06230
April 25, 2006

1,300 attend memorial service
for Rev. William Sloane Coffin

Longtime civil-rights, anti-war activist remembered as ‘the man of paradox’

by Nate Herpich
Religion News Service

NEW YORK —  Thirteen hundred people gathered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 20 to celebrate the life and ministry of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr.

        Author and journalist James Carroll delivered a eulogy for Coffin to a sanctuary packed with admirers of the man who led Riverside Church from 1977 to 1987 and embraced a host of anti-war and civil rights causes.

        Coffin, 81, died on April 12 of congestive heart failure.

        “Life in death, that contradiction — no, that paradox — is a fitting last subject of the sermon that was Bill Coffin's life," Carroll said. "Who was that man? Why, he was the man of paradox, of course. ... He was the first white man standing with black folks. A patrician who was the tribune

of nobodies. A patriot in disobedient dissent. A critical thinker with a simple faith.”

        Coffin was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1956. He later gained ordained ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ, which he maintained until his death.

        In 1958 he became the youngest chaplain in the history of Yale University, his alma mater. Before joining the church, he served as Gen. George Patton’s Russian interpreter in World War II and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe.

        In the 1960s, in his role as Yale chaplain, Coffin was a major player in the fight for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, taking his first “Freedom Ride” against segregation in 1961. In 1968 he was indicted on charges of conspiring to counsel draft resistance.

        In 1979, Coffin was one of four clergymen allowed to visit American hostages in Tehran, Iran. Then, in the 1980s, his activism turned toward the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Recently, he championed a stance of total acceptance of homosexuals in the Christian church, and campaigned against the war in Iraq.

        Garry Trudeau’s ultraliberal Rev. Scot Sloan, of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” is a caricature of Coffin.           

        Nearly everyone raised a hand.