william sloane coffin and strafford vermont and union seminary and niebuhr

Anyone who spent any serious time in the mainline Protestant religious community between the 1960s and 1990s has something to say about William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Most people will tell you about an experience they had with him or, more likely, a speech they heard him give. Coffin had a dogged optimism about him, and he combined a quick wit with a instinctive sense of how political power reacted to various situations so that he always was ready with quips and trenchant analysis into the latest foibles and ambitions of national and international leaders. But what is most striking to me as I take this hour to think about his life is the way that he combined in self-presentation three characterists that made him obsolete even as he pushed forward on a most progressive agenda. Or, to phrase it slightly differently, these three characteristics reflected a world that disappeared thirty or more years ago, even as we enjoy the fruit of that world through his work.

Three Characteristics

First of all, he was a White Liberal Protestant preacher who easily talked about Christian faith in the public sphere. Today's liberal Protestant ministers, when you can find them, speak the language of social action or psychological analysis. Theological and biblical speech has been jettisoned from their public vocabulary because they don't want to offend people who might not share their presuppositions. Coffin would have none of this. He represented another time in our culture, where the Mainline Protestant ministers could be fairly certain that the societal leaders in business, finance, education and government all were knowledgeable about the Bible and could be plainly appealed to on the basis of a common Christian faith. Coffin was educated with and was of the social class of these leaders; they were "family." Hence he had no fears in speaking directly to them.

Second, Coffin spoke with an epigrammatic style that is absent today from White preaching. The only thing I remember from the first time I heard him speak (at the invitation of Brown University Chaplain Charles Baldwin during my undergraduate days--probably 1971), was an epigrammatic sentence. After Baldwin gave him an effusive introduction, Coffin arose and thanked Baldwin, a man who "once again just demonstrated how his zeal has outstripped his intelligence." Loud roars of laughter followed. I think it was after hearing that line that I secretly decided (and I confess this for the first time) to follow Coffin in the future only for his one-liners. And so, the second time I heard him speak, in Boston in 1978, I asked him about peace and trust (the theme was the proliferation of nuclear weapons by the US and Soviet Union), he gave me an epigram in response. Finally, the last time I heard him speak in person, in the most unlikely place--a rural school house in Maui (March 1989)--and to a group of no more than 15 of us, I asked him his impression of George H.W. Bush, who had just begun his Presidency. Coffin's response: "Deep down, he's rather shallow."

The third thing about Coffin's style that is absent today is the way he spoke in Niebuhrian antimonies. All liberal Protestant seminarians of the late 1940s and 1950s would have been affected by Niebuhr. Niebuhr was the son of German immigrants, and so had a liberal streak in him when it came to providing social entitlements for citizens. But Niebuhr was an uncompromising opponent of the Soviet regime and, indeed, all historical programs that believed in the perfectability of human nature. His Gifford Lectures on "The Nature and Destiny of Man" portrayed the world as a battleground between inherently contradictory forces and ideas. Coffin would borrow that Niebuhrian method and language and then skillfully transmute it into the language of our day. Thus, he could dish it out equally to Soviets and Americans alike, believing that above all, standing in the shadows, was Christ himself, the judge of all human efforts and affairs.

Living With Passion

But even if, for me, Coffin is best understood as a period piece in a world that exists no more, he does leave a vast legacy of inspiration for me. That "message" might be gotten equally well from a number of sources, but it is especially evident in the witness of Coffin's life. The message is that once you perceive your call in life, you ought to devote yourself to it with passionate intensity, putting your mind, heart, faith, skill and good will to work in the task that is before you. And, to be noted, that task may not always be coincident with what you perceive your skills to be. After all, Coffin married the daughter of Arthur Rubinstein, and at one time planned a career as a concert pianist. It would have been a good life, no doubt, and one richly rewarding on a number of levels. But the call of ministry, of service to the ideas of the age and the application of the Gospel to those ideas proved to be a more alluring Siren. And so he followed his call with, to use the words from the Presbyterian ordination ceremony (he was ordained as a Presbyterian clergyman), "energy, intelligence, imagination and love."

I think the biggest temptation today for people a generation younger than Coffin (which I am) is to leave aside the passionate life out of fear--fear primarily that we will run out of money before we die in good old age. Coffin, if he could speak to each one of us, would gently ask us where our heart was and then probably would quote the words of Jesus, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." And, as was often the case with Coffin, the words he quoted or epigrams he used needed little exposition.

1809