[Mb-civic] A genius of a man, he believed in hope - James Carroll - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  A genius of a man, he believed in hope

By James Carroll  |  April 24, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

''WILLIAM Sloane Coffin dies at 81," The New York Times headline read 
last week. A subhead defined him as ''A preacher on behalf of the poor 
to the most prominent."

The Globe headline read, ''CIA agent became beacon of antiwar movement."

Even these quick references caught the genius of the man, and, as I 
collected my thoughts in preparing to speak at a memorial service, I saw 
what had made him great. There was tension in the headlines -- poor 
versus prominent, CIA versus antiwar -- and such tension gave structure 
to his life. A first white man to stand with blacks in the civil rights 
movement. A patrician who was tribune of the nobodies. A patriot who had 
served his country nobly, but was suddenly in disobedient dissent. A 
critical thinker with a simple faith. Bill embodied in his biography the 
possibility that the divisions of life can be broughtinto resolution.

What made Bill Coffin famous was his rhetorical flair. His genius for 
the energetic sound bite was the solution to every reporter's deadline 
problem.

''It's not enough to pray for peace. Work for justice!"

''War is a coward's escape from the problems of peace."

''We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force."

Such language was a reflection of the choices that defined him -- the 
dynamic of ''versus" again. This is the rhetoric of irony, a bringing 
together of polarities to see how the tensions of life and the various 
levels of meaning can be brought to resolution. Irony of this sort is 
the essence of humor, which is why those who knew Bill Coffin, or ever 
heard him speak, remember, above all, his great rolling laughter.

Irony depends on an exquisite balance of language and ideas both, 
opposites held in tension with each other not to split them apart, but 
to propose a new kind of unity. In the choices he made, and in the 
language he used, Bill Coffin held up the possibility of hope. He 
proclaimed by his preaching and his living that the human heart is not 
doomed to break, however cracked it is by war, by injustice, or even by 
the sorrows, say, of a child who dies too young.

By his preaching and living, Bill Coffin told us that the divisions of 
the human heart can be brought into unexpected harmony. This, of course, 
always assumes that ''the heart is a little to the left." That book 
title of his, derived from the Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camarra, is 
the perfect example of the free and freeing mind of Bill Coffin, a sly 
but gentle jibe at right-wingers, reminding them that the human body 
itself suggests we are all meant to be liberals.

A man of paradox and hope. For all of the political power that accrued 
to Bill, through his civil rights and antiwar celebrity, it was his 
religious conviction that most defined him. Peace and justice were his 
absolute values. But, by his own account, he had those values not from 
his privileged background, nor from his beloved America, nor from Yale. 
To the mystification and even consternation of many, Bill Coffin defined 
himself by Jesus. And what did Bill love about Jesus, if not the 
paradox? The contradictions that added up to hope. Jesus, the peasant 
nobody who is Lord of the universe. Jesus, the victim who is victorious. 
Jesus, who can say, ''My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?" while 
also saying, ''Into Your hands." With that habitual rhetorical flair of 
his, Bill said, ''I don't know what is waiting for me after death, but I 
do know Who." I first met Bill Coffin 40 years ago, when I was a 
seminarian. He gave me a new idea of what the ministry could be. In 
large part because of him, I became a college chaplain -- and then, 
however timidly, a war resister. Once, I found myself in a jail cell 
next to his after a demonstration. Through a long and -- to me -- 
terrible night, Bill led the cellblock in choruses from Handel's 
''Messiah." Even now, when I hear its sweetest refrain -- ''Comfort ye!" 
-- I hear his resonant voice. I am consoled and emboldened by both.

Through the decades, Bill faithfully maintained his commitments. He was 
a firm critic of the unnecessary war in Iraq, and he never stopped 
decrying America's unbroken bondage to nuclear weapons. But with his 
unfailing generosity of spirit, he never stopped embodying the hope that 
oppositions, even of the kind that still divide his beloved America, can 
be overcome.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/24/a_genius_of_a_man_he_believed_in_hope/
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