William Sloane Coffin: 1924-2006

In Memory

Rev. William Sloan Coffin perhaps the best known non-black minister of the American political left has died at the age of 81. Coffin made a name for himself in the 1960's with his active opposition to the Vietnam war, he had also been in opposition to the current war in Iraq though ill health had prevented him from making public appearances in that capacity. I write this partially because I just learned today who the Reverend Coffin was in an article published in The Nation (published just a day or two before he died) lamenting that no one like Sloan Coffin had emerged to prominence in the religious left in decades! I can really say, Rev. William Sloan Coffin I hardly knew you.