelism, someone else to preparing refreshments to welcome visitors, and someone else to work with lighting and sound systems. “But if Jim places all his attention on the sound system, won’t that distract the church from the main task of preaching the Gospel?” No, not at all. That is not what God has called Jim to emphasize (though he will certainly share the Gospel with others as he has opportunity). Jim’s exclusive focus on the church’s sound system means he is just being a faithful steward in the responsibility God has given him. In the same way, I think it is entirely possible that God called Billy Graham to emphasize evangelism and say nothing about politics and also called James Dobson to emphasize a radio ministry to families and to influencing the political world for good. Aren’t there enough Christians in the world for us to focus on more than one task? And does God not call us to thousands of different emphases, all in obedience to him? But the whole ministry of the church will include both emphases. And the teaching ministry from the pulpit should do nothing less than proclaim “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). It should teach, over the course of time, on all areas of life and all areas of Bible knowledge. That certainly must include, to some extent, what the Bible says about the purposes of civil government and how that teaching should apply to our situations today. This means that in a healthy church we will find that some people emphasize influencing the government and politics, others emphasize influencing the business world, others emphasize influencing the educational system, others entertainment and the media, others marriage and the family, and so forth. When that happens, it seems to me that we should encourage, not discourage, one another. We should adopt the attitude toward each other that Paul encouraged in the church at Rome: Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God…. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother (Rom. 14:10–13). For several different reasons, then, I think the view that says the church should just “do evangelism, not politics” is incorrect.

One Sunday a girl from our study group, Jenny, invited us all to her mom's house in Hyde Park for a true Sunday Soul Food Dinner. Jenny's mom, Billie, a tiny woman with skin the color of café au lait, and silvery hair in a perfect chignon, laid out a soul food spread that brought a tear to the eye. Barbecue ribs, macaroni and cheese, collard greens with ham hocks, bread dressing, green beans, biscuits, candied sweet potatoes, creamed corn, and in the center of the table, a huge pile of fried chicken. I had never tasted anything like that fried chicken. The perfect balance of crisp batter to tender juicy meat. Everything that day was delicious, but the fried chicken was transcendent.

Billy Graham once said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.” Perhaps

Beginning with the radio evangelist Billy Sunday in the twenties, American fundamentalists, with their black-and-white view of every issue, have made effective use of each new medium of mass communication. Liberal religion, with its many shades of gray and determination to make room for secular knowledge in the house of faith, does not lend itself as readily to media packaging and is at an even greater disadvantage in the visual media than it was on the radio.

It is said that during Napoleon’s Austrian campaign his army advanced to within six miles of the town of Feldkirch. It looked as though his men would take it without resistance. But as Napoleon’s army advanced toward their objective in the night, the Christians of Feldkirch gathered in their little church to pray. It was Easter eve. The next morning at sunrise, the bells of the village pealed out across the countryside. Napoleon’s army, not realizing it was Easter Sunday, thought that in the night the Austrian army had moved into Feldkirch and the bells were ringing in jubilation. Napoleon ordered a retreat, and the battle at Feldkirch never took place. The Easter bells caused the enemy to flee, and peace reigned in the Austrian countryside.

She wished Billy and his family were there, or Sandra and her husband and son. She had begun making the Sunday meal a bigger affair before the war because she had spent so much time alone in her life. It was a feeling of desolation that had grown since the loss of her first husband and unborn child. She had realized she wanted to gather family around her while she could, because she felt the chance slipping through her fingers. And then life had changed. Life and love had lifted her, so even at the worst of times—a time of war—the meal delighted Maisie, for it heralded the first such gathering in many months.

Never before in all North Kiangsu had a child been recovered without a ransom ... The next Sunday, as Mrs. Billy Graham often told the story to her own children, Ruth saw ' Mr. Kao Er and his wife stand up in the church to give public thanks to God for what he had done. Mr. Kao was carrying the little boy who still couldn't walk, and his wife was carrying the little girl. And they stood up before the whole congregation to give God the glory. The Billy Graham children would then pray for Kao Er's son and daughter who would have been twenty-four and seventeen at the Communist revolution of 1949. Many years later Ruth received a photograph of the son from Shanghai with a personal inscription.

And our own beloved Carl Sandburg had this to say about the fire-belching evangelist Billy Sunday: You come along—tearing your shirt—yelling about Jesus. I want to know what the hell you know about Jesus. Jesus had a way of talking soft, and everybody except a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem liked to have Jesus around because he never made any fake passes, and he helped the sick and gave people hope. You come along calling us all damn fools—so fierce the froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips—always blabbering we’re all going to hell straight off and you know all about it. I’ve read Jesus’s words. I know what he said. You don’t throw any scare into me. I’ve got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus. You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they’re dead and the worms have eaten ’em. You tell $6-a-week department store girls all they need is Jesus. You take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he’ll be all right. You tell poor people they don’t need any more money on pay day, and even if it’s fierce to be out of a job, Jesus’ll fix that all right, all right—all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say. Jesus played it different. The bankers and corporation lawyers of Jerusalem got their murderers to go after Jesus because Jesus wouldn’t play their game. I don’t want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.

Gloomy Sunday,” originally composed by Hungarian pianist Rezsõ Seress in 1933. It’s legendary not just because Billie Holliday once sang it, but because it sounded soooooo frowny-face sad it supposedly drove a bunch of unsuspecting listeners to suicide.

We — two men, both at least one hundred and seventy pounds, both at least six feet tall — sleep on my twin-sized bed, as though the next day were a Sunday and there were only Sundays from here on out.

I believe that my parents’ call to the ministry actually drove them crazy. They were happiest when farthest away from their missionary work, wandering the back streets of Florence; or, rather, when they turned their missionary work into something very unmissionary-like, such as talking about art history instead of Christ. Perhaps this is because at those times they were farthest away from other people’s expectations. I think religion was actually their source of tragedy. Mom tried to dress, talk, and act like anything but what she was. Dad looked flustered if fundamentalists, especially Calvinist theologians, would intrude into a discussion and try to steer it away from art or philosophy so they could discuss the finer points of arcane theology. And Dad was always in a better mood before leading a discussion or before giving a lecture on a cultural topic, than he was before preaching on Sunday. I remember Dad screaming at Mom one Sunday; then he threw a potted ivy at her. Then he put on his suit and went down to preach his Sunday sermon in our living-room chapel. It was not the only Sunday Dad switched gears from rage to preaching. And this was the same chapel that the Billy Graham family sometimes dropped by to worship in, along with their Swiss-Armenian, multimillionaire in-laws, after Billy—like some Middle Eastern potentate—arranged for his seventeen-year-old daughter’s marriage to the son of a particularly wealthy donor who lived up the road from us in the ski resort of Villars. Did

sobered, nodded awkwardly, and acted like he wanted to speak, but didn’t. He turned to a laptop, gave it a command. The screens on the wall displayed what looked at first glance like a collage of images. At center was a photograph Acadia had recently taken of Alex Cross’s house from across Fifth Street. Dotted lines traveled from various windows in the house out to pictures of Dr. Alex, his wife, his grandmother, his daughter, and his younger son. Set off to one side was a framed picture of Damon, Alex Cross’s older son, seventeen and a student at a prep school in western Massachusetts. Digital lines went out from each portrait, linked to images of schools, police stations, churches, grocery stores, and various friends. There were also lines connecting each member of Cross’s family to calendar and clock icons. “He uses mind-mapping software and an Xbox 360 with Kinect to make it work,” Acadia explained. “It’s interactive, Marcus. Just stand in front of the camera and point to what you want.” Intrigued now, Sunday stepped in front of the screens and the Kinect camera. He pointed at the photograph of Cross. The screen instantly jumped to a virtual diary of the detective’s recent life, everything from photographs of Bree Stone, to his kids, to his white Chevy sedan and his best friend, John Sampson, and Sampson’s wife, Billie. Sunday pointed at the calendar, and the screens showed a chronological account of everything he had seen Cross do in the prior month.

Billy Sunday said, “If there is no joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

The reign of tears is over,” proclaimed evangelist Billy Sunday in Virginia, during a mock funeral for John Barelycorn, a fictional character and the personification of whisky and beer. “The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.

Billy Joel was supposed to have a triumphant first on Sunday night, April 14. The Piano Man was headed to high time for his first- ever broadcast network performance special, The 100th Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden – The Greatest Arena Run of All Time, following fifty times in the music business. still, his broadcast was cut short by CBS. Why did CBS cut short Billy Joel’s broadcast? The event, which was supposed to state on CBS from 9 to 11p.m., was blazoned before this time’s Super Bowl and taped on March 28 during Joel’s 100th performance at the fabled New York City theatre. Unfortunately, the Joel musicale’s airing was delayed due to the network’s live content of the Masters golf event. As a result, numerous observers missed the show’s dramatic conclusion and were forced to switch to the original news.

The Faith of Jimmy Carter Carter grew up in the Southern Baptist Church that had dominated many parts of the South since the Civil War. As a child, he regularly attended Sunday school, worship services, and the Royal Ambassadors, an organization for young boys that focused on missions, at the Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. At age eleven, Carter publicly professed his faith in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord, was baptized, and joined the church. Thereafter, he participated faithfully in the Baptist Young People’s Union. Carter’s religious convictions and social attitudes were strongly shaped by his mother, Lillian. In 1958, Carter was ordained as a deacon, the governing office in Southern Baptist congregations, and he ushered, led public prayers, and preached lay sermons at his home church. His failure to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966 prompted Carter to reassess his faith. Challenged by a sermon entitled ‘‘If You Were Arrested for Being a Christian, Would There Be Enough Evidence to Convict You?’’ and conversations with his sister, evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, he vowed to make serving Christ and others his primary aim. During the 1966 governor’s race, he had spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day trying to convince Georgians to vote for him. ‘‘The comparison struck me,’’ Carter wrote, ‘‘300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God [to witness to others] in fourteen years!’’ Carter soon experienced a more intimate relationship with Christ and inner peace. He read the Bible ‘‘with new interest’’ and concluded that he had been a Pharisee. He went on witnessing missions, attended several religious conferences, and oversaw the showing of a Billy Graham film in Americus, Georgia.

Rousing fire-and-brimstone evangelist Billy Sunday, whose popular attacks on sin were wrapped in colorful language. (“I’ll punch it, kick it, butt it, bite it, and when I’m old and fistless and toothless I’ll gum it!”)

The Fist Kiss Came With Flame" The first kiss came with flame She gave him a flame wine From her scarlet lips a flame wine The second kiss came with a sea-wish She became the sea to him The pride and anger of the sea she gave him Three times they had kissed A third time deep in her winding sea-velvet She moved in light-shifts of bright sea-velvet for him Again she came with a long kiss of stars She beckoned him to a tall dome of stars

Billy Graham once said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.

Sunday school...Bible study...prayer meetings. Now that's just too much church. Ain't nobody so full a sin they need that much church.

I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit. Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…