RNS In I made the front page of The New York Times by asserting that the greatest American theologian of the 20th century probably did not originate the most famous and beloved prayer of the 20th century. The theologian was Reinhold Niebuhr. Its adoption by Alcoholics Anonymous and other step programs has propelled it to worldwide renown.
I now am able to report that I have uncovered new evidence establishing to a high degree of confidence that Niebuhr did originate the Serenity Prayer. In no less than 13 places, she characterized Heath as the place and time of composition.
The Times then published a second front-page story reporting my reaction to the new information. When, in the course of that work, I came to one of the most celebrated of all sayings, the Serenity Prayer, I found examples of its use back to by searching ProQuest Historical Newspapers, NewspaperArchive and Google Books.
After the articles in The New York Times and Yale Alumni Magazine, I enhanced my repertoire of electronic resources with additional newspaper archives.
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 things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own. In the 8 th century, a Buddhist monk, Shantideva, wrote another line similar in spirit to the Serenity Prayer. Shantideva was especially disliked in his monastery, often being described as lazy. To atone for his sins, Shantideva was asked to speak before the entire monastery. He delivered, creating a work that is still used today, the Bodhicaryavatara.
In it, he says:. And if there is no help for it, What use is there in being glum. While it is apparent that Reinhold Neibuhr wrote the current version of the Serenity Prayer, it is often heartening to many who use it that similar concepts have been voiced, and often, in other cultures.
In fact, while our earliest version of a quote with a similar spirit dates to ancient Greece, we have no earlier records to prove that Epictetus was in fact the first to voice these ideas. Whether you attend AA, another form of step, or have come across the prayer in another way, you now know the complete history.
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Give us a call now. We accept most insurances and financing. Verify My Insurance. The Origin of the Prayer The earliest written reference to the Serenity prayer dates to in a diary entry by Winnifred Crane Wygal. Whatever the means of transmission were, AA picked up the prayer in a big way. Founder Bill W. In , Hallmark began using the prayer in its graduation cards. Hallmark credited Niebuhr, but by this time a virtual cottage industry of Serenity Prayer prints and knickknacks had sprung up, and many of these reproductions gave no attribution at all.
Today it is possible to buy jewelry, candles, and many kinds of embroidery kits that feature the prayer—even Zippo lighters. When I found that versions of the prayer had been printed in newspapers before , I contacted Ms. For an article by Ms.
Sifton responding to this one, please see below. In an undated memorandum in the Reinhold Niebuhr papers at the Library of Congress, she wrote:. My husband wrote that prayer in [the] early s during the war.
He wrote it and used it for service when he was preaching in the Congregational Church of Heath. My husband and I were never quite sure whether it was or The earliest attribution I have found to Niebuhr comes from William D. Clapp, Rochester, N. The author is also unknown to this correspondent. Ward M. McClure, Mobile, Ala. No further identification given by this correspondent about the passage.
Howard Robbins, asked permission to use that part of the longer prayer in a compilation he was making at the time. It was published in that year in Dr. Robbins' book of prayers. Over the years, many wild guesses have been made about the provenance of the Serenity Prayer. Hart, various World War II military leaders, and anonymous sources going back to the ancient Egyptians. Another often-cited creation theory ascribes the prayer to an eighteenth-century German theologian, Friedrich Oetinger.
This claim has been shown to be a double misunderstanding. In the s, a professor at the University of Kiel, Theodor Wilhelm, used the prayer in a book of his. He published the book under the pseudonym Friedrich Oetinger—causing the confusion with the earlier Oetinger. Bach, T. Eliot, Shakespeare and Jesus, for that matter often echoed material from the past. The extensive pre documentation I have found, none of which refers to Reinhold Niebuhr, is subject to two interpretations.
I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself. I would not rule out the scenario that Niebuhr introduced the prayer by the mids in an unpublished or private setting. The formula of the Serenity Prayer is not intellectually sophisticated, but it has clearly been profound in its influence on the lives of many.
Testaments to its power are legion. Over the years the pain gradually increased in strength and frequently escalated to completely unbearable. Folklorists regard variant versions of a text as evidence of a descent that has not been fixed by writing and print.
Sayings with this kind of variation may be proverbial, the circumstances of their coinage often unknowable. The Serenity Prayer is probably too long to function as a true proverb, but the considerable variations in wording and ordering of phrases in the newspaper versions suggest a deep, traditional ancestry, perhaps long predating both the women in the s who now provide the oldest attestations and the courageous and wise Reinhold Niebuhr.
Shapiro does. The Serenity Prayer, its popularity notwithstanding, strikingly diverges from the usual pieties, the prevailing self-congratulatory cheeriness, of twentieth-century American Protestantism.
So we must ask where the idea for its austere, demanding, tripartite entreaty came from. Who, if not Niebuhr, might have introduced it? Who was praying along these lines in , , , when local newspapers tell us that women around the country, mostly connected to teaching institutions or the YWCA, quoted a version of it? Prayers are presented orally, circulate orally, and become famous orally long before they are put on paper.
Pastors and congregants use them in worship, recall and even misremember them, think about them for years before they are printed. That is why common, i. This spiritual tradition differs from the legal tradition with which Mr.
To throw light on this long, often anonymous process was one purpose of my book, the thesis of which still seems to elude Mr.
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