William Sloane Coffin

June 1, 1924 — New York, New York

William Sloane Coffin Jr. was an American minister, civil rights activist, and anti-war leader who became one of the most prominent religious voices for social justice in twentieth-century America. As chaplain of Yale University from 1958 to 1975, and later as senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, he combined a gift for preaching with moral courage, leading Freedom Rides, organizing resistance to the Vietnam War, and championing causes from nuclear disarmament to gay rights across a fifty-year career of engaged ministry.

Early Life and CIA Career

Born on June 1, 1924, in New York City, Coffin came from a prominent family — his uncle was philanthropist and museum director Henry Sloane Coffin. After studying at Yale and serving in World War II, he worked as a CIA officer in the late 1940s and early 1950s, an experience he later reflected on with considerable ambivalence. He left the agency to study theology at Yale Divinity School, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, and returned to Yale as university chaplain in 1958. There his preaching — brilliant, witty, morally pointed, and deeply learned — made him a beloved and controversial figure on campus and far beyond it.

Activism and Controversy

Coffin was among the early volunteers for the Freedom Rides in 1961, riding integrated buses through the South in defiance of segregation. In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, he helped draft resistance resisters and was indicted — along with pediatrician Benjamin Spock — for conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. The charges were eventually dismissed on appeal. He moved to Riverside Church in 1977, where he expanded his advocacy to include nuclear disarmament, serving as president of SANE/Freeze, one of the largest anti-nuclear organizations in the country. In the 1990s he became one of the more prominent mainline Protestant ministers to speak in favor of gay rights, adding another front to his lifelong engagement with justice issues.

Legacy

William Sloane Coffin died on April 12, 2006. His legacy is that of one of the most consequential American ministers of the twentieth century — a man who insisted that faith demanded political engagement and that the pulpit was a proper place from which to challenge injustice. His sermons, collected in several volumes, remain models of prophetic preaching. He exemplified the tradition of the Social Gospel at a time when that tradition required not just words but personal risk.