Sunday, March 11, 2007

Serenity Prayer

The Serenity Prayer is the common name for an originally untitled prayer written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s or early 1940s.

Elisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer (2003) quotes this version as the authentic original:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

The earliest verifiable printed texts so far discovered are an approximate (apparently remembered) version in a query in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1942, p. 23, which asks for the author of the quotation; and an answer to in the same column, in the issue for August 2, 1942, p. 19, where the quotation is attributed to Niebuhr and an unidentified earlier printed text is quoted as follows:

O God and Heavenly Father,
Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; the courage to change that which can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.


(Another version) The prayer is reliably reported to have been in use in Alcoholics Anonymous since the early 1940s. It has also been used in Narcotics Anonymous and other Twelve-step programs. The Alcoholics Anonymous version omits some of Niebuhr's text:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

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