(The Dialog) — I’m no longer clear when I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first occurred to me to anticipate who wrote it. For an extraordinarily good deal of my lifestyles it by no methodology occurred to me that prayers had been the roughly issues that folks in actuality wrote down, severely one thing as standard because the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to gain the issues I cannot commerce, the courage to commerce the issues I will, and the wisdom to uncover the variation.”
This straightforward, noteworthy sentence has been reprinted on all the pieces from key chains and espresso mugs to tattoos and tea towels. For heaps of of us, it is miles also most intently linked to 12-step restoration programs equivalent to Alcoholics Anonymous. There, the prayer serves as a reminder both of human limits and of the truth that they bring about out no longer justify us.
First and most main, on the plenty of hand, the prayer was once written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. For him, it was once a name to confront the realities of the field with courage – relying no longer on one’s beget energy nonetheless on God’s grace.
Christian realism
Over time, the prayer has most regularly been attributed to diversified Christian writers, in conjunction with Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Francis of Assisi. Many folk might possibly possibly maybe very neatly be taken aback to walk looking out to search out that, removed from being penned in an frail European monastery, the Serenity Prayer was once written lower than a century in the past in a cottage in western Massachusetts.
Niebuhr was once born the son of a German American pastor in Wright Metropolis, Missouri. He became a pastor himself, serving a congregation in Detroit earlier than keen to Contemporary York to coach at Union Theological Seminary, where he obtained recognition as a theologian, activist and social critic. His brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, additionally became a neatly-recognized ethicist and theologian, as did his sister Hulda.
Reinhold Niebuhr photographed in 1963.
AP Picture
Right this moment, Reinhold Niebuhr is also handiest recognized as a founding father of “Christian realism.” As I report in my e book “The Niebuhr Brothers for Armchair Theologians,” it is miles an manner to ethics grounded in the perception that human beings are known as to strive against their perfect precise beliefs, while recognizing our incapacity to completely attain them.
This thought is captured by the title of 1 in all his handiest-recognized books, “Ethical Man and Depraved Society.” There Niebuhr argued that, while folk are on occasion able to performing purely from be pleased for others, teams are no longer. When human beings fabricate collectives, these collectives are in the kill able to performing handiest from self-pastime.
Which ability that of this fact, essentially the most that will probably be expected from any society will not be any longer be pleased nonetheless justice – which approximates, nonetheless by no methodology fulfills, the demands of be pleased.
Over time, Niebuhr’s opinion became severely influential in politics. His work was once be taught and revered by liberal politicians equivalent to Arthur Schlesinger and Hubert Humphrey, who was once vp beneath Lyndon B. Johnson. A majority of these admirers had minute exercise for his faith, and even dubbed themselves “atheists for Niebuhr,” nonetheless they revered and embraced his insights into society.
2 variations
How then did Niebuhr formulation to jot down this prayer?
His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, recounts the fable in her e book “The Serenity Prayer.” She was once a girl when Niebuhr first composed the lines for a treasure service shut to their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts. Later, as she tells it, he contributed a version to a prayer e book for squaddies being shipped off to fight in World Battle II, and from there it sooner or later migrated to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Niebuhr didn’t assume that prayers needs to be copyrighted, she writes, and by no methodology profited from its reputation – though mates would gift him with examples of Serenity Prayer kitsch, equivalent to wood carvings and needlework.
But the ideal-recognized version of the prayer will not be any longer somewhat the version that Niebuhr in the beginning wrote. Essentially based on Sifton, his first version be taught, “God, give us the grace to gain with serenity the issues that can’t be changed, the courage to commerce the issues that needs to be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the diversified.”
The variations between the 2 variations are refined nonetheless valuable, emphasizing topics that had been central to Niebuhr’s opinion. He didn’t simply pray for serenity, nonetheless for grace. He didn’t pray for courage to commerce what’s going to be changed, nonetheless lawful for what needs to be changed.
And crucially, it is no longer a person prayer, nonetheless collective: “grant us,” no longer “grant me.” Niebuhr believed that while one of the best precise achievements will likely be attained handiest by folk, positive social commerce was once that you just might possibly maybe maybe well imagine handiest by working collectively for justice.
‘Saved by hope’
The Serenity Prayer in all of its forms rests on Niebuhr’s laborious-obtained sense of history’s tragic dimension, borne of his expertise of two world wars and a world despair. He recognized that even essentially the most daring actions are no longer guaranteed to be successful.
However Niebuhr was once no fatalist and didn’t assume uncertainty was once a motive no longer to behave. On the opposite, he believed that as human beings we are obligated to enter the fray of social battle – no longer with an boastful sense of our beget superiority, nonetheless with a humble recognition of our limits.
As he wrote in diversified locations: “Nothing value doing will likely be performed in our lifetime; as a outcome of this fact we needs to be saved by hope. Nothing precise or swish or lawful makes whole sense in any immediate context of history; as a outcome of this fact we needs to be saved by faith. Nothing we operate, on the plenty of hand virtuous, will likely be done by myself; as a outcome of this fact we needs to be saved by be pleased.”
Within the terminate, for Niebuhr, it is miles God’s grace that determines the closing course of history, in space of our beget actions – enabling us to gain the truth that the outcomes of our actions are continuously out of our hands.
(Scott Paeth, Professor of Non secular Research, DePaul University. The views expressed on this commentary operate no longer necessarily replicate these of Religion News Provider.)
by 
