Affable, handsome Henry Sloane Coffin, ordained in the Presbyterian Church at the age of 23, began his ministry humbly in a room over a Bronx fish market. Last week he ended 19 years as president of one of Protestantism's most outstanding theological schools, Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Coffin had reached Union's retirement age (68) and was making way for Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, Union's professor of systematic theology (TIME, May 29, 1944).
To honor the man who had brought prestige to Union and fame to himself as a liberal, a scholar and a Christian gentleman, Union announced that it would...