I’m now not positive once I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first passed off to me to invite who wrote it. For far of my lifestyles it by no means passed off to me that prayers have been the type of issues that individuals in truth wrote down, particularly one thing as widespread because the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.”
This easy, robust sentence has been reprinted on the whole thing from key chains and occasional mugs to tattoos and tea towels. For many of us, it’s most likely maximum carefully related to 12-step restoration techniques reminiscent of Alcoholics Nameless. There, the prayer serves as a reminder either one of human limits and of the truth that they don’t outline us.
Firstly, on the other hand, the prayer was once written via the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. For him, it was once a decision to confront the realities of the arena with braveness – depending now not on one’s personal energy however on God’s grace.
Christian realism
Over time, the prayer has regularly been attributed to different Christian writers, together with Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Francis of Assisi. Many of us could be shocked to find that, some distance from being penned in an historic Ecu monastery, the Serenity Prayer was once written not up to a century in the past in a cottage in western Massachusetts.
Niebuhr was once born the son of a German American pastor in Wright Town, Missouri. He was a pastor himself, serving a congregation in Detroit prior to transferring to New York to show at Union Theological Seminary, the place he won reputation as a theologian, activist and social critic. His brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, additionally was a well known ethicist and theologian, as did his sister Hulda.
Reinhold Niebuhr photographed in 1963.
AP Photograph
These days, Reinhold Niebuhr is most likely ideally suited referred to as a founding father of “Christian realism.” As I describe in my ebook “The Niebuhr Brothers for Armchair Theologians,” it’s an option to ethics grounded within the perception that human beings are referred to as to try towards their best ethical beliefs, whilst spotting our lack of ability to totally succeed in them.
This concept is captured via the name of one among his best-known books, “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” There Niebuhr argued that, whilst persons are infrequently able to appearing purely from love for others, teams don’t seem to be. When human beings shape collectives, the ones collectives are in the end able to appearing best from self-interest.
Subsequently, probably the most that may be anticipated from any society isn’t love however justice – which approximates, however by no means fulfills, the calls for of affection.
Over time, Niebuhr’s concept was specifically influential in politics. His paintings was once learn and revered via liberal politicians reminiscent of Arthur Schlesinger and Hubert Humphrey, who was once vp underneath Lyndon B. Johnson. A few of these admirers had little use for his faith, or even dubbed themselves “atheists for Niebuhr,” however they revered and embraced his insights into society.
2 variations
How then did Niebuhr come to write down this prayer?
His daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, recounts the tale in her ebook “The Serenity Prayer.” She was once a lady when Niebuhr first composed the strains for a worship provider close to their summer season house in Heath, Massachusetts. Later, as she tells it, he contributed a model to a prayer ebook for infantrymen being shipped off to combat in International Battle II, and from there it ultimately migrated to Alcoholics Nameless.
A sobriety medallion utilized in an dependancy restoration program, imprinted with the Serenity Prayer.
Joe van petten/Flickr, CC BY-SA
But the best-known model of the prayer isn’t rather the model that Niebuhr at the beginning wrote. Consistent with Sifton, his first model learn, “God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”
The diversities between the 2 variations are refined however vital, emphasizing topics that have been central to Niebuhr’s concept. He didn’t merely pray for serenity, however for grace. He didn’t pray for braveness to switch what may also be modified, however just for what must be modified.
And crucially, it isn’t a person prayer, however collective: “grant us,” now not “grant me.” Niebuhr believed that whilst the best ethical achievements might be attained best via people, positive social trade was once conceivable best via running in combination for justice.
‘Saved by hope’
The Serenity Prayer in all of its bureaucracy rests on Niebuhr’s hard-won sense of historical past’s tragic measurement, borne of his revel in of 2 global wars and an international melancholy. He known that even probably the most brave movements don’t seem to be assured to prevail.
However Niebuhr was once no fatalist and didn’t consider uncertainty was once a explanation why to not act. To the contrary, he believed that as human beings we’re obligated to go into the fray of social struggle – now not with an smug sense of our personal superiority, however with a humble reputation of our limits.
As he wrote in different places: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”
In any case, for Niebuhr, it’s God’s grace that determines the overall process historical past, relatively than our personal movements – enabling us to simply accept the truth that the results of our movements are regularly out of our palms.
