William Sloane Coffin

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William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (born June 1, 1924 in New York City , † April 12, 2006 in Strafford , Vermont ) was a liberal Protestant pastor and longtime peace activist with international stature. He was ordained in a Presbyterian church and was pastor and theologian in that church after the formation of the United Church of Christ .

In his youth he was an eminent athlete, a very talented pianist, a CIA agent and later chaplain at Yale University , where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's philosophy made him a leader of the civil rights and peace movement in the 1960s and 1970s let.

Coffin was called to serve as a senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City and president of SANE / Freeze (now Peace Action ), the largest peace and right-wing group in the United States . Coffin became a prominent opponent of military intervention in the Vietnam War and the Iraq War . In addition, Coffin campaigned for the rights of lesbians and gays in his life .

biography

childhood

William Sloane Coffin, Jr., was born into the middle class of New York City. His paternal grandfather was a co-owner of the very successful W. & J. Sloane Company. His uncle was Henry Sloane Coffin , president of the Union Theological Seminary and one of the most famous preachers in the United States of his day. His father, William Sloane Coffin, Sr. was President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and executive in the family business.

His mother, Catherine Butterfield, grew up in the Midwest and spent some time in France during the First World War to strengthen the faith of American soldiers, where she met her future husband, who was also involved in welfare activities. Their three children grew up bilingual with fluent French and were sent to private schools in New York.

William Sr.'s father, Edmund Coffin, was a prominent lawyer and real estate agent who owned Hearth and Home Corporation.

After the death of Edmund Coffin, the company was passed on to sons William and Henry in 1928, with William managing the company. William Sloane, Sr. died in 1933 of a heart attack on his son Edmund's 11th birthday. Mother Catherine Sloane decided to leave Manhattan after the death of William Sloane, Sr., and moved to Carmel , California .

In the years that followed, William, Jr. became a talented musician and planned a career as a pianist. In 1938 his mother enrolled him at Deerfield Academy.

At the age of 15, William Coffin traveled to Paris , France with his mother , where he received private piano lessons from major pianists of the 20th century, including Nadia Boulanger . When the German Wehrmacht invaded France, the Coffin family went to Geneva , Switzerland and then returned to the United States, where William attended the Phillips Academy in Andover , Massachusetts .

Adult time

Early years

After graduating from school in 1942, William enrolled at Yale University . In addition to the perfection on the piano, he was enthusiastic in the struggle to stop fascism and became a close observer of the war development in Europe. William, Jr. Coffin decided to work as an agent for the Office of Strategic Services in 1943 but was turned down on the grounds that he did not have the 'Gallic features' necessary to be successful.

William, Jr. graduated from college and enrolled in the Army and was quickly promoted to officer post. After the end of the training he was used to gather information between the French and Russian armies and the American military leadership.

After the end of World War II, Coffin moved to New Haven , Connecticut , where his mother and brother now lived, and returned to Yale University. There he became president of the Yale Glee Club. William Coffin was there a friend of George HW Bush , whom he already knew from his childhood at Phillips Academy (1942). George Bush brought him into the exclusive Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University during his senior years .

When Coffin graduated from university in 1949, he attended Union Theological Seminary, where he stayed for a year until the Korean War broke out, which activated his interest in fighting communism. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. applied to the CIA as an officer in 1950 and went to West Germany as a CIA agent for three years, where he recruited anti-Soviet refugees and trained them to undermine the Stalin regime.

Increasingly, William Coffin, Jr. disapproved of the role of the CIA and the United Years when the CIA was involved in the events of the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 . He was also disaffected by the role of the CIA in the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

Preacher and political activism

When he left the CIA, William Jr. Coffin enrolled at Yale Divinity School , where he earned his Bachelor of Divinity in 1956. In the same year he became a Presbyterian preacher. That year he married Eva Rubinstein, daughter of Arthur Rubinstein , and became a chaplain at Williams College. Shortly thereafter, he accepted the position as chaplain at Yale University, where he stayed from 1958 to 1975.

With his CIA background knowledge, William Coffin was very angry when he was allowed to learn and witness the course of the history of French and American involvement in South Vietnam in 1964 . The official stance of his own American government on the unfulfilled promise of a referendum in South Vietnam on the unity of Vietnam brought him into opposition to his government. William Jr. Sloane Coffin became an early opponent of the Vietnam War and became famous for his anti-war and civil rights activism.

Coffin had a prominent role in the freedom rides , the fight against racial segregation and the oppression of the black population. As a chaplain at Yale University, he organized busloads of civil rights activists to repeal racial segregation laws in each southern state. He was jailed several times, but his first conviction was overruled by the Supreme Court. In 1962 he joined the organization SANE: The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy : an organization he later headed.

In 1961, Coffin was recruited by Sargent Shriver to accompany a training program for a Peace Corps. Coffin accepted the task and temporarily resigned from his job as a chaplain at Yale to work on a program at a training camp in Puerto Rico .

As a preacher, Coffin used his pulpits as a preacher for like-minded fighters, hosting the Reverend Martin Luther King , Jr., South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela , among many others. Garry Trudeau immortalized Coffin (together with Coffin's protegee Reverend Scotty Mc Lennan) in his comic Doonesbury .

During the years of the Vietnam War, Coffin and his friend Howard Zinn often spoke of an anti-war platform. As an inspiring rhetorician, Coffin was known for his optimism and humor: "Remember, young people, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."

Since 1967, Coffin has focused on preaching civil disobedience and supporting young men who are changing the way they live. He was one of several well-known American intellectuals who signed the open letter entitled "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority," which was printed in several newspapers in October 1967. That same month, Coffin was considering making the Battel Chapel at Yale University a sanctuary for resistance fighters or a site for large-scale demonstrations of civil disobedience. The Yale University Administration has refused to use the university church as such a sanctuary. Coffin later wrote, “I accused them of behaving more like 'true Blues than true Christians'. They squirmed but weren't about to change their minds ... I realized I was licked. "

On January 5, 1968, Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock , Marcus Raskin, Michael Ferber and Mitchell Goodman (all signatories of the article "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority") indicted by a grand jury in federal court for "conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance". Except for Marcus Raskin were convicted in June 1968. An appeals court overturned this conviction in 1970.

Coffin remained chaplain from Yale until December 1975. In 1977 he became senior minister at Riverside Church - an overarching congregation between the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Churches USA . In the years that followed, he openly and loudly advocated support for the rights of homosexual people , when many liberals were still unable to deal with the issue of homosexuality . Some of his socially conservative church members openly attacked Coffin for his position on sexual morality .

His progressive Christianity let The Nation dub him “the true heir to Martin Luther King, Jr.” after Coffin's death.

Commitment to global nuclear armament

During his time at Riverside Church, Coffin began a program against global nuclear armament and hired Cora Weiss, a secular Jew, for this, which was inconvenient for some parishioners. To expand his efforts against global nuclear rearmament, he met a number of statesmen around the world. His travels also took him to Iran in 1979 , where he organized a Christmas service in the enclosed American embassy in Tehran ( hostage-taking of Tehran ). In Nicaragua , too , he protested as a preacher against the American military intervention.

In 1987 he finished his office at Riverside Church and devoted his time to extra-church activism. Coffin became President of SANE / FREEZE (now Peace Action), the largest peace and civil rights organization in the United States. Coffin authored several books.

Private life

Coffin was married three times; his first wife was Eva Rubinstein, the daughter of the pianist Arthur Rubinstein , with whom he had three children. The death of his son Alexander in 1983 inspired Coffin to give one of his most requested sermons. Coffin's daughter Amy lives in California and his son David is a musician in Boston, Massachusetts. His nephew Edmund Coffin became Olympic champion in eventing in 1976 .

In 2004, Coffin suffered a minor heart attack and lived with his third wife, Virginia Randolph Coffin, in the small town of Strafford , Vermont , where he died on April 12, 2006.

Works

Books by Coffin:

literature

  • Warren Goldstein: William Sloane Coffin, Jr .: A Holy Impatience , Yale University Press, March 2004, ISBN 0-300-10221-6
  • Jessica Mitford : The Trial of Dr. Spock, William Sloane Coffin, Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, New York, Knopf, 1969 ISBN 0-394-44952-5
personal data
SURNAME Coffin, William Sloane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coffin, William Sloane Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Protestant church official and peace activist
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 2006
Place of death Strafford , Vermont