Journal Time
with Ray Waddle
He was one of America's most famous ministers, and one of the last public theologians shaped by the wars and woes of the 20th century — a man shaped by his Presbyterian roots too.
I met William Sloane Coffin once, a few years ago when he was in Nashville to do a guest lecture. Even in casual conversation, Coffin was a man of forceful opinions and unstoppable high spirits.
He'd sit there with a mischievous grin and say things like, "Rather than claim God for our side, it's better to wonder whether we are on God's side."
And, "Never become dogmatic. Dogma's fine — being dogmatic isn't."
And, "Christianity has certainly not been tried and found wanting. It has been tried and found difficult, and watered down again and again."
I scribbled away, trying to keep up. He had what many lack today in mainline church life — a public flair for unpopular convictions, eloquent passion for the Bible, a touch of the poet too.
The Rev. Coffin died in April at age 81 after a crowded life of advocacy and controversy. A New England native, he was a World War II veteran, chaplain at Yale University, and a provocative critic of war, arms races and social injustices wherever he found them.
Obituaries characterized him as a patriarch of the religious left in its heyday. But he was more than a partisan churchman who opposed U.S. foreign policy. Coffin offered a steady stream of reasons for personal Christian belief.
He made faith and church-going sound like a romantic adventure not to be missed.
I've been reading his last book published before his death, Letters to a Young Doubter, a series of short letters to a (fictional) college-bound nephew. "Doubt" isn't really the focus. Instead, the book's format allows Coffin to summarize a lifetime of biblical and political convictions as peacemaker and pulpit preacher. Advice about faith and life jump off every page, edgy devotional entries offered by an energetic octogenarian.
"When people stop believing in God, the trouble is not that they thereafter believe in nothing, but that they believe in anything," he says, paraphrasing novelist Dostoyevsky.
"Or let's put it this way: a truly religious person has infinite love only for the infinite, whereas an idolator has infinite love for something finite."
Life's purpose, he declares, is to widen the heart — broaden the circle of compassion, behold the whole world as a creation loved by God, and love it in return. Gratitude, conscience, creativity and wonder are Coffin's touchstones, over against rigidity, ambition and guilt.
"I cannot stress wonder enough," he writes. "Without wonder, prayer life is nil." (He quotes the writer Chesterton: "The world does not lack for wonder, only for a sense of wonder.")
Coffin was impatient with spiritual glibness and pat answers. The world's pain was never far away. He was a father who knew grief: his own son died in a car crash.
"When unbearable grief turns into bearable sorrow, an important decision has to be made," Coffin writes. "Either you stay stuck in your own sorrow, or your heart can widen to embrace the comparable sorrow of others. It's a crucial choice, for without doubt the best healers in this world are wounded healers."
He writes about how he came to embrace faith in Christ: Jesus' words and deeds struck him by their "breathtaking rightness."
"In the sullied and bloody stream of life, not innocence but holiness was the option he offered," Coffin says. Jesus ushered in a joy so strong that it "could absorb all sorrow," and brought the news that "caring is the greatest thing in life."
God is not "confined" by Jesus but "defined" by him: this idea meant everything to Coffin. Identifying with Jesus, God entered into the world's suffering.
"When we see Jesus scorning the powerful, empowering the weak, healing the hurt, always returning good for evil, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work."
We're in a time of terrifying religious aggression — also an era of public debates and secret doubts about sacred traditions, yet marked by intensified spiritual searching. Coffin was a beacon. He never softpedaled the difficulties, but he witnessed to tough-minded faith with gusto. Christian gratitude and hope are divine gifts, he often said, and they trump gloom.
"Hope reflects the state of your soul rather than the circumstances surrounding your days. Praise God and your soul gets stronger."
(Ray Waddle, based in Nashville, is author of Against the Grain: Unconventional Wisdom from Ecclesiastes.)
Posted: 11-Jun-2006 2:42 PM
