Letters to a Young Doubter

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2006 by Portaro, Sam

Letters to a Young Doubter. By William Sloane Coffin. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. x 185 pp. $14.95 (cloth).

The late William Sloane Coffin's long and distinguished career was remarkable for many accomplishments, not least being his preaching. Though I heard him in the pulpit only once, I remain a fan of his prodigious talent to engage. And as a former university chaplain myself, I was predisposed to appreciate this little book that brings Coffin back into conversation with a college-age young adult several decades removed from Coffin's chaplaincy at Yale. Acknowledging in his preface that this project is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Pod, Coffin sets forth a conversation with an imaginary undergraduate, a freshman named Tom.

What ensues is less engaging that one might hope, suggesting that Rilke's model is now a dated conceit. For starters, few students today write letters; an e-mail correspondence might have been more in character. Lacking "Tom's" correspondence, the reader gets only one side of the conversation, which is certainly consistent with Rilke's original. But I found myself repeatedly wondering just how accurately Coffin's imagined student represents a contemporary undergrad.

How much richer, I kept thinking, had Coffin actually undertaken an e-mail correspondence with a current undergrad, or several which he might have collated into a realistic composite. Better yet, a series of recorded interviews with a variety of students, edited into downloadable audio files or podcasts. To have his thoughtful responses to the very real concerns of the present student generation, to watch him engage the extremes of secularism and religious fundamentalism within which they not only live but which they actually embody might have proven of greater value and interest to a wider spectrum of readers. But the imagined questions of the invisible Tom seem strained. I simply could not imagine many students of my own experience and acquaintance engaging this book, though I can well envision many a wellmeaning parent or elderly friend presenting it, neatly wrapped, to a gowned high school graduate at commencement time.

The form does allow Coffin to compile a wonderful collection of wise perspectives delivered in pithy aphorisms: "You . . . may think wisdom comes with age. Believe me, . . . age often comes alone"; "What's dangerous is not a commercialized Christmas but a sentimentalized Christmas"; "It's always a good time to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart"; and "The greatest perils to the planet arise not from the poor and ignorant for whom education is an answer; they are caused by the well-educated for whom self-interest is the problem."

Unfortunately, it also allows a platform for Coffin's political perspectives, too many narrowly focused on the present presidential administration, a detail that will date this text fairly quickly. Moreover, he manages within the brief span of these pages to touch every incendiary topic in currency, even working in the, complete text of a letter to the American Catholic bishops dated November 14, 2000, challenging their church's position on homosexuality. While I find myself in frequent agreement with his opinions, they seem sadly out of place in this context and lacking the breadth of mind and spirit, and the thoughtful, critical but sympathetic nuance one might expect an elder to impart to a younger, emerging adult.

Still, the book is eloquently written and does contain lovely nuggets like those mentioned above. Perhaps one might consider a more appropriate and marketable, and thus useful, volume in future-a collection of the considerable wit and wisdom of one of America's best liberal Christian spokespersons containing the finest of Coffin's sermons, essays, and interviews exceipted and arranged for thoughtful engagement and quick reference, and for a generation of readers better positioned to impart them through loving personal relationship to those for whom this book was intended.

SAM PORTARO

Berwyn, Illinois