Reverend Revs Up Avocation : Military Minister’s Faith Is Fueled by Drag-Racing

Seated behind the wheel of his fire-engine-red Ford Mustang, the Rev. Robert Ray revs his pride and joy, a 600-horsepower, eardrum-blasting racing machine. With the smell of burning rubber fouling the night air, the rear tires stir up a cloud of dust, grease and smoke thick enough to choke a mule.

The race is about to begin, and Ray’s Mustang--with “Racers for Christ” emblazoned on the side--is in the No. 1 lane, wheels spinning in anticipation.

Amid a deafening roar, the car lurches forward. Its front end raises up as if trying to fly, looking more like an F-18 than a ’68 Mustang. Spitting dirt behind him, the reverend bolts down the track, taking the checkered flag in 11.3 seconds and pulling cheers from the crowd at Brotherhood Raceway Park.

His top speed: 117 miles per hour.

A few days later, Ray, 30, is sitting in a booth at Burrell’s, his favorite grits-and-gravy coffee shop, within walking distance of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where the soft-spoken preacher has come to be known fondly as “the drag-racing minister.”

Six years in uniform, Ray is a Religious Program Specialist 2nd Class. He assists the Rev. Robert Purser, the base chaplain, by doing everything called for in a military ministry--addressing the spiritual needs of servicemen and women and playing a preacherly role at hospitals, funerals and weddings.

He also serves as a track chaplain with Racers for Christ, which provides worship services at speedways from Talladega, Ala., to Indianapolis, to the Inland Empire. Unlike his ministerial colleagues, though, Ray is often behind the wheel--and doing well.

He finished second at the Buick Nationals in Bakersfield in May, his most successful of 14 races.

“The initial launch, the takeoff, the G forces, the pull of the car . . . “ he said, talking about the part that thrills him most--the start. “Going 120 miles an hour in a quarter-mile, from zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds . . . you can’t beat it.”

Three years ago, at a race in Palmdale, Ray saw a sign for Racers for Christ and immediately volunteered to be a chaplain. But in the past two years, he has poured $15,000 of his own money into racing, beefing up the Mustang. The spirit of such racing heavies as the late Mickey Thompson and Louie Unser help keep his car going.

Thompson’s company provides free tires, and Unser’s Fullerton shops built the state-of-the-art 351 Windsor engine. Otherwise, Ray would have spent even more. Racing has hardly been profitable--he’s won only $400.

Rather, “it’s been like a leap of faith,” he said, especially before the race in Bakersfield. “I said, ‘Lord, I’m trusting you now. Don’t drain my pocketbook forever. Let me at least win something.’ ”

He lost 13 straight races and then, at his lowest point, finished second in the Buick Nationals. Ray saw it as a sign from God that he ought to keep going--a kind of checkered flag from heaven.

An earnest man with a boyish face and a pencil-thin mustache, he grew up in Portland, Ore., where one of six stepfathers turned him on to racing. As a boy whose family life was hard-scrabble, the passion often took him astray and got him into trouble. As a teen-ager, Oregon cops arrested him twice for racing on city streets.

But winning the Oregon State High School Drag-Racing Championships gave him a raison d’etre and added fuel to an avocation already in overdrive.

“It’s the same endorphins or adrenaline you would get from sky diving or running in a marathon,” he said. “By the end of a race, you’re literally shaking from the rush, the thrill of competition. But you have to be a true motor head, as I am, to enjoy it.”

He scoffs at the notion that he might have a death wish or a longing to tempt fate like some Bible-toting version of James Dean from “Rebel Without a Cause.” He sees drag-racing as a natural extension of a life with God, making him the minister with a cause.

“Sky diving is just a stupid thing to me,” he said by way of comparison. “There’s no competition involved. What reason would anyone have for jumping out of a plane that’s flying? There’s so much more involved in drag-racing. Why, it’s one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.”

The Rev. Purser, his El Toro base boss, says his colleague defies the drag-racing stereotype, and by being a drag-racer, defies people’s attitudes about ministers as well. Both Purser and Ray say the young recruits, from East Texas, rural Alabama and the South Bronx, are immediately intrigued by the racing preacher and thus more inclined to listen to the word of God.

“He’s not out there just talking the talk,” Purser said. “He’s walking the walk.”

John Ewing, who works at Louie Unser Engines in Fullerton and who helped build Ray’s racing engine, says Ray “has a real big heart” and has helped other racers see that “ministers, they’re people too. They’re in touch with God, but they’re allowed to have hobbies like anyone else.”

Ewing calls Ray’s ’68 Mustang “clean, well put together. . . . He bought it as a junker and brought it back to life. Hey, you might say he resurrected it.”

In many ways, Ray resurrected his own life, which he admits was marred, on occasion, by drinking and other foolishness. His mother, a former bartender and palm reader known to her Oregon community as “the good witch” for her powers as a psychic, suffered a near-fatal car crash six years ago while coming home from a Bob Dylan concert.

Ray said the incident changed her life and had a profound impact on the lives of her five children. It drew the fragmented family closer together and “more important,” he said, “drew us all closer to God.”

He came from the kind of household “where you had to lock your stuff up--my little sister was a thief. I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 5, 6 years old. I stole a lock to bolt my bedroom door down at night. The lady asked why I stole it and I said, ‘To keep my sister out!’ ”

Ray lives in Laguna Niguel with his fiancee, Kim, and her two children. Asked if the kids are his, he said, “They are in my heart.” He says he has no ambition to be a professional drag-racer, only to raise a Christian family and “serve the Lord any way I can. If that means the track, so be it.”

At Long Beach, Bakersfield, Pomona--wherever the ordained minister races on the Winston Drag Racing, National Hot Rod Assn. circuit--he hears the announcer boom to the crowd: “Here’s Robert Ray of Racers for Christ!”

But amid the cheers from drag-racing enthusiasts who just love the novelty of rooting on a speedway preacher, Ray has only one thing in mind. You might call it his little secret.

“I’m a very competitive person,” he said. “When that flag drops, I’m not praying for anybody any more. I just want to win!”

Profile: The Rev. Robert Ray

Born: Portland, Ore.

Lives: Laguna Niguel

Age: 30

Occupation: Assistant chaplain, El Toro Marine Corps Air Station

Education: Bachelor’s of theology degree from Golden Grain Bible College and Seminary in Saticoy, Calif. He is pursuing a master’s degree there.

Professional: Manages chaplain’s office at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station; occasionally handles chaplain’s duties at Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms Marine Corps bases, and at weddings, funerals and area hospitals.

Hobby: Drag-racing; finished second in Buick Nationals in Bakersfield in May.

Why he does it: “It’s the same endorphins or adrenaline you would get from sky diving or running a marathon. By the end of a race, you’re literally shaking from the rush, the thrill of competition. But you have to be a true motor head, as I am, to enjoy it.”