The Gospel of Efficiency

This essay investigates the roles of Billy Sunday's staff during his urban revivals in the 1910s, especially the committees and departments they administered. Understanding this revival organization is central to understanding Sunday's success. A corporate organization not only allowed Sunday's team to reach urban populations, it also put evangelicalism culturally in step with the times. This committee structure made outpourings of the Holy Spirit predictable and even guaranteed, and it helped Sunday create a revivalism for an age of mass production, one that was palatable to a cross-class and nationwide audience and reproducible in cities across the country. Most scholars of American religion are familiar with the outline of Sunday's career, but the labors of his staff and their contributions remain virtually unexplored. Further, there is a looming historiographical problem with how scholars treat Sunday. His most important years as a revivalist were in the 1910s, before the fundamentalist movement began, but his name is virtually synonymous with fundamentalism. This article challenges scholars to interpret Progressive Era evangelicals not in terms of what they became in the 1920s, but in terms of how they shaped and were shaped by an era of urbanization and consumer capitalism

Bureaucracy · Capitalism · Fundamentalism · Gospel · Historiography · Media studies · Political science · Progressive era · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy · Religious studies

• Efficiency and Evangelism

  Todd R Stubbs•Histoire sociale•2018

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• In Search of Progressivism

  Daniel T Rodgers•Progressive Era in the USA•2017

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• Celestial Haze

  Kermit L Hall, John W Howard•Reviews in American History•1982

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• In Search of Progressivism

  Daniel T Rodgers•Reviews in American History•1982

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• Moody, "Gapmen," and the Gospel

  Open Access•James Findlay•Church History•1962

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• The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough

  Open Access•Gail Bederman•American Quarterly•1989

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