William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience

This is the third biography I've read about a person whom I know well, and I must say that of the three, it succeeds the most at bringing its subject to life. It reads like a long visit with this extraordinary man, and it's filled with much detail about the rich life he's lived. I have one major issue with this book. WSC's decade as Senior Minister of Riverside Church in New York was perhaps the high point of his life. His life-affirming and thought-provoking preachng reached its widest audience from Riverside's pulpit. As pastor and friend, to me and many others, he had a great and wide-reaching influence. Twenty years later I still quote him and talk about him. In the course of his tenure there, Bill met and worked with perhaps the most diverse and challenging group of people he'd ever dealt with in his life, in the congregation, among the lay leadership, and on the large staff. I admired his enthusiastic response to this challenge: he embraced it wholeheartedly and fearlessly, always willing to stretch his mind and heart, while maintaining his integrity as a person committed to some very controversial causes, with which some people at Riverside most decidedly did NOT agree. In spite of this, the author seems to give this rich period of Bill's life only a quick once over. It's as if by this point in the book he lost interest in his subject and distanced himself from the project. As a result, he gives only a bare-bones picture of what this most important period in William's life was like, and how Bill responded to it. What's worse, he seems to have used only ONE person as a source for information about WSC's tenure at Riverside, thereby cheating the reader of seeing how, in his 50s and 60s, a very strong-minded individual was able to embrace and nurture new ideas and people with experiences vastly different than his own. As a "classic" baby boomer suspicious of persons of Bill's generation, and one from a decidedly non-privileged background, I was constantly delighted by his openness, lack of rigidity, his completely uncensored sense of humor and by his real gift for friendship, which to my mind, along with his musicality, was (and is) his greatest gift.

In one of Paul's letters (I think it's Timothy), Paul speaks of "fighting the good fight"-- and Coffin has fought the good fight his entire life. Coffin's passion, courage, empathy and ability to inspire are cherished by all who have had the privilege of knowing him (as I have). For those old enough to remember the 1960s, this book will rekindle the embers of your idealism; for those too young, it will provide a primer in how to speak truth to power and translate faith into action. This is essential reading for all who seek to keep alive the tradition of dissent that holds our government accountable to the principles it was founded on, and deliver a thunderous "No" to both injustice at home and the ongoing horror in Iraq.