Serenity Prayer in Yale Alumni Magazine

[Stephen Goranson]

Several of these women worked with children, so edifying fiction for young
readers, especially girls, might be a possible source, as a guess. Also maybe
women's suffrage literature. It might be interesting to know if the
first three
known quoters shared a church denomination. I agree that Niebuhr--whose
admirable contributions are not diminished by this question--as the
originator,
on current data, appears to be less than 50 percent likely, even if the most
plausible name so far mentioned. If the question stirs more interest in
Niebuhr, his daughter might take some comfort from that.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson


Quoting Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at GMAIL.COM>:

> Wild guess: women + AA => Women's Christian Temperance Union ?
>
> On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 11:09 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Serenity Prayer in Yale Alumni Magazine
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> >         I think it's also significant that the early citations are all
>> > to women, none of whom were clergymen but many of whom (and especially
>> > the earliest) were associated with eleemosynary or educational
>> > institutions.  Consider these datings:
>> >
>> >                 1936            Syracuse YWCA executive secretary
>> >                 1938            superintendent of the Newington Home for
>> > Crippled Children
>> >                 1939            home counselor of Oklahoma City's public
>> > schools
>> >                 1940            Middlesex, Mass. women's club (speaker's
>> > status unspecified)
>> >                 1941            book with two female authors
>> >                 1941            Texas state home demonstration agent
>> >                 1941            visiting professor at Pennsylvania State
>> > College
>> >
>> >         So seven out of seven of the early citations came from women.
>> > For this period, that's not typical.  None of these refer in any way to
>> > a clergyman.  These considerations argue against (though they certainly
>> > do not disprove) an origin with Niebuhr or any other clergyman; they
>> > argue so strongly against propagation through a conventional church
>> > sermon that I think that vector all but disproved.  The initial
>> > propagation, if not necessarily the origin, must have come from some
>> > source to which a YWCA executive secretary, a superintendent of a home
>> > for crippled children, and a highly placed home counselor would have had
>> > access.  Plausible candidates include some sort of conference,
>> > specialized publication, or traveling speaker.
>> Some vector candidates IMHO:
>>
>> (1) Radio program (probably 'inspirational'-themed, whether overtly
>> religious or not);
>>
>> (2) Magazine (ditto);
>>
>> (3) Embroidery pattern, wall motto, calendar, tchotchke of some sort
>> (ditto).
>>
>> Any of these easily could have had a predominantly female target
>> population.
>>
>> -- Doug Wilson
>>
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