Article June 9, 1997 Issue

Scholarship and religious faith

by Kim Shippey

Last year, Paul B. Ranslow was inaugurated as the eleventh president of Ripon College, a private, residential liberal arts college located eighty miles northwest of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The installation address, "The Spiritual and the Secular: Can They Meet?" was given by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, professor of religious studies at Lawrence University in nearby Appleton.

Professor Coffin first gained national attention in 1961 as an activist in the American civil rights movement. He was one of seven "Freedom Riders" arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for violating local segregation laws by riding an interstate bus—a conviction that was later overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

From 1958 to 1975 he served as chaplain of Yale University. He has also served as senior minister of New York's Riverside Church and with Peace Action, a peace and justice organization working on behalf of the environment, children, and the poor.

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