Once to Every Man: A Memoir

by William Sloane Coffin Jr.

Among the representative men of our era, William Sloane Coffin, Jr. stands out as that unique individual whose life and career epitomize the dramatic issues and conflicts - social, political, spiritual and academic - of his time.

CIA operative and civil rights activist, clergyman and iconoclast, army officer and champion of draft resisters, aspiring concert pianist and formidable athlete - Coffin truly has been a child of the century. Here is a man of unquenchable vitality and prodigious capabilities: relishing the challenges to advocates of liberty, equality and fraternity, posed by a complex and contradictory universe. Here is a man to whom civil disobedience has been more than a lofty abstraction: jailed in Alabama with Ralph Abernathy, on trial in Boston with Dr. Spock, at odds with the trustees and officers of Yale, he has never hesitated to risk the worst in order to achieve the best. And here is a profoundly reflective and deeply humorous man, whose tough-minded spirituality has been tempered in the furnace of public action.

Once To Every Man encompasses five tumultuous decades, and sweeps the reader from the fashionable world of New York society to the chaos of Europe at war, from Ivy League campuses to Peace Corps training camps in Puerto Rican jungles, from clandestine anti-Communist operations to the March on the Pentagon, from racial strife in the South to a Black Panther rally in New Haven. It offers an indispensable perspective on many of the crucial events of the past fifty years, and an unforgettable portrait of the man who figured so prominently in them.

Genres: Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Born into money, but with his family having to regroup when his father died suddenly, Coffin led a remarkable life - Deerfield Academy, Yale, Union Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School, CIA operative, chaplain, clergyman, fighter for civil rights, leader of draft resisters in the Vietnam War, and brushed shoulders with an impressive array of acquaintances, teachers and leaders: Paderewski, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert McNamara, JFK (a surprisingly limp handshake), William F. Buckley, Erik Erikson, and many others, all have cameos here.

As a boy Coffin's talent was such that he thought he might become a concert pianist. He studied harmony with Nadia Boulanger, considered the greatest harmony teacher of the century, in France, and played for Alfred Cortot, one of the greatest pianists, who told him he had an enormous talent. Coffin's boasts quickly become unsubtle: during the Second World War, in a forest outside Paris he was teaching a platoon how to conduct a combat patrol. Suddenly a phalanx of jeeps approached, and men jumped out of them. One of them happened to be General Eisenhower, who watched intently. Later, Coffin was told that Eisenhower said of him, "I wish all my officers were as aggressive as that young lieutenant." Coffin was athletic and at age 40, vacationing with his wife in Greece, brags about winning a footrace in Delphi against a bunch of 20-year-olds. "That night I was a hero all over town."

His self-portrait is thus a bit uncongenial, and I found myself wondering how his self-regard integrated with his position in the clergy. But his thoughts on faith and theology, of which there aren't all that many here (rather, the focus is much more on his ethics in action), are interesting and insightful. For example, here he is as a Yale student coming to a realization that he might be meant for a life in faith: "Like music, revelation was not so much the solution of mystery as it was the disclosure of new mystery. So the leap of faith was not a leap of thought after all. The leap of faith was really a leap of action. Faith was not believing without proof; it was trusting without reservation."

And at Yale Divinity School: "In Erich’s [Dinkler] course I gradually came to realize that the belief that Christ is Godlike is less important than the belief that God is Christlike. When Christians see Christ healing the hurt, empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, they are seeing transparently the power of God at work. Erich presented Christ to us not only as a mirror of our humanity but as a window to divinity, a window through which we see as much as is given mortal eyes to see. But to believe that God is best defined by Christ is not to believe that God is confined to Christ: there is more to God than is contained in the theologies of any of our religions."

On the students at Andover, where he was chaplain in the 50s: "They were actually so bright, so quick to reject illusory answers, that they were in danger of becoming brilliant adversaries of everything and advocates of nothing. There was no point in exhorting them to high causes. Instead I asked them to examine the emotional investment they had in their cynicism – what it did for them, how it made life easier – and then asked if something else couldn’t serve as well, and at less expense to others."

On Billy Graham: "I was impressed by his powerful delivery and by the fact that his audience was integrated, as it was everywhere, at his insistence. But by refusing to confront the issue of segregation specifically, Graham obscured it, leaving his hearers free to draw their own conclusions, which more often than not were highly biased. I also had the feeling that Graham trivialized the good intentions of many decent people by drawing their attention away from the giant social issues of the day into a tiny exclusive world of private piety."

On clergy and the Vietnam antiwar movement: "I felt also that the clergy could speak out against the herd mentality that tends to dominate any nation in wartime. What is the point of national unity if it is unity in cruelty and folly? Clergy in particular must remember that human unity is based not on agreement but on mutual concern."

There is a lacuna in the memoir which I found extremely odd. In 1956 Coffin married Eva Rubinstein, the daughter of one of the 20th century's greatest pianists, Arthur Rubinstein. The marriage produced three children and ended in 1968. But Arthur Rubinstein, his father-in-law, only makes one appearance: he wasn't enthusiastic about their relationship and didn't find Coffin deferential enough. He "told Eva that he didn't want a Billy Graham as a son-in-law." Did he ever hang out with the Coffins? Visit his grandchildren? Given Coffin's brilliant piano playing, did they ever play a duet? Even have a conversation about music? We have no idea.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A MEMOIR OF COFFIN’S LIFE AND ACTIVITIES UP THROUGH 1977

William Sloane Coffin Jr. (1924-2006) was a Presbyterian and (later) United Church of Christ minister and activist for many causes (peace, civil rights, LGBT rights, etc.). He was minister for Riverside Church in New York City from 1977-1987. He wrote other books, such as 'A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches,' 'The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality.'

In this 1977 book, he recalls F.D. Roosevelt’s death: “The news stunned every one of us. Somehow or other I managed to take an hour off to go to a small church on the edge of town. Why it was so important to me to be alone and to find a church I do not know. Perhaps I was looking for a place large enough, symbolically, to absorb the event, in much the same way that millions of non-church-going Americans went to church the Sunday after President Kennedy was shot. Not being much of a believer, I didn’t pray, but I remember crying. By that time I was very tired and the war had sobered me. I was no longer the young enthusiast I had been only a few months before… I was beginning to wonder is all the violence might not simply change the world into a more turbulent rather than a more peaceful one.” (Pg. 48)

He was in the CIA from 1950-1954, and he says of one operation he was involved in, “My part in the Plattling operation left me a burden of guilt I am sure to carry the rest of my life…. And it made it easier for me in 1967 to commit civil disobedience in opposition to the war in Vietnam… Plattling has made me sympathize with the Americans I consider war criminals in the Vietnam conflict. Some of them at least must now be experiencing the same bad moments I have had so often thinking of the lives I might have saved.” (Pg. 77-78)

After he enrolled in Yale University, “I was put off by the churches which were just then beginning to desert the city in droves, fleeing to the suburbs in search of their middle-class constituents… I was unimpressed by many of the Christian students I met. Their answers seemed too pat, their submission to God too ready… Yet every time I was ready once and for all to deny the existence of God… I would always have an unsettling experience which would start me wondering all over again… Bach’s great chorale prelude…. made me think that religious truths, like those of music, were probably apprehended on a deeper level than they were ever comprehended. Like music, revelation was not so much the solution of mystery as it was the disclosure of a new mystery. So the leap of faith… was really a leap of action. Faith was not believing without proof; it was trusting without reservation.” (Pg. 82-83)

Of his later time in Yale Divinity School, he recalls, “I learned from [professor Robert Calhoun] that there is a vast difference between conventional Christianity and orthodox Christianity. What is said and done in many modern churches does not always reflect the thought and action of saints and scholars through the ages… [Erich Dinkler] had: an extraordinary sense of the meaning of Christ’s divinity… I gradually came to realize that the belief that Christ is godlike is less important than the belief that God is Christlike. When Christians see Christ healing the hurt, empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, they are seeing transparently the power of God at work… But to believe that God is best defined by Christ is not to believe that God is confined to Christ: there is more to God than is contained in the theologies of any of our religions.” (Pg. 115-117)

He adds, “So by the time I graduated in the spring of ’56 most of my doubts were resolved. I could see that while conventional Christianity seemed all too often a religion of creeds and laws, which were frequently repressive, orthodox Christianity was liberating. And it certainly was not escapist. Religious conversion is not from this life to some other but something less than life to the possibility of full life itself. This I could accept with a whole heart.” (Pg. 118)

He says of Martin Luther King Jr., “Ever since the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, I had been stirred by the power of King’s words and by his ability to translate them into action. Equally impressive was the power of his followers to sustain these actions… Almost as soon as I arrived at Yale [as university chaplain], I had invited him to preach in Battell Chapel… Next morning Battell Chapel was packed. The sermon was simple and powerful---and relevant. He asked that Christians speak truth to power… The power of his spirit, which infused everything he said with grace, was as clear and simple as his words.” (Pg. 146-147) Later, he added, “we do need people to inspire the best in us, people for whom we can feel grateful. Moses was one of them. Another of course was Martin Luther King… What I admired particularly was his independence, which I attributed to his religious faith.” (Pg. 170) [Coffin also organized many busloads of “Freedom Riders” in the early 1960s.]

He observes, “I was mindful that clergy are often accused of meddling in politics… far from meddling in politics---a charge no doubt first leveled by Pharaoh against Moses!---we clergy could more rightly, I thought, be accused of what might be termed ‘irrelevant righteousness.’ … I felt then, and feel even more now, that peace should be our major religious responsibility… What was troubling in those days what that the Pentagon by its juiceless jargon … was attempting to make the [Vietnam] war appear as bloodless and antiseptic as possible to the American public. So too, it appeared at the time, were the networks.” (Pg. 220)

He says of the 1960s student radicals, “Frustrated in a way that was understandable if not excusable, they were taking on the worst features of the very people we were opposing. In so doing they were alienating others whose support we needed. Even more than Nixon, they were isolating themselves from the American public. The Weathermen claimed… they wanted a revolution. So did many of the rest of us, but we were interested in the depth of the change, not just its speed. We yearned for a revolution of imagination and compassion that would oppose the very aggressiveness and antagonism that characterized the actions of both Nixon and the Weathermen. We were convinced nonviolence was more revolutionary than violence.” (Pg. 238-239)

He concludes, “I want to join the many people I know in the United States and abroad… who feel as I do that fresh energies have been released, that now is the time to devote themselves anew to the creation of a world without famine, a world without borders, and world at one and at peace. It may well be that our efforts will not be successful if only because what human beings seem to fear is not the evil in themselves but the good---the good being so demanding… So while not optimistic, I am hopeful. By this I mean that hope, as opposed to cynicism and despair, is the sole precondition for a new and better life. Realism demands pessimism. But hope demands that we take a dark view of the present only because we hold a bright view of the future; and hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.” (Pg. 344)

This book will be of great interest to those wanting to know about the “earlier” years of Coffin’s life and career. If you want to know more about Coffin past 1977, you might read the biography, [[ASIN:0300102216 William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience]].

[Dan Charnas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant and fiery man who became so deeply and personally involved at the forefront of the "interesting times" of the '60's and '70's, I have tremendous respect for the late Reverend Coffin. One cannot help but make comparisons of the divisiveness of the Vietnam War era with the divisiveness that exists today, and reading this book forced such introspection upon me: to consider and question my perspectives and values of then and now.
My conclusions about Coffin are that he was a brave and powerful fighter for the principles in which he believed and a man of great integrity - perhaps beyond that which normally would be expected - even from a man of the cloth.

[Evan Hoekzema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting biography of William Coffin. From war, to politics to religion, he led an amazing life!

[Tra Mie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for my thesis.
Was deeply moved by this man’s incredible morals and his fight for justice.