[Dialogue] Remembering William Sloane Coffin

[Harry Wainwright]

Remembering William Sloane Coffin

by Jim Wallis 

Bill Coffin has died. Rev. William Sloane Coffin was likely the most
influential liberal Protestant clergyman and leader of his generation. One
of the first white men to go South and be arrested in the civil rights
movement, one of the first church leaders to dissent from the Vietnam War,
one of the first moral voices against the nuclear arms race, Bill was a
prophetic voice of Christian conscience to both church and state for many
decades. 

Bill died at his final home in Vermont of congestive heart failure but, as
many have testified, his heart never failed a generation committed to
putting their faith into action. While apparently unafraid of death, Bill
Coffin (unsurprisingly) defied it to the very end. Seemingly on the edge of
death for month after month, Bill kept publishing new books, giving new
speeches, founding new organizations, hosting a legion of pilgrims saying
their last goodbyes and being ministered to once again by the
prophet-pastor, and somehow finding the time to keep encouraging countless
friends in the struggle for social justice and peace - including regular
phone calls to our home to cheer me on during the God's Politics book tour.
He would see a television interview and call just to offer his encouraging
and wise words. Sometimes he would speak to Joy while I was on the road, and
send me his good advice, "Tell Jim to let his success go to his heart but
not to his head." 

I remember a special dinner for Bill, hosted by his friends, Marian Wright
Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, and Rev. John Chane, the
Episcopal Bishop of Washington. It was billed as Bill Coffin's likely last
visit to Washington, D.C., (it was) and a host of interesting people turned
up. Dan Rather, then-CBS anchor, testified to the consistent moral voice
that Bill Coffin offered to journalists such as him. Joe Hough, the
president of Union Seminary, named him a genuine prophet for our time.
Marian spoke of how impressed a young generation of civil rights activists
was with the active support of a northern white clergyman. 

And in an extraordinary story, Bill Moyers described an interview he once
did with the Religion News Service while still press secretary in Lyndon
Johnson's White House. After stepping into the makeshift phone booth used
for phone interviews, the religion reporter kept challenging the
administration's arguments for the Vietnam War, and kept citing anti-war
points made by a young chaplain at Yale - Rev. William Sloane Coffin. No
matter what Moyers' rebuttals, the reporter kept coming back with Coffin's
clear theological and political objections to the war. After the interview,
a frustrated Moyers instructed an aide to "find out who this guy Coffin is"
and to get his arguments against the war. He got them; Moyers read them
carefully, and the encounter with Coffin's prophetic critique was the
beginning of Moyers own change of heart on Vietnam and, eventually, many
other things. I don't know if Bill had ever heard that story quite before,
but the influence on Moyers was stunning to all of us in the room. 

I had the job of helping Bill get up to the podium for his remarks in
response to all the tributes he had received (strokes had diminished his
mobility and slurred his words but had not dulled the sharpness of his mind
or cooled the warmth of his heart.) In introducing Bill to speak to all of
us, I described how this young evangelical with a growing social conscience
had failed to find many in his own contemporary faith tradition to learn
from, but had discovered this liberal chaplain at Yale and senior minister
at The Riverside Church who was more faithful to the gospel at the point of
its social and political implications. I gave Bill a big smile and tearfully
testified that, "On the biblical matters of justice and peace, Bill Coffin
was one of the most evangelical Christians of our time." 

Today is Bill Coffin's memorial service at The Riverside Church in New York
City. Many will testify to his prophetic courage, his indomitable spirit,
his great humor, and his pastoral care. And many, such as me, will just be
grateful to have been one of his many friends. Now Bill goes to God. 

"The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early
as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only
way to have a good death is to lead a good life.... The more we do God's
will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die." - William
Sloane Coffin, June 1, 1924 to April 12, 2006 

 

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