Dwight L. Moody

Edwin Moody, a farmer and stonemason, died in 1841 and left his widow nine children under 13, two of them born a month after the funeral. Dwight, the seventh, was four. Some of the children were sent out to work for their board. His schooling stopped at roughly a fifth-grade level and never resumed. He spelled phonetically all his life, and his grammar was mocked. At 17 he went to Boston to sell boots and shoes in an uncle's store, and he was very good at it. In April 1855 his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, came into the store to talk to him. Moody applied to join the church, failed the deacons' questions about the Bible, and waited a year to be admitted.

What Moody added to revival was management. He sold shoes and then sold meetings, and the method came out of the store. Canvassers worked a city house by house for months before he arrived. Local businessmen underwrote a rented hall. Ira Sankey sang, a choir of hundreds sang behind him, and Moody's people fed the newspapers copy in time for the morning edition. Ushers moved the anxious into an inquiry room. Two years in Britain, from 1873, made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Charles Finney invented the revival meeting. Moody built the machine that ran it.

He was very good at business. Selling shoes in Chicago he saved 7,000 dollars in four years, then in 1861 he gave up the trade for full-time work at the YMCA and a mission Sunday school among immigrant children. He could not conscientiously enlist in the war, describing himself later as a Quaker in that respect, and instead paid nine visits to the Union front for the United States Christian Commission — after Shiloh, after Stones River, and into Richmond with Grant's troops. Then in October 1871 the Great Chicago Fire took his church, his house, the YMCA and the homes of most of his congregation. He said afterward that he saved nothing but his reputation and his Bible. He was 34, wiped out, and about to become famous.

He preached his last sermon in Kansas City on November 16, 1899, and died at Northfield five weeks later. No doctor named the illness. Within a decade the Chicago Avenue Church and the Chicago Evangelization Society both carried his name, and the institute became the model for the Bible school — cheap, fast, practical, an alternative to seminary that fundamentalism built by the dozen. Historians of the period, among them Michael Hamilton and Timothy Gloege, argue that the movement claiming him turned narrower and more combative than the man, who avoided doctrinal fights and shared his Northfield platform with almost anyone. Billy Graham inherited the organization. The quarrels came attached.

Dwight L. Moody's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Illinois Street Church other
  Grew out of his North Market Hall Sunday school and became the Moody Church 1864
• Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies other
  A school for girls founded near his birthplace in western Massachusetts 1879
• Mount Hermon School for Boys other
  Merged with Northfield in the late 20th century as Northfield Mount Hermon 1881
• The Way to God and How to Find It book
  Devotional writing in the plain speech he preached in 1884
• Chicago Evangelization Society other
  Renamed the Moody Bible Institute and copied across the country 1886
• Bible Institute Colportage Association other
  Cheap religious books sold from horse-drawn wagons — later Moody Publishers 1894

• 1841 aged ~4 His father dies, leaving nine children under 13 Twins were born a month after the funeral. Some of the children were sent out to work for their board.
• April 1855 aged 18 Converted at 18 while clerking in a Boston shoe store His Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, came to talk to him at work. The deacons turned down his first application for membership.
• 1861 aged ~24 Gives up the shoe trade for the YMCA and his mission Sunday school He had saved 7,000 dollars selling shoes in Chicago. He married Emma C. Revell on August 28, 1862.
• 1862 aged ~25 Goes to the Union front for the United States Christian Commission Nine visits in all — after Shiloh and Stones River, and into Richmond with Grant's troops.
• June 1871 aged 34 Meets the singer Ira Sankey at a convention in Indianapolis The pairing of preacher and gospel soloist became the standard shape of the mass campaign.
• October 8, 1871 aged 34 The Great Chicago Fire burns his church, his house and the YMCA He said afterward that he saved nothing but his reputation and his Bible.
• 1873 aged ~36 Sails for Britain with Sankey and stays two years He preached across England, Scotland and Ireland and came home an international name.
• January 22, 1886 aged 48 Founds the Chicago Evangelization Society at Farwell Hall He asked for gap-men — trained laymen standing between the ministers and the pews.
• December 22, 1899 aged 62 Dies at Northfield, five weeks after his last sermon The illness was never diagnosed. He was 62.

• Charles Grandison Finney 1792–1875
  Turned religious revival into a set of repeatable methods that every American evangelist since has used. succeeded the movement of
• Billy Graham 1918–2018
  Evangelist whose mass crusades, media reach, and presidential relationships made him a defining figure in modern American Protestantism. influenced
• Aimee Semple McPherson 1890–1944
  Evangelist and media innovator who founded the Foursquare Church and pioneered religious broadcasting and celebrity ministry. influenced
• John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937
  Established the Rockefeller Foundation and funded medical research, education, and public health initiatives. funded by