Henry Sloane Coffin (January 5, 1877, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

– November 25, 1954, in Lakeville, Connecticut) was president of the Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) was the first national Presbyterian denomination in the United States, existing from 1789 to 1958. In that year, the PCUSA merged with the United Presbyterian Church of North Americ ...

, and one of the most famous ministers in the United States. He was also one of the translators of the popular hymn " O Come, O Come Emmanuel", along with John Mason Neale.O Come, O Come Emmanuel
on WorshipTutorials

Biography

Coffin was the son of Edmund Coffin and Euphemia Sloane. He was an heir to the fortune of the furniture firm of W. and J. Sloane & Co. His brother was William Sloane Coffin, who was later the president of New York's

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. Coffin attended

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

and obtained a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in 1897. In 1896, he was one of fifteen juniors invited to join the Skull and Bones. He then received his master's degree from Yale in 1900. Henry Sloane Coffin Gravesite 2010

During his time at Yale, Coffin was on friendly terms with evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who devoted considerable attention to Coffin during his famous Northfield Conferences in Massachusetts. In spite of Moody's influence, Coffin would emerge as a leading theological liberal. Coffin also obtained his

Bachelor of Divinity In Western universities, a Bachelor of Divinity or Baccalaureate in Divinity (BD or BDiv; la, Baccalaureus Divinitatis) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded for a course taken in the study of divinity or related disciplines, such as theolog ...

from the Union Theological Seminary in 1900. He then became pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in

in 1910. He declined an offer to become president of Union Theological Seminary in 1916. In 1917, he became Chairman of the Committee of the Board of Home Missions. In 1926, offered the presidency of Union a second time, he accepted and retained the post until 1945. Coffin was married to Dorothy Eells. He was the uncle of William Sloane Coffin, and a member of the Yale Corporation (1921–45). Henry Sloane Coffin died in 1954 at age 77 and was interred at

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is the final resting place of numerous famous figures, including Washington Irving, whose 1820 short story " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set in the adjacent burying ground at the Old Dutch ...

in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Works

Music

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Articles and chapters

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Coffin, Henry Sloane Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ministers Yale College alumni Union Theological Seminary (New York City) alumni Union Theological Seminary (New York City) faculty 1877 births American people of Scottish descent 1954 deaths Burials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery