A Tribute to Bill Coffin: Pastor, Prophet, Friend of the World

The Washington Post today (April 13, 2006) headlined its obituary for Bill Coffin: William Sloane Coffin Jr; Chaplain was Lifelong 'Disturber of the Peace'. They got it wrong. Bill was a disturber of complacency, of apathy, of cynicism, of syrupy sentimentality and bland religion. If you felt comfortable in any of those ways, then he disturbed your equilibrium and upset your ways of thinking about life and the Gospel. He was, rather than a disturber of the peace, an advocate for peace, the peace that passes all understanding. He believed in the reconciliation of nations and human beings. He committed himself to right the wrongs he saw that wounded people and kept us all from the truth.

It was my privilege to know Bill Coffin for over 40 years. Although I was never part of the inner circle of students from Yale Divinity School who became his close friends in the days of his chaplaincy at Yale, I was on the fringes of his ministry for over 8 years during that time in a variety of ways. I taught his children in Sunday School, although I doubt that they remember me because their lives intersected with hundreds of seminarians and students. Later, after graduation from Yale Divinity School, I served as an associate minister of one of the three churches on the New Haven Green, and there, with other colleagues, formed the New Haven Downtown Christian Ministry, an ecumenical effort at serving the poor, feeding the hungry, and in shared religious education. In that capacity, I worked as a colleague with Bill during those days when there were demonstrations about the Vietnam War and over Civil Rights issues (the Black Panther trial in New Haven). Those days during the 1960s and 1970s were formative of my entire life and ministry. I have tried to model my own preaching, teaching, pastoral style, and work for social justice on what I learned from William Sloane Coffin.

Long years passed, until we reestablished our friendship when we brought Bill to Kentucky to be our speaker for the annual assembly of the Kentucky Council of Churches, in October of 2001. He remained in Kentucky after that assembly and preached on Sunday morning at my little country church, New Union Christian Church in Woodford County. There were people who called members of my congregation to blast them for having that "radical" speak at their church.

Wherever he went and whenever he spoke, he left the people who heard him charged with a new vision of their potential to be something better than they were, and with a knowledge that they had the capacity, as ministers-as pastors, and preachers, as leaders-to change the world. His pastoral style was so personal that he connected directly to all kinds of people who may or may not have agreed with him. And he remembered them. He would, from time to time, in these last few years ask me about John David Dyche, a Louisville conservative commentator; or about Dan Rosenberg, the CEO of Three Chimneys Farm; or about Ben Chandler; or any number of other people with whom he interacted while in Kentucky. His pastoral capacity to remember people in their particularity stands in contradiction to those who say he was just a "disturber of the peace."

In his most recent book, Letters to a Young Doubter [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005], written after the time when doctors had told him he would probably be dead, he writes to "Tom", some of my favorite words about religion: "...religious faith often goes through three stages: conscious, self-conscious, and finally unconscious. That takes time. Only when you've reached the third stage are you free, and free perhaps to be really happy. Actually I would call religious life joyful rather than happy. Happiness connotes pleasure while joy is a deeper emotion that, far from excluding, can actually include pain. Joy often points to a profound sense of self-fulfillment: 'For this I was made and meant to be'-that's a joyful experience." [pp. 73-74]

In July, 2005, I pledged myself to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament. It's a crazy dream, but it is possible, and I believe it is possible because of the life and witness of a great preacher of the Christian Gospel. His intellect, his extraordinary gifts with words, music, poetry, and his faith were gigantic. I'll miss him terribly, but I know that his life and words will continue to inspire a new generation of pastors and prophets who believe in God's cause to redeem the world.