Influences on the Construction of the Serenity Prayer - Maybe OT

[Shapiro, Fred]

Garson,

This is a nice discovery.  There is nothing I would like more than to find precursors of the Serenity Prayer prior to 1936.  I do have to say, however, that I see the courage and the serenity in this 1897 citation, but not really the wisdom.  In the SP, the wisdom is the wisdom to differentiate what can be done from what cannot be done.  Here the wisdom is the wisdom to discern God's truth, probably meant as a preliminary to taking action in furtherance of that truth.  "Wisdom" is arguably the most original element of the triad in the SP, the one that most makes it a novel, 20th-century formulation.  There are probably many pre-SP statements that contain the elements of courage and serenity.

I strongly encourage you to continue looking for pre-1936 SP versions, or post-1936 versions that shed some light on the prayer's origins.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Garson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 6:48 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Influences on the Construction of the Serenity Prayer - Maybe OT

A famous short prayer begins, "God grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change." This entreaty is called the Serenity Prayer
and it is traditionally attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
The prayer was discussed extensively on ADS-L in 2008.

Fred Shapiro found an important collection of citations starting in
1936 that cast doubt on the Niebuhr attribution. On ADS-L in 2008
Stephen Goranson announced that he found a phrase from the prayer in a
work dated 1934.

Reinhold Niebuhr said about the prayer, "Of course, it may have been
spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don’t think so." In
this post we will briefly examine a work that may have influenced the
person or persons who created the Serenity Prayer.

The Smith College Monthly of December 1897 contains a hymn that I
think displays several points of similarity with the Serenity Prayer.
This might be a nascent version of the prayer. Of course, this is a
subjective evaluation and others may fail to see any correspondence.
Here are the first four lines of a twelve line hymn:

O Father, give me wisdom, give me strength;
Wisdom to see thy truth - the strength to do;
And grant, through these, thy fair serenity
That stands when others deem my truth untrue.

Citation: Hymn by Edith Theodora Ames, Smith College Monthly, page
118, December 1897.

http://books.google.com/books?id=57MAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA118&#v=onepage&q=fair%20serenity&f=false

The text above has an underlying  three-fold structure. First, it asks
for serenity when the prayer-giver encounters opposition that is
unyielding because "others deem my truth untrue". The Serenity Prayer
contains an analogous request for the serenity to accept that which
cannot be changed.

Second, the prayer-giver asks for "the strength to do". Thus, when
some act should be performed the petitioner requests the strength to
accomplish it. This is parallel to the request for the "courage to
change" in the Serenity Prayer.

Third, the supplicant asks for "wisdom to see thy truth". This wisdom
will allow the prayer-giver to decide what actions can and cannot be
accomplished. Some actions cannot be accomplished because of the
opposition that occurs "when others deem my truth untrue." This is
analogous to the "wisdom to distinguish" in the Serenity Prayer.

The hymn above appears in a later 1919 work of religious education
that may have had wider distribution. Perhaps this appearance or the
Smith College Monthly appearance influenced others consciously or
subconsciously to craft the Serenity Prayer.

Citation: "Behold a Sower: A Book of Religious Teaching for the Home"
selected and arranged by M. Louise C. Hastings, page 126, The Beacon
Press, Boston, 1919.

http://books.google.com/books?id=MdwTAAAAYAAJ&q=serenity#v=snippet&q=%22fair%20serenity%22&f=false

For comparison, here is one version of the serenity prayer:

   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.

I hope that this proves useful to someone. If not, I shall still
endeavor to maintain serenity.

Garson O'Toole

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