As published in August/September 1992 BOX-459

For many years, long after the Serenity Prayer
became attached to the very fabric of the
Fellowship's life and thought, its exact
origin, its actual author, have played a
tantalizing game of hide and seek with
researchers, both in and out of A.A. The facts
of how it came to be used by A.A. a half
century ago are much easier to pinpoint.

Early in 1942, writes Bill W., in A.A. Comes
of Age, a New York member, Jack, brought to
everyone's attention a caption in a routine
New York Herald Tribune obituary that read:

"God grant us the serenity to accept the
things we cannot change, courage to change
the things we can, and wisdom to know the
difference."

Everyone in A.A.'s burgeoning office on
Manhattan's Vesey Street was struck by the
power and wisdom contained in the prayer's
thoughts. "Never had we seen so much A.A. in
so few words," Bill writes. Someone suggested
that the prayer be printed on a small, wallet-
sized card, to be included in every piece of
outgoing mail. Ruth Hock, the Fellowship's
first (and nonalcoholic) secretary, contacted
Henry S., a Washington D.C. member, and a
professional printer, asking him what it
would cost to order a bulk printing.

Henry's enthusiastic response was to print
500 copies of the prayer, with the remark:
"Incidentally, I am only a heel when I'm
drunk ... so naturally, there could be no
charge for anything of this nature."

"With amazing speed," writes Bill, "the
Serenity Prayer came into general use and
took its place alongside our two other
favorites, the Lord's Prayer and the Prayer
of St. Francis.

Thus did the "accidental" noticing of an
unattributed prayer, printed alongside a
simple obituary of an unknown individual,
open the way toward the prayer's daily use
by thousands upon thousands of A.A.s
worldwide.

But despite years of research by numerous
individuals, the exact origin of the prayer
is shrouded in overlays of history, even
mystery. Moreover, every time a researcher
appears to uncover the definitive source,
another one crops up to refute the former's
claim, at the same time that it raises new,
intriguing facts. What is undisputed is the
claim of authorship by the theologian Dr.
Reinhold Niebuhr, who recounted to interviewers
on several occasions that he had written the
prayer as a "tag line" to a sermon he had
delivered on Practical Christianity. Yet even
Dr. Niebuhr added at least a touch of doubt to
his claim, when he told one interviewer, "Of
course, it may have been spooking around for
years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I
honestly do believe that I wrote it myself."

Early in World War II, with Dr. Niebuhr's
permission, the prayer was printed on cards
and distributed to the troops by the U.S.O.
By then it had also been reprinted by the
National Council of Churches, as well as
Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dr. Niebuhr was quite accurate in suggesting
that the prayer may have been "spooking around"
for centuries. "No one can tell for sure who
first wrote the Serenity Prayer," writes Bill
in A.A. Comes of Age. "Some say it came from
the early Greeks; others think it was from the
pen of an anonymous English poet; still others
claim it was written by an American Naval
officer ...." Other attributions have gone as
far afield as ancient Sanskrit texts, Aristotle,
St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Spinoza.
One A.A. member came across the Roman philo-
sopher Cicero's Six Mistakes of Man, one of
which reads: "The tendency to worry about
things that cannot be changed or corrected."

No one has actually found the prayer's text
among the writings of these alleged, original
sources. What are probably truly ancient, as
with the above quote from Cicero, are the
prayer's themes of acceptance, courage to
change what can be changed and the free
letting go of what is out of one's ability
to change.

The search for pinpointing origins of the
prayer has been like the peeling of an onion.
For example, in July 1964, the A.A. Grapevine
received a clipping of an article that had
appeared in the Paris Herald Tribune, by the
paper's correspondent in Koblenz, then in West
Germany. "In a rather dreary hall of a
converted hotel, overlooking the Rhine at
Koblenz," the correspondent wrote, is a tablet
inscribed with the following words:

"God give me the detachment to accept those
things I cannot alter; the courage to alter
those things I can alter; and the wisdom to
distinguish the one thing from the other."

These words were attributed, the correspondent
wrote, to an 18th century pietist, Friedrich
Oetinger (1702-1782). Moreover, the plaque
was affixed to a wall in a hall where modern
day troops and company commanders of the new
German army were trained "in the principles of
management and . . . behavior of the soldier
citizen in a democratic state."

Here, at last, thought A.A. researchers, was
concrete evidence -- quote, author, date -- of
the Serenity Prayer's original source. That
conviction went unchallenged for fifteen years.
Then in 1979 came material, shared with
G.S.O.'s Beth K., by Peter T., of Berlin.
Peter's research threw the authenticity of
18th century authorship out the window. But
it also added more tantalizing facts about
the plaque's origin.

"The first form of the prayer," Beth wrote back,
originated with Boethius, the Roman philosopher
(480-524 A.D.), and author of the book,
Consolations of Philosophy. The prayer's
thoughts were used from then on by "religious-
like people who had to suffer first by the
English, later the Prussian puritans . . .
then the Pietists from southwest Germany . . .
then A.A.s . . . and through them, the West
Germans after the Second World War."

Moreover, Beth continued, after the war, a
north German University professor, Dr. Theodor
Wilhelm, who had started a revival of
spiritual life in West Germany, had acquired
the "little prayer" from Canadian soldiers.
He had written a book in which he had included
the prayer, without attribution, but which
resulted in the prayer's appearance in many
different places, such as army officer's halls,
schools and other institutions. The professor's
nom de plume? Friedrich Oetinger, the 18th
century pietist! Wilhelm had apparently
selected the pseudonym Oetinger out of admira-
tion of his south German forebears.

Back in 1957, another G.S.O. staff member,
Anita R., browsing in a New York bookstore,
came upon a beautifully bordered card, on
which was printed:

"Almighty God, our Heavenly Father,
give us Serenity to accept what cannot be changed,
Courage to change what should be changed,
and Wisdom to know the one from the other;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

The card, which came from a bookshop in
England, called it the "General's Prayer,"
dating it back to the fourteenth century!
There are still other claims, and no doubt
more unearthings will continue for years to
come.

In any event, Mrs. Reinhold Niebuhr told an
interviewer that her husband was definitely
the prayer's author, that she had seen the
piece of paper on which he had written it,
and that her husband -- now that there were
numerous variations of wording -- "used
and preferred" the following form:

"God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other."

While all of these searchings are intriguing,
challenging, even mysterious, they pale in
significance when compared to the fact that,
for fifty years, the prayer has become so
deeply imbedded into the heart and soul of
A.A. thinking, living, as well as its
philosophy, that one could almost believe
that the prayer originated in the A.A.
experience itself.

Bill made this very point years ago, in thanking
an A.A. friend for the plaque upon which the
prayer was inscribed: "In creating A.A., the
Serenity Prayer has been a most valuable
building block -- indeed a corner-stone."

And speaking of cornerstones, and mysteries
and "coincidences" -- the building where
G.S.O. is now located borders on a stretch
of New York City's 120th St., between
Riverside Drive and Broadway (where the
Union Theological Seminary is situated).
It's called Reinhold Niebuhr Place.

\LD Pierce
aabibliography.coim