Posted on 04/22/2006 3:56:19 PM PDT by rhema
"A long, long time ago I can still remember ..."
That's how Don McLean's No. 1 hit from 1971, "American Pie," begins. The news earlier this month was that William Sloane Coffin Jr., America's most famous liberal minister from the 1960s through the 1980s, had just died at age 81. Obituaries noted that Coffin, recipient of an elite education in New England and Paris, had thought of a career as a concert pianist, but became Yale University chaplain in 1958.
"February made me shiver, With every paper I'd deliver, Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step."
New Haven often has miserable winter weather, and the ideological slush within the Yale Daily News building from 1968 through 1971 was often as unpleasant as the freezing rain outside. So I went occasionally to Battell Chapel to hear Coffin's fiery sermons about the Sin of the Vietnam War. But his bad news of American evil was tempered by his good news that we bright students could remake ourselves into righteous beings.
"Did you write the Book of Love, And do you have faith in God above? If the Bible tells you so."
I had no faith in God or the Bible, and probably wouldn't have paid attention if Coffin had given biblical messages. I was impressed when he rode a motorcycle around campus and called himself a "Christian revolutionary." So were others: Gary Trudeau made him a character ("Rev. Sloan") in his Doonesbury comic strip and once enthused about Coffin: "Without him, the very air would have lost its charge. With him, we were changed forever."
"As I watched him on the stage, My hands were clenched in fists of rage ... As the flames climbed high into the night, To light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight."
Coffin's hip sermons reflected the wisdom of both John Lennon and Vladimir Lenin. He advocated the "social gospel," pointing out accurately that many churches had turned their backs on the poor, but minimizing our desperate need for Christ while emphasizing the overthrow of social classes and traditional institutions. Coffin certainly was not responsible for my embrace of Marxism, but he and others made me feel my rage was righteous and my anger was more than angst.
"In the streets the children screamed, The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed, But not a word was spoken, The church bells all were broken."
Coffin moved on in 1977 to become chief minister at perhaps the leading social gospel church in the country, New York's Riverside. Two years later, he journeyed to Iran to meet with American hostages and then speak of America's "sins" in Iran. In 1987, just before Ronald Reagan's tough stand pushed the Soviet Union to decompose, Coffin left Riverside to head the SANE/Freeze movement's push for the United States to disarm.
"And the three men I admire most, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the coast, The day the music died."
Right after graduating in 1971, I rode a bicycle from Boston to the Pacific Coast. Several years later, I came to admire the Trinity: The gospel message took root in my heart not in Yale's elegant chapel via an articulate minister, but in a plain and small California church where the preacher essentially had one sermon that he repeated every week, "You must be born again" -- through Christ's grace, not our own braininess.
"They were singing, bye-bye, Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry, Them good old boys was drinkin' whiskey and rye, Singin' this'll be the day that I die."
On April 12, William Sloane Coffin Jr., retired in Vermont, was -- his daughter said -- "out in the sun. Everybody was talking, and then he was gone."
That's what has happened to the social gospel, as well. A few Coffin epigones talk on in attempt to keep that ol' time religion alive, but evangelicals explain that God changes people one by one, and those people then change society.
ps.
George Bush was a Yale classmate and good buddies with Sloan up to the end.
May the souls of those killed by the Communists and Muslims find justice in his eternal disposition.
The Social Gospel has really been dead for decades now. It is no longer an organizing principle within mainstream Christianity. That is because it is another Gospel, not the true Gospel of Christ. Supporters had nothing to hold onto - not a risen Lord or forgiveness of sins or a new life, but only the next piece of Great Society legislation or America-bashing on the world stage.
Good riddance, I say.
That's too bad. Sloane did not preach the Bible if this article is any indication.
Bye, bye, William Sloane Coffin. You will not be missed.
But I did like that song. What a strange and mysterious song it was. What great music!
A long, long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while but February made me shiver with every paper I delivered, bad news on the door step, I couldn't take one more step, I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride but something touched me deep inside, the day, the music, died. So...
CHORUS
Bye, bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry an them good ol' boys were drinkin whiskey and rye singin this will be the day that I die, this will be the day that I die.
Did you write the book of love and do you have faith in God above, if the bible tells you so, and do you believe in rock n' roll, can music save your mortal soul and can you teach me how to dance real slow? Well I know that you're in love with him cuz I saw you dancin in the gym you both kicked off your shoes and I dig those rhythm and blues. I was a lonely teenage bronkin buck with a pink carnation and a pick up truck but I knew I was out of luck, the day, the music, died. I started singin...
Chorus
Now for ten years we've been on our own and moss grows fat on a rollin stone but that's not how it used to be, when the jester sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean and a voice that came from you and me, oh and while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown the courtroom was adjourned, no verdict was returned, and while Lenin read a book on Marx, the quartet practiced in the park and we sang dirges in the dark, the day, the music, died. We were singin...
Chorus
Helter Skelter in a summer swelter the birds flew off with a fallout shelter, eight miles high and fallin fast, its the land that falled on the grass the players tried for a forward pass with the jester on the sidelines in a cast, now the half-time air was sweet perfume while the sergeants played a marching tune we all got up to dance oh but we never got the chance oh as the players tried to take the field the marching band refused to yield do you recall what was revealed, the day, the music, died. We started singin...
Chorus
Oh and there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space with no time left to start again, so come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candle stick because fire is the devils only friend, oh and as I watched him on the stage, my hands were clinched in fists of rage, no angel born in hell could break that satan's spell and as the planes climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial right I saw satan laughing with delight, the day, the music, died. He was singin...
Chorus
I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news but she just smiled and turned away, I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken and the three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day, the music, died, and they were singin...
Chorus
They were singin... Bye, bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry an them good ol' boys were drinkin whiskey and rye singin this will be the day that I die.
Short biography on Coffin:
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=969
Pretty much what I said !
"They hobnobbed with the filthy rich and powerful all the while wagging a judgmental finger at the "bourgeois"
WHAT YOU SAID!
41.
Again my point !
Many pardons.
When I said George Bush I forgot to add "Sr."
However Sloan was a family friend to all the Bushes*(both Sr. and Jr) and was received by the family on cordial grounds.
And it bears repeating:
"Hypocrites All and to the Last"
Another one bites the dust. He's now a good Liberal.
Not much of a husband, either.
Coffin was married three times.
I imagine he's turned in his peace symbol for a millstone by now...
I'm like you, I've always loved that song but struggled to make sense of it. Found this at understandingamericanpie.com and thought you might find it interesting (obviously Don McLean wasn't just some airhead):
In the autumn of 1971 Don McLean's elegiac American Pie entered the collective consciousness, and over thirty years later remains one of the most discussed, dissected and debated songs that popular music has ever produced. A cultural event at the peak of its popularity in 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard 100 charts in a matter of weeks, selling more than 3 million copies; and at eight and a half minutes long, this was no mean feat. But this was no ordinary song, either: boldly original and thematically ambitious, what set American Pie apart had a lot to do with the way we weren't entirely sure what the song was about, provoking endless debates over its epic cast of characters. And these controversies remain with us to this day. But however open to interpretation the lyrics may have been, the song's emotional resonance was unmistakable: McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience—something had been lost, and we knew it. Opening with the death of singer Buddy Holly and ending near the tragic concert at Altamont Motor Speedway, we are able to frame the span of years the song is covering—1959 to 1970—as the "10 years we've been on our own" of the third verse. It is across this decade that the American cultural landscape changed radically, passing from the relative optimism and conformity of the 1950s and early 1960s to the rejection of these values by the various political and social movements of the mid and late 1960s.
Coming as it did near the end of this turbulent era, American Pie seemed to be speaking to the precarious position we found ourselves in, as the grand social experiments of the 1960s began collapsing under the weight of their own unrealized utopian dreams, while the quieter, hopeful world we grew up in receded into memory. And as 1970 came to a close and the world this generation had envisioned no longer seemed viable, a sense of disillusion and loss fell over us; we weren't the people we once were. But we couldn't go home again either, having challenged the assumptions of that older order. The black and white days were over.
Bye bye, Miss American Pie.
• • •
The era of the 1950s was a relatively peaceful period in American life, as many of the values of the preceding generation held firm and a general acceptance of the status quo prevailed. Having survived the traumas of the Great Depression and World War II, Americans were eager to put these years of uncertainty and privation behind them; and as the postwar economy thrived and expanded, swelling the ranks of the American middle class, a sense of well-being and prosperity anchored us. It is no wonder, then, that life appeared more stable, more comprehensible, more black and white. This was also reinforced by the popular entertainment of the day, as historian David Halberstam sums up in his book The Fifties:
In that era of general good will and expanding affluence, few Americans doubted the essential goodness of their society. After all, it was reflected back at them not only by contemporary books and magazines, but even more powerfully and with even greater influence in the new family sitcoms on television. These—in conjunction with their sponsors' commercial goals—sought to shape their audience's aspirations. However, most Americans needed little coaching in how they wanted to live. They were optimistic about the future.
The same cannot be said of the sixties. Just as the fifties was an era of great conformity and consensus, the sixties became its antithesis, as the values of the status quo embraced by the previous generation—the sense of the "essential goodness" and generosity of American society—no longer rang true. Arising from the civil rights issues that had been simmering since World War II, and spurred on further by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, this generation's dissatisfaction with American culture grew markedly more pronounced, as many of the assumptions about the society we were born into were called into question:
...the civil rights and antiwar and countercultural and woman's and the rest of that decade's movements forced upon us central issues for Western civilization—fundamental questions of value, fundamental divides of culture, fundamental debates about the nature of the good life.
From The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin
The rules were changing. And so was the music. As American values were shifting through this period, a corresponding shift can be observed in rock 'n' roll, as it moved away from the exuberant simplicity of the 1950s to the more literate and politically charged subject matter of the 1960s. And as the music reflected these changes it also became symbolic of them, producing a defining musical figure at each major turning point: Bob Dylan at the more cerebral beginnings of the radical sixties, the Beatles during its more idealistic middle period, and the Rolling Stones closer to its anarchic end.
So even though American Pie appears to chronicle the course of rock 'n' roll, it is not, as is sometimes suggested, a mere catalogue of musical events. In using the cast of rock 'n' roll players from the 1960s and setting them against the backdrop of Buddy Holly's death, they become polarized—metaphors for the clash of values occurring in America at this time: Holly as the symbol of the happier innocence of the fifties, the rest as symbolic of the sixties' growing unrest and fragmentation. And as each verse sums up chronological periods in time—the late 1950s, 1963-66, 1966-68, 1969, 1970—another blow against the happier innocence of another era is registered: another day the music dies.
• • •
The song can be divided into roughly 5 sections: the prologue (verse 1), which looks back from the early seventies and introduces the catalyst for the story about to unfold; Act 1 (verse 2), which, along with the chorus and verse 1, establishes the 1950s as the reference point for the rest of the song; Act II (verses 3 & 4), in which the story builds on the growing conflicts of the 1960s; Act III (verse 5), the apocalyptic climax of the story; and the epilogue (verse 6), the song's coda.
Yeah, I had someone teach a bible class back at my church, and all of the material was notoriously derived from this social gospel stuff. Don't think it has died with this guy. You can see strains of in some, and I say some, of the emerging church movement.
So that's what that song's all about......
What, again?
You are in error, sir.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1614562/posts?page=49#49
The "no angel born in hell could break that satan's spell" lyric is about the murder at Altamont in 1970, and the behavior of the band on stage at the time...
He does have the look of a smug old fart, doesn't he?
Excellent picture, you can see the egomania in his eyes. Self-satisfied SOB is the phrase that comes to mind.
Yes, as I recall there was a plane crash, and a musician was killed. And there was a gradual loss of idealism as the Great Cultural Revolution of Woodstock began to be seen for what it was, an empty dream, and sleazy to boot.
I remember when the Beatles remarked that they were more famous than Jesus Christ. (Actually, I liked the Beatles, but didn't much appreciate that comment.) People thought that Woodstock and the Summer of Love could do the job better than Christianity had done it. Flower power would transform the world and end war.
But, it's goodbye to all that. And goodbye to Reverend William Sloan Coffin. Good riddance, too. Still, the song lingers, because it understood the hollowness, and pitied the lost idealism, and because the music was so beautiful.
I know of a few Patriots and a group of Iranian Hostages who won't shed a tear for this SOCIALIST!
You could be alot more specific? Where?
Interesting you use the word remedial.
I thank that applies to your understanding of real social & professional situations.
Interesting you use the word remedial.
I thank that applies to your understanding of real social & professional situations.
Interesting you use the word remedial.
I thank that applies to your understanding of real social & professional situations.
Interesting you use the word remedial.
I thank that applies to your understanding of real social & professional situations.
Double posting
I see you're a great example of "remedial"
Connecticut ping!
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
I'm stating that the implication that the Bushes were "close" with Coffin were incorrect. In fact, Dubya's infamous run-in with Coffin at Yale badmouthing his father, if anything, spurred on Dubya to move away the anti-American liberalism that engulfed the campus (spearheaded by Coffin) at that time. I dare say that if the family were as close as you claim, the Bushes would be John Kerry RINO trash, and Dubya's political career would've been D.O.A.
I don't think many here regard that "relationship" in a positive light. They may tend to view it as being beneficial for fundraising purposes for natural disasters, but as for socializing, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that "person."
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