William Sloane Coffin Jr.

Starred review from January 26, 2004
From the mid-20th century until now, Coffin has served as the prophetic conscience of a nation divided by race, war and economic injustice. In this compelling and eloquent biography, Goldstein captures the enigmatic nature of the great preacher and activist who came to be called the voice of American Protestant liberalism. Drawing on interviews with Coffin's friends and family as well as on unprecedented access to his archives, Goldstein begins with Coffin's privileged early life in a wealthy family committed to helping in various social causes, then highlights his stint as a second lieutenant in the army. After the war, Coffin studied at Yale, where he discovered the significance of religion as a cultural force, and at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where his uncle, Henry Sloane Coffin, had been president. Although he spent only one year at Union, his study there amongst the giants of theology and social activism—Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and John Bennett—cemented his commitment to social justice and the ministry. With the advent of the Civil Rights movement, Coffin threw himself headlong into the fray; he participated in 1961 in the Freedom Rides and in various demonstrations, and later joined Benjamin Spock and Daniel Berrigan in actively protesting the Vietnam War. Goldstein captures Coffin's fervent commitment to helping others as well as his flaws as a husband and father. Coffin remains one of America's most important cultural figures, and Goldstein's first-rate biography provides a deeply appreciative and unflinchingly honest tale worthy of its celebrated subject. (Mar.)

Forecast:
Goldstein's biography nicely complements Coffin's own recently published memoir
, Credo (WJKP, Dec.). These two books come at a time when Coffin has also been the subject of a "Talk of the Town" piece in the
New Yorker.

Starred review from March 1, 2004
For three and a half decades, from his position as Yale University chaplain and later as pastor of New York City's prestigious Riverside Church, William Sloane Coffin (b. 1924) challenged the political and religious status quo with his biblically grounded bons mots. Modeling a "holy impatience" with injustice, he was the media-savvy prophet of liberal Protestantism and a clarion on behalf of civil rights, the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, nuclear disarmament, and the acceptance of gays and lesbians. Yet while Coffin thrived on the public stage, in the domestic arena he was woefully incompetent. Goldstein (history, Univ. of Hartford) ably contrasts Coffin's public giftedness with his sad inability to comprehend the needs of his wives and family. Coming a quarter century after Coffin's own memoir, Once to Every Man, this biography tells a story of which Coffin himself seems only vaguely aware: the tale of a profoundly influential yet tragically flawed public figure. This honest and compelling account, based on in-depth interviews with all the principals, captures the excitement and drama of Coffin's public and private life. Highly recommended.-Steve Young, McHenry Cty. Coll., Crystal Lake, IL

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2004
Although saying that William Sloane Coffin Jr. "remains the last of a once flourishing breed in American public life: the liberal Protestant minister preaching to the nation's faith and conscience" seems hyperbolic, he is definitely one of the most influential religious figures of the twentieth century. Goldstein paints him as the successor to Martin Luther King Jr., and the liberal Protestant counterpart to Billy Graham--characterizations that illuminate political and religious fissures of great significance in twenty-first-century America. Goldstein's life of Coffin is also a compelling biography of twentieth-century American liberalism that delves right down to liberalism's anticommunist, conservative, patriarchal, and privileged roots. Goldstein wisely gives Rabbi Arnold Wolf and Coffin himself the last words. According to Wolf, Coffin is, politically, "not particularly radical, courageous in a personal way, but not particularly vanguard or unusual," yet a "real" and "authentic" preacher, "giving classical Christian sermons based on the Bible." Authenticity permeates even the more troubled aspects of Coffin's life, and life, according to Coffin, is an "instrument" to be played by God.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)