Christianity in this country has become almost synonymous with right-wing fanaticism, conservative politics and--courtesy of Mel Gibson--a brutally sadistic version of religious experience. For Christians like me who are appalled by that distortion of our faith, the biography of William Sloane Coffin brings reassurance that not only Martin Luther King Jr. but also a white Protestant minister can become a national leader in the fight for peace, equality, healing and compassion for society's outcasts--the issues that inspired the ministry of Jesus.

As chaplain of Yale and then pastor of New York's Riverside Church, Reverend Coffin put himself and his faith on the line from the first Freedom Rides and protests against the Vietnam War to nuclear disarmament, sanctuary for Central American political dissenters and an egalitarian church policy for gays and lesbians.

In his comprehensive and compelling biography William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience, Warren Goldstein provides abundant evidence for his claim that Coffin "became the outstanding voice of liberal Protestantism in America, one of the last unabashedly liberal voices in American public life during the ascendancy of Reagan Republicanism, the rise of right-wing fundamentalism, and the dramatic rightward shift of public policy and discourse." Coffin parlayed his pulpits, his charismatic personality and "a hunter's instinct for sensing opportunities" to get national media attention for his causes and become "a household word--indeed a religious celebrity." He even made it to the comics page, as inspiration for the Doonesbury campus minister, "Reverend Scot Sloane." Watching him speak at an anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington in 1968, Norman Mailer described Coffin as "hard, quick, deft and assured.... He had a voice which sounded close to the savvy self-educated tones of a labor union organizer, but there was the irreducible substance of Ivy League in it as well."

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