The New Spiritual Leader on Campus

THE ATLANTIC —On May 24, 1961, the Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. led a group of Freedom Riders on a 160-mile bus ride from Atlanta, Georgia, to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregation laws. The voyage and his subsequent arrest turned Coffin into a national figure in the fight for civil rights. Yet even as he made headlines, Coffin remained committed to another, quieter aspect of his role as a college chaplain. Over the course of his 18 years at Yale, he spent virtually every afternoon counseling students. They discussed relationships, academic worries, theological questions, and—for those eligible—the prospect of being drafted into the Vietnam War. A pastor first and foremost, he considered it “a great privilege” to enter what he called “the secret garden of another person’s soul.”

Read the full interview here.