This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
"Timing is everything," as Reverend James L. Delk could tell you after a summer of revival meetings in the city of Rock Island in 1919.
Delk arrived with high hopes in late June and announced that he planned to remain until August 3rd. He brought with him the proper credentials for an American evangelist. The son of a Kentucky moonshiner, he had grown up without religion or an education, had gone on to become a successful showman and trapeze artist, until a conversion experience changed his life.
In spite of successes elsewhere, Reverend Delk failed to make much of a dent in Rock Island. On one Wednesday evening, a passionate sermon on the Parable of the Ten Virgins produced only three converts at the altar call, bringing the total after several weeks to only one hundred and forty-three women and a hundred and four men. Even Delk admitted that his average of 28 converts a week was a poor showing.
Reverend Delk's campaign ended sooner than he planned. On July 28th, he was attacked in the street by a man using brass knuckles. He promised to continue his campaign. However, a police investigation of the attack showed that Delk himself had pulled a knife during the scuffle which had arisen because of disparaging remarks Delk had made about a woman. Delk and his assailant were both arrested.
Though all charges were dismissed, Reverend Delk announced that he would end his services in Rock Island. Delk blamed his failure on "a current against revivals in Rock Island," but it is likely he knew the real reason. Even as Delk preached, not far away a large wooden tabernacle was under construction, seating seven thousand, designed specifically for a crusade four years in the planning: the arrival in September of the great evangelist, Billy Sunday, who would send more people down the sawdust trail each evening than Reverend Delk had done in a whole summer.
Delk’s prospective converts had apparently decided to wait two months and "let Billy do it."
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
