Words of William Sloane Coffin

I recently learned about the prophetic voice of Rev.Coffin, who just passed away this last month. Below are excerpts of an article that summarize his witness and legacy, along with some of his profound quotes that give us conviction and theology to mull over and be encouraged by. Finding stories of faithful people before and alongside us on the journey toward embodying a holistic, just gospel can be so rewarding.

Remembering William Sloane Coffin
by Jim Wallis
Bill Coffin has died. Rev. William Sloane Coffin was likely the most influential liberal Protestant clergyman and leader of his generation. One of the first white men to go South and be arrested in the civil rights movement, one of the first church leaders to dissent from the Vietnam War, one of the first moral voices against the nuclear arms race, Bill was a prophetic voice of Christian conscience to both church and state for many decades.

Bill died at his final home in Vermont of congestive heart failure but, as many have testified, his heart never failed a generation committed to putting their faith into action. While apparently unafraid of death, Bill Coffin (unsurprisingly) defied it to the very end. Seemingly on the edge of death for month after month, Bill kept publishing new books, giving new speeches, founding new organizations, hosting a legion of pilgrims saying their last goodbyes and being ministered to once again by the prophet-pastor, and somehow finding the time to keep encouraging countless friends in the struggle for social justice and peace…

And in an extraordinary story, Bill Moyers described an interview he once did with the Religion News Service while still press secretary in Lyndon Johnson’s White House. After stepping into the makeshift phone booth used for phone interviews, the religion reporter kept challenging the administration’s arguments for the Vietnam War, and kept citing anti-war points made by a young chaplain at Yale – Rev. William Sloane Coffin. No matter what Moyers’ rebuttals, the reporter kept coming back with Coffin’s clear theological and political objections to the war. After the interview, a frustrated Moyers instructed an aide to “find out who this guy Coffin is” and to get his arguments against the war. He got them; Moyers read them carefully, and the encounter with Coffin’s prophetic critique was the beginning of Moyers own change of heart on Vietnam and, eventually, many other things. I don’t know if Bill had ever heard that story quite before, but the influence on Moyers was stunning to all of us in the room.

And now some quotes:
“The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life…. The more we do God’s will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die.” – William Sloane Coffin, June 1, 1924 to April 12, 2006

“After experiencing the horrors of the Vietnam War, certain American veterans proclaimed they couldn’t believe in God any more, as if it had been the will of God that they should have been over there in the first place. It is not the will of God that any human being die in a war, on a battlefield, and it is no exaggeration to picture Christ between the opposing lines, every bullet and missile passing through his body. Why does God let these things happen? Because God can’t prevent them, love being self-restricting when it comes to power. If these human disasters grieve us, we can imagine how they break God’s heart. But human disasters are the responsibility of human beings, not God. We can blame God only for giving us the freedom that, misused, makes these disasters inevitable. Often, I confess, I do blame God. I rail at God, saying, “Look, God, if you give an expensive watch to a small child and the child smashes it, who’s at fault?” But I have to recognize that if love is the name of the game, freedom is the absolute precondition. God’s love is self-restricting when it comes to power. The Christmas story, more than any other in the Bible, shows us that we are going to be helped by God’s powerlessness – or God’s love – not by God’s power. The Christmas story shows us that God had to come to earth as the child of Joseph and Mary because freedom for the beloved demands equality with the beloved.”
-Rev. William Sloane Coffin

“The trouble with violence is that it changes not too much, but too little. Nonviolence is more radical because it is more truthful. Violence always ends up calling on lies to defend it, just as lies call on violence to defend them. By contrast, truth is naked, vulnerable as Christ, its only weapon Christ’s own, God’s love. So the very love of God that found oppression, poverty, and corruption intolerable, this same love, rather than inflict suffering – even on those imposing it on the poor – took suffering upon itself. What can only be said cynically of another – “It is better that one man should die than that an entire nation perish” (ah, the demands of national security!) – can be said in utter truthfulness about oneself: “It is better that I should die rather than a single other person perish.” That’s finally how truth disarms, and there is no better way.” – Rev. William Sloane Coffin