Moody, Dwight Lyman
MOODY, DWIGHT LYMAN
American revival preacher; b. Northfield, Mass., Feb. 5, 1837; d. Northfield, Dec. 22, 1899. He received a grammar school education and went to work in a Boston shoe store in 1854. Although originally a Unitarian, he experienced a religious conversion in 1855 and joined the Congregational Church. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1856 and worked as a salesman until 1860, when he became a full-time city missionary. He organized the North Market Sabbath School in 1858 and formed a nondenominational church in 1863. He was active in the Chicago YMCA and became its president in 1866. His first evangelistic crusade in British industrial centers began in 1873, and in 1875, he conducted interdenominational revivals in various American cities. He toured the British Isles from 1881 to 1884 and again in 1891 and 1892. He founded the Chicago (Moody) Bible Institute in 1889 to train evangelists and began the Student Volunteer Movement. Moody's preaching was restrained and stressed "Bible Christianity." He brought modern business methods to revivalism, but his crusades did not reach the masses of the unchurched or notably increase church membership.
Bibliography: w. r. moody, Dwight L. Moody (New York 1930). w. m. smith, comp., Annotated Bibliography of D. L. Moody (Chicago 1948). r. k. curtis, They Called Him Mr. Moody (Garden City, NY 1962). j. c. pollock, Moody without Sankey (New York 1963).
[r. k. macmaster]