Helen Thompson Sunday

Life

Helen Amelia Thompson was born on June 25, 1868, in Dundee, Illinois, to William Thompson and Ellen Binnie Thompson. She was the second of five children. Her father, a successful businessman of Scottish descent, was a devout Presbyterian. In 1869 the whole family moved with him to Chicago.

On September 5, 1888, at her parents' home in Chicago, she married Billy Sunday, who would later become one of America's leading revivalists. The couple had four children: Helen, George, William, and Paul. Her husband called her "Nell" or "Ma," names that later came into wide use; she was commonly known as "Ma Sunday."

Her husband died in 1935, and she outlived him by more than twenty years. In her later years she suffered from cataracts, heart attacks, and cancer. She died on February 20, 1957, at the age of 88, in Phoenix, Arizona, where she had been spending the winter with her grandson Paul Haines. She was buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.

Ministry and Accomplishments

For several decades in the early twentieth century, she organized and managed the large-scale evangelistic campaigns (revival meetings) led by her husband. While Billy Sunday preached from the platform, Helen is known to have handled the organization and day-to-day administration of the campaigns.

After her husband's death, rather than remaining solely in the role of his wife, she carried on the ministry as an evangelistic speaker in her own right. Her funeral was conducted by longtime associates. The American Christian educator Bob Jones Jr., speaking in her memory on that occasion, remarked that had she been alive, she would have told them to stop praising her and talk about Jesus instead. The anecdote is told as reflecting the impression that she placed evangelism above all else throughout her life.

Assessment

Assessments of Helen Sunday focus on two roles. The first is her role as the organizer who actually ran her husband's large-scale evangelistic campaigns; the second is her role as an independent evangelistic speaker after his death. She is cited as an example of a revivalist's spouse who bore responsibility for the practical management of the meetings. Criticism directed at her personally is difficult to find in the available sources. Evaluation and criticism of her husband's revival movement as a whole are covered in the article on Billy Sunday.