11/22/2023 0 Comments Full serenity prayer text![]() ![]() Bartley juxtaposes Niebuhr's prayer with a Mother Goose rhyme expressing a similar sentiment, but without comment: For every ailment under the sun That I may be reasonably happy in this life Trusting that He will make all things right ![]() God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,Īn expanded version exists, but its origins are unknown it is certainly not by Niebuhr, who invariably cited his original version.Īccepting hardships as the pathway to peace The slightly edited Alcoholics Anonymous version below omits the word "grace" from the first line, shortens some of the remainder, and sets out the prayer in the form of verses: ![]() Niebuhr's original text, from in Elisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer appears near the top of this page. It has also been used in Narcotics Anonymous and other Twelve-step programs such as, Serenity Groups. The prayer is reliably reported to have been in use in Alcoholics Anonymous since the early 1940s. In the movie Billy Jack, authorship of the prayer is mistakenly given to St. Other spurious claims for the authorship of the prayer (none of them supported by any evidence whatever) include one that the prayer was written by the Christian philosopher and theologian Boethius just before his execution in the year 524 or 525. Niebuhr is quoted in the January, 1950 Grapevine as saying the prayer "might have been spooking about for years, perhaps centuries." He concludes, therefore, that, while Oetinger may not have written the prayer, Niebuhr was certainly not the original author. John Sasser has produced photographs of a Gasthaus, built in 1849 in Bergen-Enkheim, Germany, which contain the words of the serenity prayer above the windows of the first floor. Wilhelm apparently chose to publish under a pseudonym because his Nazi past was widely known in Germany at the time. Theodor Wilhelm was apparently unaware that the US Army and the USO had been distributing the prayer in Germany since the end of World War II, and later writers who were unaware that "Friedrich Oetinger" was a pseudonym (even though the book was clearly written by a 20th-century author) confused this name with the eighteenth-century Oetinger. Wilhelm printed a German version of the prayer as his own work in his book, Wendepunkt der poltitischen Erziehung he published the book under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oetinger" (the book did not pretend to be the work of the 18th-century Oetinger the name was merely a pseudonym, apparently chosen because the author's wife was descended from pastors who shared the theology of the 18th-century Oetinger). The prayer's origin is often attributed to Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), but this attribution may be the result of a misunderstanding of a plagiarism of the prayer by Theodor Wilhelm, an ex-Nazi professor at the University of Kiel. 6-7), and the AA web site continues to identify Niebuhr as the author (see External Links). The prayer became widely known when it was adopted in modified form by Alcoholics Anonymous an AA magazine, The AA Grapevine, identified Niebuhr as the author (January 1950, pp. 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. 19, where the quotation is attributed to Niebuhr and an unidentified printed text is quoted as follows: 23, which asks for the author of the quotation and a reply in the same column in the issue for August 2, 1942, p. ![]() The earliest verifiable printed texts so far discovered are an approximate version (apparently quoted from memory) in a query in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1942, p. Reinhold Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version. Reinhold Niebuhr recalled that his prayer was circulated by the Federal Council of Churches and later by the United States armed forces. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. 684), perhaps in the early 1940s.Įlisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer (2003) quotes this version as the authentic original: Niebuhr seems to have written the prayer for use in a sermon, perhaps as early as 1934 (the date given in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edn., ed. History and text Original version by Reinhold Niebuhr
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |