c. 2006 Religion News Service
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., a fiery and controversial social activist, Presbyterian minister and author who saw social justice ‘at the heart of the Gospel,’ died Wednesday (April 12). He was 81.
Coffin, who had been suffering from congestive heart failure, died at his home in rural Strafford, Vt.
He rose to prominence in the 1960s as Yale University’s chaplain, a position he used to great effect to campaign against the Vietnam War and fight for civil rights for blacks.
A natural leader for the protesting students of the 1960s, Coffin took his first ‘Freedom Ride’ to Montgomery, Ala., in 1961 to challenge the segregation of Southern buses. In 1968, Coffin was indicted on charges of conspiring to counsel draft resistance.
Coffin left Yale in 1975 to finish his autobiography, ‘Once to Every Man,’ and seek out new avenues for social engagement. Two years later, Coffin became pastor of New York City’s Riverside Church, where he stayed until 1987. At Riverside, Coffin was active in the anti-nuclear proliferation movement and strove to focus America’s attention on economic inequality and world hunger.
Besides his autobiography, Coffin’s books include ‘The Courage to Love’ (1982), a collection of essays on topics ranging from abortion to homosexuality, and ‘A Passion for the Possible’ (1993), a message to the church on a variety of the day’s most pressing moral questions. In addition, Coffin wrote hundreds of essays and sermons, as well as numerous letters to prominent political and religious leaders.
Coffin reached popular immortality in Yale graduate Garry Trudeau’s comic strip ‘Doonesbury,’ as the inspiration behind the Rev. Scot Sloan, a hip minister concerned with social justice.
Coffin was born in 1924 into what he described as the ‘archetypal’ WASP family. His father was a vice president of the family’s W & J Sloane furniture chain and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. When Coffin, a talented pianist, lost his father during the Great Depression, his mother took him to study in California, Paris and Geneva. He later enrolled at Yale.
With the start of World War II, Coffin left Yale to enlist in the Army. He was trained as a paratrooper, but later served as a liaison officer to the Russian army in Czechoslovakia and Germany because of his extensive knowledge of languages — Coffin was fluent in French, German and Russian. He also served for a time as Gen. George Patton’s Russian interpreter.
After the war, Coffin returned to Yale and his inquisitive mind turned to religion. ‘The experience of war raised crucial questions,’ he explained. ‘And I turned to religious answers.’
After Yale, Coffin enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in New York, but he again interrupted his studies to serve his country. This time, Coffin went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe. He assisted the CIA in its effort to foment a political movement in Russia to unseat Joseph Stalin.
After returning to the United States, Coffin was ordained a minister and married Eva Rubinstein, the daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. In 1958, Coffin became the youngest chaplain ever appointed at Yale and quickly set to work inspiring students across the country to get involved in various social causes. Coffin felt his faith compelled him to speak out on political issues. ‘Social justice is at the heart of the Gospel,’ he said.
Not everyone was pleased with Coffin’s moral crusading. Before long, calls for Coffin’s resignation and the threat of going to jail for counseling draft evasion put great pressure on his marriage. In 1968, Coffin and Rubinstein divorced. A year later, Coffin married Harriet Gibney.
Coffin’s time at Riverside Church was marked by a deep concern over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He wrote and spoke out frequently on the issue, and upon leaving Riverside in 1987, Coffin assumed the leadership of SANE/Freeze, an organization devoted to nuclear disarmament.
The 1990s saw Coffin continue his work as an outspoken and sometimes controversial social critic. In recent years, Coffin turned his attention to the church and homosexuality, arguing that the only Christian position on the matter was one of full acceptance.
In 2004, Coffin, slowed by a stroke, did not seem bothered by death.
We should cooperate gracefully with the inevitable,’ he told a reporter. ‘If you don’t come to grips with death early on, but know you’ll die, it will make you insecure.
And that’s the worst thing that humans can do, try to secure themselves against insecurity. With money. Or power. Pretending that life will go on forever. And it makes others pay a gruesome price.’
