Way back in the depths of last century, ca. 1930, a prayer began to form and then circulate. I say, “began to form” because most prayer patterns and iconic prayers tend to grow over time until they acquire a certain sense of definition, making them recognisable, appreciated, and used by others. In other words, that prayer’s time had come…
The “Serenity Prayer” is one such prayer. It’s origins are not quite clouded by the mists of time – fortunately – but there is a lot of commentary on how it came to be, and how it has been used, and abused over the last 80-90 years. And so, I have undertaken some research this week in the hope of providing a helpful perspective. According to Wikipedia a short version of the prayer was originally composed by Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the early 1930s. Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. He was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century, and was a local pastor for many years in the working-class industrial area of Detroit, Michigan.
The prayer – or the first part of it, at least - was initially popularised by one of Niebuhr’s colleagues, and it began to spread widely without reference to the original author. It all happened like this: around 1932, Niebuhr is reported to have first used the prayer as the last part of a much longer prayer during a church worship service – it was off the cuff, so to speak, but in that anointed moment, something took root. In an October 31, 1932 diary entry by American YWCA official Winnifred Wygal, she quotes her colleague Niebuhr: “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 further, Wygal later published a version of this “prayer” in the March 1933 edition of YWCA periodical “The Woman's Press”. This 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 cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.” The prayer was subsequently quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch later that month, and other substantial quotes from the prayer were also printed in two Atlanta newspapers that month. Those few lines of prayer began to catch on, particularly with organisations like, Alcoholics Anonymous founded in 1937 and, later with other 12-step programs, which adopted it or their own versions of it. There were a few.
But that’s not the whole story.
In 1943, Niebuhr wrote the full version of the prayer for a sermon in a New England village church. It was as an unashamedly Christian prayer of invocation, and this was what was eventually published as the “Serenity Prayer”. Today, however, two thirds of that entire prayer are omitted on the vast majority of websites and in virtually all publications I researched, but it is still called the “Serenity Prayer”. The entire tripartite original has been preserved, however, by Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, in her book “The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Time of Peace and War”. In her book she laments that the short antecedents of the prayer have misappropriated the title of the later Serenity Prayer saying, “… their message and their tone are not in any way Niebuhrian”; which is to say that the richness of the Christian faith core of the later prayer has not been appreciated and respected by most. The title of the prayer, which was actually a poem used in Niebuhr’s sermon, has been variously misappropriated and appended to the shortened antecedents.
This is what Elisabeth Sifton has preserved for us of her father’s poem, in full …
“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.
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.”
All the power is in the second two-thirds of the prayer. This is where the substance lies. This is where faith is implemented, and where we surrender to God. The first third – the antecedent of the whole - is almost a wish, not quite a prayer we’d pray in church. Remember, originally, the antecedent lines were part of the end of another prayer ten years prior. And this was Elisabeth Sifton’s concern.
The point of the full Serenity Prayer is simply for the believer to know what to do in the life of faith, and when, and how. As well as learning to trust and surrender to God when we cannot change something far beyond our means. It is in this place - of not being able to change circumstances, and feeling powerless - where we surrender to God and His will in faith, that peace is learned …
“Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace”
It is not an easy thing to do, I know, but it is the first step along the pathway to enduring peace. And, as we travel this path, by faith, God initiates us into the mysteries of His shalom regardless of the surrounding chaos so that with the apostle Paul we can say …
Philippians 4:12 (MRO) “…I have been initiated into the mysteries of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
This is the place of shalom. God’s shalom.
Think on these things.
Shalom!
Ps Milton
[Sources: portions of this BLOG – i.e. the biographical-historical details of Reinhold Niebuhr’s life and ministry - have been adapted and edited from Wikipedia, Britannica, and various other websites dedicated to him. Also, “The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Time of Peace and War”, by Elisabeth Sifton, author, was also insightful]