Ray Vaughn

Ray Vaughn (b. "Boyce Smith") is an American Evangelist preacher probably best known as "The Singing Evangelist."

From the mid-1960's through the mid-1970's, Vaughn travelled throughout the United States ministering a moderate brand of evangelical Methodism. Vaughn's evangelism differed from that of most of his contemporaries as his religious testimony ("witnessing") was performed mostly through his music. Unlike many other evangelists of his era, Vaughn delivered his evangelistic messages in a non-confrontational tone. He preached to congregations across the country by singing his testimonies, sprinkling his presentations with short stories about his path from a successful entertainer to a becoming an ordained minister in the North Georgia Conference (USA) of the United Methodist Church.

Biography

Ray Vaughn was the younger brother of the famous American poet, author, and educator Helen Bevington. Under his birth name of Boyce Smith, Vaughn first gained popularity as a member of the band on the television show called Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, a highly popular radio show broadcast from Chicago, Illinois. Don McNeil's Breakfast Club was eventually transformed into the first news and entertainment show on American television. Vaughn was the show's pianist. His voice was familiar to millions of viewers and listeners as the singer of the Duz soap commercial jingle. After working on Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, Vaughn moved to South Florida where he began a career as a journeyman musician. During the early to mid-1960s, his musical reputation grew quickly and considerably. He soon found himself in high demand as a solo musician and vocalist for many of South Florida's most popular resorts and night clubs. One of Vaughn's most interesting musical stints took him to Cape Canaveral where, at a local night club, he would often take song requests from various Gemini astronauts, most notably Gus Grissom. Astronaut Grissom often asked Vaughn to sing a particular song (title currently unknown) that contained lyrics about stars that flickered in the night sky.

Following his move to Florida, Vaughn married a former dancer from Cuba, Nieves Castillo. The couple had two sons, Charles Orlando Smith and Jorge (later "George") Francis Smith. However, the marriage did not last long and the couple divorced after only six years.

After the failure of his marriage, Vaughn met Louise Rose. As a staunch Christian, Rose had the effect of providing Vaughn with a deeper spiritual consciousness. Shortly after meeting Rose, Vaughn suffered a malady that resulted in the complete loss of his singing voice. The cause of the malady has never been explained although it was not believed to be any known form of laryngitis. During his stay in a Florida hospital, Vaughn was visited by a stranger who changed Vaughn's life. That stranger was a Methodist minister named Charles Kinder. The two men quickly became friends and Vaughn became convinced that his loss of voice and the coincidental meeting of Rev. Kinder was, in fact, a call from God to change his lifestyle.

Over the course of several weeks, Vaughn's voice slowly returned. After fully recovering, Vaughn abandoned his highly successful entertainment career and, with the guidance of Rev. Kinder, began a religious transformation that would eventually lead to his becoming an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church.

In the mid-1960s, Vaughn was accepted into the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. For the next several years, Vaughn engaged in (and completed) theological studies as he travelled across the country "spreading the Gospel" through his unique "Ministry of Song" method of evangelism. During his theological studies, Vaughn became a close friend of Bishop Arthur James Moore of the United Methodist Church. When Vaughn was ordained as a minister in the Methodist church, it was Moore who gave Vaughn a personal blessing during the ceremony. After his ordination, Vaughn continued to travel the Eastern United States, ministering to large congregations. Toward the end of his life, as health problems started to take their toll on him, Vaughn served as an associate pastor of the Vinings United Methodist Church in Vinings, Georgia, USA.

During the mid-1970s, Vaughn's health declined due to a combination of diabetes and high blood pressure. In the summer of 1977, he suffered a massive heart attack at his home. His wife, Louise, and his older son, Charles, administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the scene. Vaughn died several weeks later in the Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Georgia, USA.

Musical Talents

Ray Vaughn was an accomplished musician. He had a full mastery of the piano, the trombone, drums, and the vibraharp (a musical device resembling an electronically amplified xylophone). Indeed, as a youngster, Vaughn won the United States Junior Drumming Championship.

Vaughn was a close friend of the noted Christian music author, Richard E. Blanchard Sr. A prolific author, Blanchard wrote numerous popular Christian hymns including the modern gospel classic, "Fill My Cup Lord". Blanchard's music was a staple in the "Ministry of Song" that Vaughn practiced throughout the Southeastern United States.

Religious Beliefs

Ray Vaughn's religious beliefs were deep and complex. Although an evangelist himself, he did not approve of the "fire and brimstone" approach to evangelism. For Vaughn, religious experiences consisted of a quiet understanding of God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, and humanity's relationship to — and interaction between — all four of those elements. Vaughn did not believe that The Bible was to be taken literally. Rather, his theological education in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University instilled him with a keen sense of the multiple layers of meaning — symbolic and literal — that appear in The Bible. Indeed, Vaughn considered purely literal interpretations of The Bible to be the hallmark of unsophisticated minds, minds that were incapable of seeing or understanding the more subtle and profound truths that Vaughn believed were in The Bible.

Vaughn abhorred the notion of mixing religion with politics and he vigorously avoided any effort to collapse the two subjects into each other. He considered human beings too flawed to create "Heaven on Earth," a belief that led him to believe that politics and politicians — even when infused with religious righteousness — were too easily corrupted to improve the lives of their fellow humans as stipulated by the laws of God. In short, he believed that politics should be guided by general principles of the common good and that, separately, religion should define that common good. He further believed that religion should aspire to improve humanity without allowing its divine mission to be warped by involvement in — and/or exposure to — the temptations and corruptions of local, state, national, and international politics. The separation of church and state, in Vaughn's mind, assured the spiritual purity of religious motives and of religious actions in public service.

The "Ministry in Song"

The most distinctive feature of Vaughn's evangelistic ministry was his ability to seamlessly integrate music into his sermons. Indeed, the verbal portions of his sermons comprised largely of a minute or two of explanations of how the song he was about to play contained Biblical truths that he had experienced himself during his life. In this manner, Vaughn literally created a way to give sermons through songs. This method of providing his personal "witnessing" of religious truths almost entirely through musical sermons was unique to Vaughn's ministry.

Recordings

Vaughn and his third wife, Louise Rose Vaughn, produced two albums comprising of Christian religious music. Both albums were distributed and sold by the Vaughns themselves at their numerous evangelical sermons. The two high fidelity albums were recorded by the Vaughns in a makeshift studio that the couple created in the living room of their Decatur, Georgia home. Although both albums were widely sold in evangelical "revivals" throughout the Southern United States during the early 1970s, copies of the albums are now extremely rare.