Fred Shapiro and the Serenity Prayer (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

A NY Times Letter to the Editor, from Nov 30, 2003:


Who Wrote the Prayer?
Published: November 30, 2003
To the Editor:

I was amused to see The New York Times Book Review print a review of
''The Serenity Prayer'' (Nov. 2), a book by Reinhold Niebuhr's daughter,
Elisabeth Sifton, in which the reviewer notes Sifton's specific account
of how Niebuhr scribbled out the prayer ''one summer Sunday in 1943.''
My amusement stems from the fact that, in compiling the forthcoming Yale
Dictionary of Quotations, I have discovered that the Book Review printed
a reader's query asking for the origin of the ''Serenity Prayer'' in its
July 12, 1942, issue.

In the Book Review's Aug. 2, 1942, issue, a respondent attributed the
prayer to Niebuhr. In the mass of misinformation surrounding its origins
(Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, has given many conflicting accounts
in its literature over the years), this attribution establishes the
theologian's claim as the strongest. I would not be surprised, however,
if earlier evidence surfaces someday showing that Niebuhr picked the
prayer up from some prior source.

Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven
Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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