First of all, revivalist Billy Sunday—Machen was sort of a fan during his Princeton days (1914):
The text of the sermon was Rom. 12:1, and the treatment was thoroughly textual. I was impressed as I have seldom been with the permanent power of great words. In an environment so intensely modern, the words of Paul seem to be as up-to-date as they ever were.
The big argument for Billy Sunday is the result of his preaching. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
….I was very greatly impressed (upon his second hearing of Sunday in Philadelphia)—far more so than on the other occasion. The text was II Sam. 12:13.
The sermon was old-fashioned evangelism of the most powerful and elemental kind. Much of it, I confess, left me cold . . . . But the total impact of the sermon was great. . . . The climax was the boundlessness of God’s mercy; and so truly had the sinfulness of sin been presented, that everybody present with any heart at all ought to have felt mighty glad that God’s mercy is boundless. In the last five or ten minutes of that sermon, I got a new realization of the power of the gospel.
The surprising thing is that the gospel which is having this unprecedented effect in Philadelphia is so aggressively and uncompromisingly old-fashioned. The magazines are expressing wonder at it. This wretched, immoral conception of the atonement! This absurd view of the authority of the Bible! And not a thing about the “social gospel,” which everybody knows is the really powerful thing today! Instead of it just the old notion of the individual soul in the presence of God! Even the opponents have to admit that the thing is bringing results. . . .
The Unitarians1 in Philadelphia are carrying on an active fight against the Billy Sunday movement. . . . Every morning, on the page of the paper devoted to Billy Sunday, a Unitarian statement appears in opposition. I like Billy Sunday for the enemies he has.
Sunday was later invited to Princeton Seminary, which precipitated a great controversy. 2
Machen certainly had issues with Sunday’s methods, but compared to the deadness Machen was already perceiving in liberalizing mainline churches, he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Speaking of methods, Machen bristled at certain revivalist new measures. He was a popular preacher at the Winona (New York) bible conferences. He reflected on the experience in a letter to his mother around 1916:
My criticism of Winona is that the ‘rough house’ element is overdone. I do not object to a little bit of it, or even a good deal of it, but it does seem to me to be a pity that is should almost crowd everything else out. Practically every lecture, on whatever subject, was begun by the singing of some of the popular jingles, often accompanied by the blowing of enormous horns (!) or other weird instruments of music.
Machen often lamented a lack of reverence and “dignity” in religious services.
Later, in France after the Armistice, he caught flak from his fellow YMCA workers for not using revivalist methods at the conclusion of his sermons to US troops waiting to leave France for the US:
I preached on Romans 8:31. After that meeting I talked for a long time to one fellow in particular who had been through agony of soul in his effort to find peace with God. It made me thing of Pilgrim’s Progress. Well, I never knew before what the preaching of the gospel is. The Y.M.C.A. men who assisted me in the service thought I had missed a great opportunity in not calling for some kind of expression on the part of those who were touched by the gospel message.
And there was more irritating music (actually, musician) with which to deal:
Our singer is inclined to want to be a speaker in his own (right), and contributes a little more fuss and “pep” than at times we might desire…
But Machen was gracious:
…but perhaps, rightly guided, it is all for the best.
Machen learned patience in his wartime service with a broadly evangelical bureaucracy (the YMCA), if nothing else. The highbrow Machen (one of the best-educated men of his generation) was no rabid anti-revivalist snob. He was a true Christian man.
by Brad Isbell
(Quotes from the Stonehouse biography and Barry Waugh’s book of Machen’s wartime letters)
An irony - Stonehouse says Machen’s one serious (it’s disputed how serious) romance was with a Unitarian lady who could not find her way to orthodox Christian faith, thus was no real wifely pospect.
My recollection is that Sunday was also invited to speak in the 30s at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.