William Sloane, Jr Coffin, 1924 - 2006
From the cover of William Sloane Coffin Jr: A Holy Impatience by Warren Goldstein (2005)
Born: 1 June 1924, New York City
Died: 12 April 2006, Strafford, Vermont
Born into a well-known American family, his great-grandfather founded an imports and furniture manufacturing company, his father was president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his uncle was president of Union Theological Seminary. His father died in 1933. Coffin attended Deerfield Academy with a strong interest in music, he and his mother moved first to Paris and then to Zurich and returned to the US where Coffin finished high school at Phillips Academy Andover in 1942, then joined the Army as an intelligence liaison to the French and Soviets. He entered Yale, was president of the Glee Club and a member of Skull and Bones, graduating in 1949. He joined the CIA for three years, then entered Yale Divinity School where he earned his Bachelor of Divinity in 1956 and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He was chosen as chaplain of Yale, a position he held until 1975. He took a year off to create the first training programs for the Peace Corps in 1962 and became active in opposing the draft during the Vietnam war. In 1977 he became the senior minister at Riverside Church at New York City, he left ten years later to devote more time to nuclear disarmament. The Nation called him "the true heir to Martin Luther King" and was the model for "the Rev. Scot Sloan" in Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. He was given six months to live in early 2004, his congestive heart failure didn't progress as quickly as anticipated.
Biography from Wikipedia and CBS News obituary
William Sloane Coffin quotes:
Quotes found : 26 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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- All of life is the exercise of risk. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word—to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Address to the Yale Class of 1968 35th reunion (May 2003) - For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Open letter to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (2000) - Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Yale Alumni magazine (1967) - It is often said that the Church is a crutch. Of course it's a crutch. What makes you think you don't limp? permalink
William Sloane Coffin - It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God's love doesn't seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. permalink
William Sloane Coffin - Credo (2003) - Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. permalink
William Sloane Coffin
Quotes found : 26 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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