William Sloane Coffin Quotes

I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.

Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.

There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation.

...for if you lessen your anger at the structures of power, you lower your love for the victims of power.

God provides minimum protection, maximum support--support to help us grow up, to stretch our minds and hearts until they are as wide as God's universe.

Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words.

It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.

Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.

Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well. As the old-church father said, 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

...there is more mercy in God than sin in us.

Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts.

Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds.

There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country.

What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love.

Christians have no business thinking that the good life consists mainly in not doing bad things. We have no business thinking that to do evil in this world you have to be a Bengal tiger, when, in fact, it is enough to be a tame tabby—a nice person but not a good one. In short, Pentecost makes it clear that nothing is so fatal to Christianity as indifference.

Many of us overvalue autonomy, the strength to stand alone, the capacity to act independently. Far too few of us pay attention to the virtues of dependence and interdependence, and especially to the capacity to be vulnerable.

It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.

Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.

But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters.... However deep, our anger, like that of Christ, must always and only measure our love.

I also was persuaded that the woman most in need of liberation was the woman in every man just as the man most in need of liberation was the man in every woman.

Finally in seminary I saw that Jesus was both a mirror to humanity and a window to divinity, the modest amount given to mortal eyes to see.

To love is surely to support and to encourage--but not necessarily to approve. Quite the contrary! If we love one another we will help one another fight against our evil dreams.

The banality of guilt is that it is such a convenient substitute for responsibility. It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out.

It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds.... Doctrines, let's not forget, supported slavery and apartheid.... Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite.

The consequences of the past are always with us, and half the hostilities tearing the world apart could be resolved today were we to allow the forgiveness of sins to alter these consequences.... if we were to say of ourselves, 'The hostility stops here.

There are two ways to be powerful. One is to seek and acquire power, the other is not to need it. There are also two ways to be rich. One is to gain riches, and the other is not to need them.

But what I am beginning to suspect is that most guilty people reject the possibility of forgiveness not because it is too good to believe, but because they fear the responsibility forgiveness entails. It's hell to be guilty, but its worse to be responsible.

Law is not as disinterested as our concepts of law pretend; law serves power; law in large measure is a recapitulation of the status quo; it confirms a rigid order designed to insulate the beneficiaries of the status quo from the disturbances of change. The painful truth--one with a long history--is that police are around in large part to guarantee a peaceful disgestion for the rich.

We are not slaves but children of our Father, free to do good, free to sin. So when in anguish over any human violence done to innocent victims, we ask of God, 'How could you let that happen?' it's well to remember that God at that very moment is asking the exact same question of us.

Remember also that scars of all sorts are all right. Scars are wounds that have healed, not without a trace, but have healed nonetheless. Think of all the scar tissue around Christ's heart, Jesus our wounded healer.

Jesus is both a mirror to our humanity and a window to divinity, a window revealing as much of God as is given mortal eyes to see. When Christians see Christ empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, healing the wounded, and judging their tormentors, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work.

No sermon on love can fail to mention love's most difficult problem in our time--how to find effective ways to alleviate the massive suffering of humanity at home and abroad. What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively...

it's always a good time to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart.

Because our value is a gift, we don't have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves...

The world owes me a living'--that's passive. 'I owe the world and God a life'--that's active.

[D]are to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.

Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.

But as regards love, I am sure the Bible is right: the opposite of love is not hate but fear. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

A friend...risks her friendship for the sake of her friend.

We don't have to be successful, only valuable. We don't have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives that society counts least and puts last.

No human being should ever be patient with prejudice at the expense of its victims" The late Rev. William Sloane Coffin

Too many religious people make faith their aim. They think 'the greatest of these' is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.

Love is to make us more human, and that demands that we care so much for each other that we have not to be nice but to be honest. We have to be honest, for most real faults are hidden and therefore demand an outside revealer.

We don't have to be "successful," only valuable. We don't have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.

i'm not always optimistic but i am always hopeful.

We must guard against being too individualistic.... Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people--the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced.

And if God is a suffering God, if this whole universe is borne on a heart infinite in compassion, then the more we suffer in his name the closer we come to him.

And if we are not yet one in live at least we are one in sin, which is no mean bond because it preludes the possibility of separation through judgment.

Joy is the most important Christian emotion. Duty calls only when gratitude fails to prompt.

As all of us who strive to be good parents know, love is self-restricting when it comes to power.... Likewise God has left his servants freedom of choice.

The joy that is of God is not opposed to earthly pleasures. Rather it infuses them with a foundation of meaning.

We want God to be strong, so that we can be weak. But He wants to be weak so that we can be strong.

Learning, and especially unlearning, can take place only in the absence of defensiveness.... [W]e can drop our defenses only when we love and are loved.

If we misconceive God as Father Protector,...then each disappointment reduces what may confidently be affirmed about God. And this is how most people lose their faith.

And if we exalt freedom as Christians, we must remember that freedom is grounded in love.

As for loneliness, it too has deep roots in selfishness, for its anguish stems less from having no one with whom to share one's burdens, more from having only one's burdens to share.

Love, and you are a success whether or not the world thinks so. The highest purpose of Christianity--which is primarily a way of life, not a system of belief--is to love one another.

...love does have a reward. Just as the proper benefits of education are the opportunities of continuing education, so the rewards of loving are to become yet more vulnerable, more tender, more caring.

...in home after home I have seen Jesus change beer into furniture, sinners into saints, hate-filled relations into loving ones, cowardice into courage, the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope.

The afterlife I leave to God, who is merciful and far too busy for impertinent questions from me. I may want to know more, but I don't need to. "One world at a time"-that's my feeling and that's more than enough given the present anguish that engulfs it.

He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.' That's not really cruel. Loving Christ more than our fathers and mothers simply saves the love we have for our parents from idolatry.... God, as the source of love, is the proper head of every loving household.

[When things go badly] Instead of becoming alienated from their faith in God, wouldn't it make more sense for them to become alienated from their mislaid hopes in human beings, alienated from shallow notions of automatic progress, from sentimental notions about the 'nobility of man'?

God is love, as Scripture says, and that means the revelation is in the relationship. 'God is love' means God is known devotionally, not dogmatically. 'God is love' does not clear up old mysteries; it discloses new mystery. 'God is love' is not a truth we can master; it is only one to which we can surrender. Faith is being grasped by the power of love.

In the Holy Land are two ancient bodies of water. Both are fed by the Jordan River. In one, fish play and roots find sustenance. In the other, there is no splash of fish, no sound of bird, no leaf around. The difference is not in the Jordan, for it empties into both, but in the Sea of Galilee: for every drop taken in one goes out. It gives and lives. The other gives nothing. And it is called the Dead Sea.

It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see, then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will he and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty. I love the recklessness of faith.

Prominent opponents of the war, among them Dr. Spock and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, openly counseled young men to resist the draft and were indicted.

The clergyman and writer William Sloane Coffin said that spirituality to him meant “living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.” We wake up to an ordinary day. The sky is blue. Trees sway in the breeze and birds twitter. Everything is as usual. Our hearts beat; our lungs take in air. We talk to friends. We eat dinner. We brush our teeth. And finally, when we put our heads down on our favorite pillows, we think, “This was a good, very ordinary day.

Hope reflects the state of your soul rather than the circumstances surrounding your days. Praise God and your soul gets stronger.

Aligning our identity to the king—over the country—is radically different. Only when we’re secure in our identity as children of the coming King, who will right all wrongs, can we read the news for the sake of our neighbors’ needs instead of for the sake of our own inadequacy. Only then are we able to repent, and not just blame another side. When we’re Christians first we can finally be good citizens second. That’s the only way we can avoid being, in the words of Reverend William Sloane Coffin Jr., either uncritical lovers of country or loveless critics of country. But when we’re citizens of heaven first, we finally become loving critics of country next—which is the truest kind of patriotism.

If you're on the edge of an abyss the only progressive step is backward.

To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make them an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.

Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.

William Sloane Coffin said when his son Alex died in a car wreck at the age of twenty-four. Ten days later, Coffin delivered Alex’s eulogy at Riverside Church in New York City, where he was senior minister. Among many other things, he said this:

When we’re Christians first we can finally be good citizens second. That’s the only way we can avoid being, in the words of Reverend William Sloane Coffin Jr., either uncritical lovers of country or loveless critics of country.

When we’re Christians first we can finally be good citizens second. That’s the only way we can avoid being, in the words of Reverend William Sloane Coffin Jr., either uncritical lovers of country or loveless critics of country. But when we’re citizens of heaven first, we finally become loving critics of country next—which is the truest kind of patriotism.