Serenity Prayer

Serenity Prayer
The Serenity Prayer is an invocation by the petitioner for wisdom to understand the difference between circumstances ("things") that can and cannot be changed, asking courage to take action in the case of the former, and serenity to accept in the case of the latter.
The prayer has achieved very wide distribution, appearing throughout church groups later in the 1930s, and in Alcoholics Anonymous and related organizational materials since at least 1941. Since at least the early 1960s, commercial enterprises such as Hallmark have used the prayer in its greeting cards and gift items. The prayer has also made its way into popular culture, including in works by Bill Watterson, Neil Young, Bryan Lee O'Malley and Sinéad O'Connor, and programming including True Detective.
History
In around 1932, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is reported to have used the prayer as the last part of a longer prayer.
On October 31, 1932, American YWCA official quoted her colleague Niebuhr in her diary, "The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered."'
Drawing on this, Wygal published a prayer in the March 1933 edition of YWCA periodical The Woman's Press, which was soon shared with a broader audience on the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel of March 15, 1933.
It read:Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.The prayer was also quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch later that month. Substantial quotes from the prayer were also printed in two Atlanta newspapers that month.
The prayer appeared a few additional times in American and Canadian newspapers in the 1930s, associated with the YWCA or with individual women. In 1937, the prayer was published in a Christian student newsletter, attributing it to Niebuhr.
Wygal published the prayer again in her 1940 book We Plan Our Own Worship Services, and attributed it to Niebuhr. It took this form:O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.The prayer became published in English language newspapers much more from 1940, but never attributed to Wygal or Neibuhr.
In June 1941, the prayer was published in an obituary in the New York Herald Tribune, and from here became known by the first Alcoholics Anonymous group. The organisation embraced it and spread it widely. It was initially known within the group as "The AA prayer", but by the late 1940s, was known as "the serenity prayer."
Niebuhr presented it in a 1943 sermon at Heath Evangelical Union Church in Heath, Massachusetts. Niebuhr's wife and daughter would later say this was when they understood the prayer was first written and used. It then also appeared in a sermon of Niebuhr's in the 1944 A Book of Prayers and Services for the Armed Forces, and was printed on cards for American soldiers in WWII. From January 1944, Niebuhr began being cited as the source of the prayer in newspaper articles.
Niebuhr also published it in a magazine column in 1951.
By this stage, the prayer had become commonly quoted as:God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
In 1962, Hallmark began using the prayer in its graduation cards, crediting Niebuhr, and in the 1970s they also produced a wall plaque. Posters and household ornaments were produced by others without attribution.
William FitzGerald believes Wygal wrote the prayer, arguing sexism as the reason for misattribution, while Fred Shapiro's, with greater nuance, has alternated in his conclusions, but presents both the messages that the "[o]rigin is debated" and Wygal as author in materials relating to The New Yale Book of Quotations, published in 2021.
Versions
The prayer has appeared in many versions. Reinhold Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence; printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version. The best-known form is a late version, as it includes a reference to grace not found before 1951:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
The following clauses were added in the AA Origin of the Serenity Prayer: A Historic Paper but were not part of the tripartite original. Niebuhr's daughter in her book The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Time of Peace and War said: "... their message and their tone are not in any way Niebuhrian."
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as He did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that He will make all things right,
If I surrender to His will,
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.
A version, apparently quoted from memory and asking for the author of the quotation, appeared in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review in July 1950, and received a reply in the same column in August 1950, attributing the prayer to Niebuhr, and quoting it as follows:
O God and Heavenly Father,
Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Some twelve-step recovery programs use a slightly different version:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.
Early history
The earliest recorded reference to the prayer is a diary entry from 1932 by , a pupil and collaborator of Reinhold Niebuhr, quoting the prayer and attributing it to Niebuhr:R.N. says that ... "The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered." Several versions of the prayer then appeared in newspaper articles in the early 1930s written by, or reporting on talks given by, Wygal. In 1940, Wygal included the following form of the prayer in a book on worship, attributing it to Niebuhr:
O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.
Wygal was a longtime YWCA official and all early recorded usages were from women involved in volunteer or educational activities connected to the YWCA.
An early printed reference, in 1936, mentions that during a speech, a Miss Mildred Pinkerton "quotes the prayer", as if to indicate it was already in a circulation known to the reporter, or that Pinkerton relayed it as a quote, without mentioning its authorship. A 1937 Christian student publication attributed the prayer to Niebuhr in the following form, which matches the other earliest published forms in requesting "courage to change" before petitioning for serenity:
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.
Various other authors also cited Niebuhr as the source of the prayer onward from 1937 on. The Federal Council of Churches (NCC) included the prayer in a book for army chaplains and servicemen in 1944 and the USO circulated the prayer (with Niebuhr's permission) to soldiers on printed cards during World War II. In 1950, in response to questions about the already quite widely known prayer's provenance, Niebuhr wrote that the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." He confirmed this in 1967. His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, thought that Niebuhr had first written it in 1943, while Niebuhr's wife Ursula believed it had been written in 1941 or 1942, adding that it may have been used in prayers as early as 1934.
The Serenity Prayer was listed under Neibuhr in the Yale Book of Quotations (2006). Editor Fred R. Shapiro first raised doubts about Neibuhr's authorship in 2008, but after further research confirmed him in 2010. William FitzGerald of Rutgers University-Camden argued in 2017 that credit should be given to Winnifred Wygal, a YWCA official and student of Neibuhr's at Union Theological Seminary. FitzGerald noted, "this is certainly not the first time a woman's voice has been silenced by a man's voice." Wygal is listed as author of the Serenity Prayer in 2021 edition of The New Yale Book of Quotations; Shapiro includes a discussion of the origin of The Serenity Prayer in the introduction.
Mistaken dating and attribution
Though Niebuhr's daughter was once quoted suggesting that Niebuhr first wrote the prayer for the 1943 sermon at the Heath Evangelical Union Church, there is convincing documentary evidence that he had used it much earlier. The prayer has also been falsely attributed to a variety of other authors.
Precursors
Numerous statements of more or less similar sentiments by other authors have been identified. These include:
Epictetus wrote:Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing."
The 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara suggested:
If there's a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?
The 11th-century Jewish philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol wrote:
And they said: At the head of all understanding – is distinguishing between what is and what cannot be, and the consoling of what is not in our power to change.
Expressing a sentiment similar to that of Niebuhr, the philosopher W.W. Bartley juxtaposes without comment Niebuhr's prayer with a Mother Goose rhyme (1695):
For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
Friedrich Schiller presents what some have said are sentiments similar to the first part of Niebuhr's prayer, in 1801:Blessed is he, who has learned to bear what he cannot change, and to give up with dignity, what he cannot save."
Spurious attributions
The prayer has been variously attributed (without evidence) to Thomas Aquinas, Cicero, Augustine, Boethius, Marcus Aurelius, and Francis of Assisi, among others.
Theodor Wilhelm, a professor of education at the University of Kiel, published a German version of the prayer under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oetinger" in 1951. Wilhelm's version of the prayer became popular in West Germany, where it was widely but falsely attributed to the 18th-century philosopher Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Elisabeth Sifton described Wilhelm's account of the history of the prayer as "dishonest".
Use by twelve-step recovery programs
The prayer became more widely known after being brought to the attention of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1941 by an early member, who came upon it in a caption in a "routine New York Herald Tribune obituary". The original clipping appeared in the May 28, 1941 public notices section: "Mother--God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Goodby." AA's co-founder Bill W. and the staff liked the prayer and had it printed in modified form and handed around. It has been part of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since, and has also been used in other twelve-step programs. "Never had we seen so much A.A. in so few words," noted Bill W. The January 1950 edition of the Grapevine (The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous) identifies Niebuhr as the author, as does the AA web site.
Adaptations by other authors
In Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin says:
Know what I pray for? The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, the Serenity Prayer appears in Chapter 3: it is displayed in Billy Pilgrim's optometry office; and though it reassures Pilgrim's patients, the Serenity Prayer underscores the irony of Pilgrim's fatalism.
A 1978 newspaper cartoon turned the phrase on its head: "If I'm not home accepting what I can't change, I'm probably out changing what I can't accept"; and a variant has become a popular slogan: "I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I'm changing the things I cannot accept". This form is often, but incorrectly, attributed to the American activist Angela Davis.
Neil Young cites a Latin translation of the Serenity Prayer on the back cover of his 1981 album Re•ac•tor.
Sinéad O'Connor cites the prayer in the intro of the song "Feel So Different", from her 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got.
The prayer features in season 3 of True Detective.
References
External links
The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, editor: Robert McAfee Brown
"Transcending and Transforming the World", in , especially pages 179–81.
Elisabeth Sifton, The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War, New York, Norton, 2003 . Elizabeth Sifton was Reinhold Niebuhr's daughter.
The Serenity Prayer: Faith in Times of Peace and War, National Public Radio - Fresh Air interview with Elisabeth Sifton (20 mins) January 14, 2005
Full documentation (in German) of false claims of authorship
The origin of our Serenity Prayer, at Alcoholics Anonymous
Nell Wing (1981). Origin of the Serenity Prayer: A Historic Paper 12 pp from AA General Service Office Service Material F-129 Rev 7/30/09 Accessed 10/20/22. (Secretary to Bill W., First AA Archivist, 1954-1983)
Serenity Prayer - Quote Investigator December 24, 2019
Alcoholics Anonymous
Prayer
Twelve-step programs
Works by Reinhold Niebuhr