Wednesday, April 12, 2023

It is the 12th of April 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

If you’re familiar with the Doonesbury comic you might remember the hippy Reverend Scot Sloan- it was cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s Yale chaplain that made up half of the caricature that was the cartoon reverend.

 He was William Sloan Coffin Jr, born in 1924- American blue blood- his family traced themselves back to the first pilgrims, his family founded the W. & J. Sloane furniture company, his uncle was the president of Union Theological Seminary, and his father was president of the board of Trustees for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They lived in a penthouse that took up the 15th and 16th floor of a building on East 68th St. in Manhattan.

But tragedy struck when William Jr was a young man, and his father died of a heart attack. His mother moved him, his brother, and his sister to the other side of the country to Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. There he attended public school until his uncle offered to send him and his brother to a prep school back east. He would train as a pianist in France, attend Andover in Massachusetts, and study music at Yale for one year before entering the Army during WWII. He returned to Yale after the war (he entered the legendary Skull and Bones club, invited by his friend George H.W. Bush). With the outbreak of the Korean War and his fear of fascism, he entered the CIA- his brother-in-law was a top official.

He was also convinced by his uncle to consider a job in the ministry. He had been to Union Seminary to hear Reinhold Niebuhr speak on the practicality and importance of the pastor's vocation for the good of society. He would attend Yale Divinity, graduate in 1956, and become the chaplain at his alma mater- Andover.

By 1958 he was the chaplain at Yale and would become a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He took part in the Freedom Rides- the 1961 interstate bus trips to the South that were purposely integrated to challenge segregation laws. He would be arrested then and then again while protesting segregation at an amusement park near Baltimore and while integrating a lunch counter in St. Augustine, Florida. According to Coffin, “Every minister is given two roles, the priestly and the prophetic,…The prophetic role is the disturber of the peace, to bring the minister himself, the congregation and entire moral order some judgment.”

In 1965 he founded a group called “Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam” He offered the chapel at Yale as a sanctuary for those refusing to enter the draft, and he collected draft cards from dissenters to deliver back to the Justice Department. For this, he would be arrested, and although the charge of conspiring to counsel draft evasion would be dropped, he would fall afoul of the Yale brass and their donors (not uncommon in the tumultuous late 60s). He refused to burn draft cards. He believed that was unnecessarily provocative. He was a radical but careful one who rejected popular violence as a strategy. He wasn’t a pacifist, but he was troubled by the seemingly endless wars in the mid to late 20th century. At one point, the National Guard was deployed to Yale, but it was Coffin who helped cooler heads prevail and the Guard to stand down- this was just prior to the similar events that led to bloodshed at Kent State.

In 1976 he stepped down from his role at Yale- he would be a vocal supporter of the anti-nuclear movement and was a minister at the famous Riverside Church- the Rockefeller-built interdenominational church in Manhattan. In 1979 he would be amongst a group of ministers sent to Tehran to celebrate Christmas with the Iranian hostages.

He spent his later years as an activist- his old schoolmate, the conservative William F. Buckley would be a regular correspondent of his. Buckley, as the founder of the National Review, would serve as the counterweight to Coffin’s activism and liberalism, but the two acknowledged each other warmly as friends, fellow Christians, and men trying to work out their vocations in the public arena. Buckley would write a eulogy (in his own prickly sweet way) for William when he died on this the 12th of April in 2006. Born in 1924, The Reverend Dr. William Sloane Coffin Jr was 81 years old.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- it’s Eastertide (or season), so we get Resurrection narratives:

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 12th of April 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. 

The show is produced by the BD to my Zonker (although not too literally). He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man that is admittedly more Peanuts than Doonesbury- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.