A review by Gene TeSelle
Credo, by William
Sloane Coffin
(Westminster-John Knox Press, $14.95 hard cover)
[3-11-04]
William Sloane Coffin was perhaps the leading "public
preacher" of his generation. A classmate of the first George Bush at Yale,
Coffin had far more varied experience, and far more varied influence than
the first George Bush -- pianist and singer, liaison with the French and
Russian military during WWII, CIA agent, chaplain at Williams College for
one contentious year, chaplain at Yale University for many more (in the
process of which he entirely altered the image of the college chaplain),
participant in the Freedom Rides and confidant of "Martin" (MLK Jr.),
opponent of the Vietnam War and founder of Clergy and Laity Concerned,
pastor of Riverside Church, president of Sane/Freeze, agitator even during
his "retirement" in Vermont. His combination of faith, learning, and
activism is very Presbyterian.
There are several books by and about Coffin. This one is
different, consisting of "wit and wisdom" excerpts collected by Stephanie
Egnotovich by poring through his many sermons and speeches. It should not be
a surprise that "blurbs" on the dust jacket have been written by Bill Moyers,
Garry Trudeau, Ellen Goodman, and Marian Wright Edelman. Barbara Wheeler
reports that at Union Seminary there was a book party recently, with Meryl
Streep and Daniel Day Lewis joining the usual theologues, and Bill Coffin
was "in great form, despite his very serious health problems."
Coffin has a distinct preaching style, always to the
point, driven by an irrepressible energy and sense of adventure. The content
is never hateful or selfish, always generous and self-giving. The attitude
penetrating his discourse is not that "the world owes me a living" but that
"I owe the world and God a life" (12).
He loves to turn a thought inside out: "what distortion of
the gospel it is to have limited sympathies and unlimited certainties, when
the very reverse -- to have limited certainties and unlimited sympathies --
is not only more tolerant but far more Christian" (144). "God is always
beckoning us toward horizons we aren't sure we want to reach" (146); and
"faith in Jesus Christ, far from diminishing the risks, inspires the courage
to take them on -- all of them, including the risk of intellectual
uncertainty" (144). He relishes the recklessness of faith: "First you leap,
and then you grow wings" (7). And it is not done without counting the costs.
It's one thing, Coffin says, to scorn pleasure like a sourpuss; it's another
"gently to lay aside a pleasure, recognizing that a lot of things have
gently to be laid aside in this world if we are to seek the pearl of great
price" (124).
This spirit of venture and self-dedication has found
expression, of course, not only in Coffin's preaching but in his life, and
he urges others to do the same. "It's so much easier to beat your breast
than to stick your neck out" (18). "Hope resists, hopelessness adapts" (19).
And there are direct political implications, of course: "you cannot set the
captive free if you are not willing to confront those who hold the keys"
(43). "Love your enemies" does not mean "Don't make any" (67, 152).
Coffin has much to say about the present evil age in the
U.S. When the U.S. tries to "lead the world" but refuses to "join it" (84);
when the real "axis of evil" is "environmental degradation, pandemic
poverty, and a world awash with weapons" (111); when conservatives "appeal
to the political center by attacking the moral center" (36); when economic
interests "make even governments more accountable to the market than to
their own citizens" (68); when the common good is identified with "the good
of those in power" (73); when "enrich thyself" is the prevailing ethos --
then "common integrity is made to look like courage." He goes on, "In the
words of a le Carré character, 'You have to think like a hero to behave like
a decent human being'" (60)
And yet his is a politics of hope. If "politics is the art
of the possible," it is also "the art of making possible tomorrow what seems
impossible today" (70). This is not a naive hope. Like Reinhold Niebuhr at
the beginning of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,
he says, "Democracy is not based on the proven goodness of the people but on
the proven evil of dictators" (103). And yet the best answer to this
problem, he says, is increased participation by all the people. He reminds
us that twenty of the twenty-six amendments to the Constitution mandate "an
extension of democracy" (44). If it is true that "power tends to corrupt,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely," another overlooked form of
corruption is "failure to assume responsibility for power," "the
indifference and negligence of the many" (52).
He finds Christological grounding for this hopefulness: ".
. . if Jesus never allowed his soul to be cornered into despair, and if it
was to those furthest from the seats of power that he said, 'You are the
salt of the earth, . . you are the light of the world'-- who then are we to
quit 'fighting the good fight of faith'?" (114)
He interprets Jesus' saying about children in a new way:
"It's children who want to save the seals, the whales, and all the rest of
us to boot. It's kids who sell cookies for causes, bake bread for
brotherhood, save pennies to fight pollution. . . . But . . . we encourage
them to outgrow it, as though generosity were a pair of short pants. Do you
think Jesus would bless that view of growing up?" (127)
Internal Christian debates enter the picture, too. "The
problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that
condemn it, but rather how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of
homosexuality with the love of Christ" (39), for "everything biblical is not
Christ-like" (159).
There are words that speak to our concerns about the unity
of the church: ". . . in joining a church you leave home and home town to
join a larger world. . . . By joining a church you declare your
individuality in the most radical way in order to affirm community on the
widest possible scale" (142-43). "Church is where all hearts are one so that
nothing else has to be one" (149).
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Finally, there are reflections on growing old. It is
possible, despite Dylan Thomas, to go gentle into the good night (167). "The
more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we
die" (169). "Until a river finds its banks it hasn't a prayer of being
anything but shallow" (167).
But now let these quotations be teasers for reading the
book. It should be helpful for inquirers, preachers, discussion groups, and
private meditation and motivation.
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