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Augustana and Billy Sunday

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

By the time the famous evangelist, Billy Sunday, came to the city of Rock Island for a six-week crusade in the fall of 1919, he was already experienced in taking on adversaries of all shapes and sizes, from the beer drinker to the devil himself.

At Rock Island, he was about to face a new test: Lutherans.

As was the custom with Sunday's crusades, services were aimed at special groups: there was Moline Day, a businessman's day, a minister’s day.

Friday evening, October 31st, had been designated Augustana College Day. Would the young Lutherans show up?

Indeed, they did. Some five hundred students—virtually the entire student body—and their teachers marched in a body across town from the campus to the tabernacle at Fifth Avenue and 24th Street. Apparently, they left their Swedish reticence at the door. The Rock Island Argus reported that they "made the rafters fairly ring with their yells and cheers." Augustana's Wennerberg Chorus, under the direction of Professor W. L. Kling, sang Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," and a gospel tune, "Our Hope is Built of Jesus' Name."

Student body president, Ames Lundquist, presented Sunday with an Augustana pennant in the college's blue and gold colors. Sunday promised to hang it on his wall alongside pennants from Cornell, Princeton, and Dartmouth, and congratulated the students for choosing school colors that "have kick and punch and snap to them" rather than sissified colors.

After a sermon on "Thou Art Not Far From Home," Billy issued his altar call. The Argus reported that 650 of the audience hit the sawdust trail that night, including virtually the entire Augustana student body—for whom sawdust was a new experience.

Sunday later remarked that never in his campaigns had he visited a school where there was a finer religious atmosphere than that which emanated from Augustana.

Sunday left Rock Island satisfied. He had saved a total of 9,995 souls—plus five hundred Swedish Lutherans.

Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Community
Beginning 1995, historian and folklorist Dr. Roald Tweet spun his stories of the Mississippi Valley to a devoted audience on WVIK. Dr. Tweet published three books as well as numerous literary articles and recorded segments of "Rock Island Lines." His inspiration was that "kidney-shaped limestone island plunked down in the middle of the Mississippi River," a logical site for a storyteller like Dr. Tweet.