The Junk Drawer

From the Washington Post, William SLoane Coffin, Jr. Chaplain was Lifelong ‘Disturber of the Peace’:

William Sloane Coffin Jr., 81, a Presbyterian clergyman and former Yale University chaplain whose early activism against the Vietnam War brought him international notoriety during a lifelong career of civil disobedience, died April 12 at his home in Strafford, Vt. He had congestive heart failure.

From the moment in 1958 when Mr. Coffin roared onto Yale’s campus atop his motorcycle, he signaled that his presence would mean a distinctly radical approach to the social, political and moral upheaval that defined the next decade.

Mr. Coffin called himself a “Christian revolutionary” and believed that his outspoken activism sprang from the principles of his faith.

His 18-year tenure at Yale encompassed the civil rights struggle and the Vietnam War, each of which he confronted in bold and daring fashion.

You can read the rest of the article here.

I like his view of Christian ministers as people who disturb the peaceful slumber of parishioners. I am less excited by his view of ministers as “prophets.” It’s far too easy for a man to believe himself a prophet when in reality he is merely another vain, self-righteous prig, like Pat Robertson and James Dobson. Coffin states that, “The Prophetic role is…to bring the minister himself, the congregation and entire social order under some judgment.”

I have problems with that word “judgement,” from a Christian perspective, because of course Christians are not called to judge, but to serve others.