New First Use of "Serenity Prayer"

[Shapiro, Fred]

I don't have time now to type a complete and fully thought-out posting, but I wanted to record that, by searching Genealogy Bank, I have pushed back the "Serenity Prayer" another three years.  In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Mar. 21, 1933, Mrs. Harrie R. Chamberlin, national president of the Y.W.C.A., is quoted as follows:

"In conclusion, she quoted the prayer which she said expressed the whole aim of the Y. W. C. A.: 'O God, give us courage to change the things that must be altered; serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.'"

Interestingly, the same newspaper four days later quotes Mrs. Lenore Stone Meffley speaking to the Family Service Society's annual meeting:

"courage to change what should be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be altered and insight to know the one from the other"

Those familiar with the Serenity Prayer origin controversy will realize that these discoveries do not by any means disprove Reinhold Niebuhr's origination of the S.P., as Niebuhr could well have written it before 1933.  I do think, however, that the further back in time I push documentation of the prayer without reference to Niebuhr, the less probable the widely accepted account of Niebuhr's coinage becomes.  The New York Times will not be interested in writing a third account of the controversy, I am sure, but I will probably write this up in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

Fred Shapiro
Editor
YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)

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