![]() I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." He confirmed this in 1967. ![]() In 1950, in response to questions about the already quite widely known prayer's provenance, Niebuhr wrote that the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. The Federal Council of Churches (NCC) included the prayer in a book for army chaplains and servicemen in 1944 and the USO circulated the prayer (with Niebuhr's permission) to soldiers on printed cards during World War II. Various other authors also cited Niebuhr as the source of the prayer from 1937 on. A 1937 Christian student publication attributed the prayer to Niebuhr in the following form, which matches the other earliest published forms in requesting "courage to change" before petitioning for serenity:įather, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other. The earliest printed reference, in 1936, mentions that during a speech, a Miss Mildred Pinkerton "quotes the prayer," as if to indicate it was already in a circulation known to the reporter, or that Pinkerton relayed it as a quote, without mentioning its authorship. Wygal was a longtime YWCA official and all early recorded usages were from women involved in volunteer or educational activities connected to the YWCA. O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other. In 1940, Wygal included the following form of the prayer in a book on worship, attributing it to Niebuhr: Several versions of the prayer then appeared in newspaper articles in the early 1930s written by, or reporting on talks given by, Wygal. The earliest recorded reference to the prayer is a diary entry from 1932 by Winnifred Crane Wygal, a pupil and collaborator of Reinhold Niebuhr, quoting the prayer and attributing it to Niebuhr. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,Īnd Wisdom to know the difference. Įarly versions of the prayer are given no title, but by 1955, it was being called the Serenity Prayer in publications of Alcoholics Anonymous. It also appeared in a sermon of Niebuhr's in the 1944 Book of Prayers and Services for the Armed Forces, while Niebuhr first published it in 1951 in a magazine column. Niebuhr used it in a 1943 sermon at Heath Evangelical Union Church in Heath, Massachusetts. The prayer spread rapidly, often without attribution to Niebuhr, through church groups in the 1930s and 1940s and was adopted and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs. Niebuhr composed the prayer in 1932–1933. Niebuhr's prayer originally asked for courage first, and specifically for changing things that must be changed, not things that simply can be changed:įather, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other. In order to clarify the very different intentions of Alciati's two emblems, the commentaries to the Liber Emblemata written by Diego Lopez (Declaration Magistral, Valencia 16) are quoted in extenso, and then these are compared with contemporary historical accounts of the events at Breda (particularly the reactions to these in Spain) in order to attempt to reveal the likely true significance of Velazquez's Las Lanzas.God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, This motif, however, is found in another of Alciati's emblems, the 167th, which deals with the cautionary subject of "IN DONA HOSTIUM" (Against Gifts from Enemies). Whereas this emblem, "CONCORDIA", somewhat echoes the principal action in Velazquez's epic surrender-scene, nevertheless it does not have any real bearing on the Spaniard's central narrative, namely the exchange of the keys to the city of Breda. Gottlieb) identified the pictorial source for Velazquez's Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas) as having been derived from an emblem included in Andrea Alciati's influential Book of Emblems. Some years ago, two investigators (John Brown and C.
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