Vance Havner (October 17, 1901 – August 12, 1986) was an American Southern Baptist minister, evangelist, and author.
Havner was born in Vale, North Carolina.[1] [2] He was a child preacher beginning at age 12, and was ordained at age 15. Havner studied briefly at Catawba College, Wake Forest University, and Moody Bible Institute, but did not graduate from any of them. He served as pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina from 1934 to 1939, after which he became an itinerant evangelist.
For a time Havner was influenced by Harry Emerson Fosdick's modernism, but moved away from that after reading J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.
Billy Graham officiated at Havner's funeral in 1986 and called him "the most quoted preacher in America". Havner is often quoted by Father Tim, the main character in Jan Karon's Mitford series.[3]