KARL PAUL REINHOLD NIEBUHR. Theologian and philosopher, Typed Letter Signed, 1 page measuring approx. 8 ½ in. x 11 in. The letter is signed in ink, “R Niebuhr” and is dated March 25, 1952. The top of the letter features the letterhead of the “International Rescue Committee”. Overall the letter is in great condition and is perfect for framing and display.

The Sander’s Price Guide to Autographs, Fifth Edition, quotes a Reinhold Niebuhr Signed Letter at $100.00. This one, in spectacular condition and featuring the “International Rescue Committee” letterhead, surely enhances its value.

The Serenity Prayer

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.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

-- Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Biography:

Niebuhr, Karl Paul Reinhold (Reinie), (June 21, 1892 - June 1, 1971), theologian and philosopher, was born in Wright City, Mo., to Gustav Niebuhr, a minister in the Evangelical Synod, a Lutheran offshoot of the Prussian Church Union, and Lydia Hosto. Gustav Niebuhr was a highly respected member of the clergy who combined a high level of intelligence with a vital personal piety. His children were raised in a deeply religious home characterized by faith, optimism, and idealism. Reinhold's brother Hulda became a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and his brother Richard became a professor at Yale Divinity School. Only his brother Walter, who became a businessman and newspaper publisher, failed to follow Gustav's example by taking up a career in the ministry or theological education.

Reinhold Niebuhr graduated from Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Ill., in 1910 and Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Grove., Mo., in 1913, both of which were schools for members of the Evangelical Synod. He postponed taking a parish by gaining permission to enter Yale Divinity School. His father died before he entered Yale, causing family hardship. Despite this setback, Niebuhr managed to complete his master's degree in theology in 1915, the same year in which he was ordained a minister in the Evangelical Synod.

Niebuhr served as pastor at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit from 1915 to 1928. What might have been a two-year stay to fulfill his obligation to the Evangelical Synod instead became a thirteen-year high-level drama that brought Niebuhr national attention as a significant leader in both the religious and the political arenas. Detroit's automobile industry was then expanding, led by the Ford Motor Company, and Henry Ford was being praised for paying his employees $5 per day, creating jobs, and stimulating growth in Detroit. While Detroit quickly tripled in size, Niebuhr's church grew from a handful of members to more than eight hundred. Niebuhr said of that period, I cut my eyeteeth fighting Ford. While the world was focusing on the opportunities Ford was bringing to Detroit, Niebuhr was focusing on the injustices that followed in the wake of industrialization. He saw poor housing; no job security, insurance, or retirement benefits; and worker exhaustion from life on the assembly lines. He wrote, No one asks whether an industry which can maintain a reserve of a quarter billion ought not make some provisions for its unemployed. During this time he became very active in the labor movement and was an influential friend to Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union. It was also during this time that Niebuhr developed his socialist ideas, becoming a member of the Socialist party in the late 1920's. He later criticized some of his own socialist ideas but also remained a lifelong critic of capitalism.

His experience in Detroit forced Niebuhr to reconsider the liberal and highly moralistic creed that he had accepted as his Christian faith. In Detroit he began to work out many of his ideas about sin and grace, love and justice, faith and reason, realism and idealism, and the irony and tragedy of history, which would characterize his controversial and influential thinking, preaching, and writing for the rest of his life.

His thinking returned to the biblical myth and the vision of our fallen nature. He viewed sin as pride, and selfish self-centeredness as the root of evil. He saw this sin of pride not only in those who commit obvious crimes, but more dangerously in people who consider themselves good. The human tendency to corrupt the good was the great insight he saw manifested in governments, business, democracies, utopian societies, and even in religious institutions. This position is laid out profoundly in one of his most influential books, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). He was a debunker of hypocrisy and pretense and made the avoidance of self-righteous illusions the center of his thoughts.

Niebuhr did battle with the liberals over what he called their naïve views of sin and the optimism of the social gospel. He did battle with the conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of Scripture and their narrow definition of true religion. He was a liberal thinker who supported many liberal religious and social causes, but his ideas were often too orthodox for most liberals, while his view that the Bible could not be taken literally was too liberal for the conservatives. Likewise, he found himself to be too secular for many of the religious and too religious for the secular.

Niebuhr's thinking was dynamic and dialectical, marked by the process of constant reassessment, and filled with paradox. So too was his life. He became head of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation in the late 1920's even though he was not a pacifist true believer. He was a part of the social gospel school of Christianity, which professed an optimistic faith in human progress and the belief that evil is socially caused and therefore socially alleviable; he also flirted with Marxism as part of his critique of individualism and naïve political optimism. He also helped found the Fellowship of Socialist Christians in the late 1920's just at the time he was becoming critical of liberal and Marxist illusions.

He became a member of the faculty at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1928, where he assumed the chair of Christian ethics even though he lacked a Ph.D. and had no obvious scholarly competence in this field. Later he humbly asserted that it was a full decade before I could stand before a class and answer the searching questions of the students. His An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), however, in which he interpreted Christian love (agape) as the possible impossibility, demonstrated once and for all his intellectual and theological depth.

Niebuhr was as imaginative and energetic in the classroom as he had been in the pulpit. He was extremely popular with his students and always seemed to have a group of students gathered around him. His office door was always open. He was in demand on the lecture circuit, kept up a lively interest in applying religious values to everyday issues, and devoted most weekends to college preaching.

His life took a major turn on Dec. 22, 1931, when he married the intelligent and attractive Ursula Keppel-Compton, a learned and religious woman who eventually became chairman of the Religious Department at Barnard College; they had two children.

One Sunday in 1934 he preached in a small church near his summer home in Heath, Mass., where he wrote his now-famous Serenity Prayer. A neighbor asked for a copy, which Niebuhr gave him after saying he had no further use for it. It was published as part of a pamphlet the following year and has since been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and numerous other organizations. He wrote: O God, give us/serenity to accept what cannot be changed,/courage to change what should be changed,/and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

In 1939 he was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He lectured on the nature and destiny of humanity, comparing biblical with classical and modern ideas of our nature and destiny. In these lectures and the Beecher Lectures he gave at Yale in the late 1940's, he argued that modern views were similar to classical idealism, but that the biblical view of human nature was superior to both classical and modern views.

In 1941 the first issue of Christianity and Crisis, edited by Niebuhr, was published. This small, unpretentious journal was a biweekly devoted to religious and social concerns. Influential far beyond its circulation numbers, its contributors included the best social, political, and religious thinkers of the time, and it was read by many of the leaders in these fields. Niebuhr wrote that his journal was devoted to an exposition of our Christian faith in its relation to world events. For more than twenty-five years this journal brought a religious viewpoint to bear on such issues as civil rights, the labor movement, women's equality, government, and war and peace.

Following World War II Niebuhr's writings and lectures focused more on religious realism and what it meant in the international sphere. He became influential in Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), which he helped found, and through which he helped to influence men such as George Kennan and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The idea of political containment of Communism was born in this circle of people.

Niebuhr wrote about the possible impossibility of love, and his life's work was an attempt to discover the proper relationship between the forces of love, power, and justice. In the pursuit of the good society, he believed the commitment to democratic principals and the avoidance of self-righteous illusions was society's best hope in achieving progress and justice.

Only in appearance can Niebuhr be described as ordinary; in every other way he was extraordinary. His intellect in the classroom and the pulpit was unmatched, yet his gentle spirit and wit balanced his analytical powers. His words came out in rapid fire, but he could listen with astute rapture. In conversation he might have tugged at an ear, pulled on his ample nose, smoothed his bald spot, or clamped a pipe between his teeth; his genial humor was unfailingly inviting.

During his life Niebuhr wrote almost twenty books and contributed more than 1,500 articles to journals and magazines. In 1952 Niebuhr had a stroke that slowed him down, but he continued to teach, write, and speak out. He retired in 1960 and moved to Stockbridge, Mass., where he carried on his efforts to teach and reform until his death.

• Beyond Tragedy by Reinhold Niebuhr (author of serenity prayer)

  (ENTIRE BOOK) This volume is vintage Niebuhr (author of serenity prayer) in that it sounds a recurring chord in his work, that the Christian view of history passes through the sense of the tragic caused by human sinfulness to a hope which is beyond tragedy due to the power of God to overcome.

• Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr

  (ENTIRE BOOK) In this book Dr. Niebuhr (author of serenity prayer) seeks to interpret the problems of Christian ethics in the light of historic conceptions and the modern situation. Accepting the law of love as the basic criterion of Christian ethics, he draws a distinction between the absolute expression of this law given in the Christian gospel and the ideal of justice which must be regarded as one approximation of the law of love in a world in which life is set against life and perfect love always remains an impossible possibility. Dr. Niebuhr thus seeks to set all moral and social problems under the tension of a religious ideal, avoiding the moral complacency and the social utopianism of secular idealism and the sentimentality of liberal, as well as the enervating pessimism of orthodox, Christianity.

  The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

  (ENTIRE BOOK) The thesis of this volume grew out of Niebuhr’s conviction that democracy has a more compelling justification and requires a more realistic vindication than is given it by the liberal culture with which it has been associated in modern history. The author’s political philosophy is informed by the belief that a Christian view of human nature is more adequate for the development of a democratic society than either the optimism with which democracy has become historically associated, or the moral cynicism which inclines human communities to tyrannical political strategies

  The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

  (ENTIRE BOOK) In spite of the hopes of our Puritan and Jeffersonian forefathers that America would be an innocent nation, the United States has ironically become a very powerful nation in a great power struggle wherein innocence is impossible, and the virtue of a responsible use of power includes the risk of using the atomic bomb.

  The Self and the Dramas of History by Reinhold Niebuhr

  (ENTIRE BOOK) In this volume Professor Niebuhr explores the philosophical and theological relationship of the human self to itself, others and God, with particular reference to both Hellenic and Hebraic frames of reference in Western thought, and as seen in the evolution of communities.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian Faith and the World Crisis(793)
  Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics(1451)
  Interpretation of Christian Ethics(822)
  Beyond Tragedy(770)
  The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness(553)
  The Irony of American History(539)
  The King’s Chapel and the King’s Court(407)
  Our Secularized Civilization(824)
  The Self and the Dramas of History(367)
  Religiosity and the Christian Faith(440)
  Let Liberal Churches Stop Fooling Themselves(266)

  The Serenity Prayer is the common name for an originally untitled prayer, most commonly attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The prayer has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs. While Niebuhr's authorship was once believed to be secure,^[1] Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred R. Shapiro in 2008 published evidence that puts elements of Niebuhr's claim in doubt and shows that a version of the prayer was in existence no later than 1936.^[2]

  Contents

   History and text

   Reinhold Niebuhr

  According to the most common attribution, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the prayer for use in a sermon, perhaps as early as 1934. He is quoted in the January, 1950 Grapevine^[3] as saying the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself."^[4]

  The prayer is cited by Niebuhr in his book: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses,^[5] and by Niebuhr's daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, in her book The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War:^[6]

  The Serenity Prayer goes like this --

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference

  In his book Niebuhr recalls that his prayer was circulated by the Federal Council of Churches and later by the United States armed forces.^[7]

  Reinhold Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence; printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version.

  An approximate version (apparently quoted from memory) appears in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1942, p. 23, which asks for the author of the quotation; and a reply in the same column in the issue for August 2, 1942, p. 19, where the quotation is attributed to Niebuhr and an unidentified printed text is quoted as follows:

  O God and Heavenly Father,

  Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; the courage to change that which can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

  The prayer became widely known when it was adopted in modified form by Alcoholics Anonymous; Grapevine, The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, identified Niebuhr as the author (January 1950, pp. 6-7), and the AA web site continues to identify Niebuhr as the author.^[4] Niebuhr himself did not publish the Serenity Prayer until 1951, in one of his magazine columns, although it had previously appeared under his name in 1944, when it was included in a Federal Council of Churches book for army chaplains and servicemen.^[2]

  Niebuhr's daughter Elisabeth Sifton thought that he had first written it in 1943; his wife wrote in an unpublished memorandum that it had been written in 1941 or 1942, adding that it may have been used in prayers as early as 1934, although it was not then in circulation.^[2] However, Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred R. Shapiro in 2008 published evidence showing that versions of the Serenity Prayer^[8] were in use as early as 1936, years before it was first attributed to Niebuhr in 1942.^[2] Curiously, all of these early examples were from women, typically women involved in volunteer or educational activities and none of them with apparent church affiliations.^[9] Shapiro suggests that Niebuhr most likely unconsciously adapted the prayer from existing formulations of unknown origin, although he acknowledges the possibility that Niebuhr introduced the prayer by the mid-1930s in an unpublished or private setting.^[2] Sifton, in a response published with Shapiro's article, argues that the prayer must have come from one of the tradition's most gifted practitioners, which she believes could only be her father.^[10]

   Other claims

  The philosopher W.W. Bartley juxtaposes Niebuhr's prayer with a Mother Goose rhyme (1695) expressing a similar sentiment, but without comment:^[11]

  For every ailment under the sun

  There is a remedy, or there is none;

  If there be one, try to find it;

  If there be none, never mind it.

  The prayer's origin is often attributed to Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), but this attribution may be the result of a misunderstanding of a plagiarism of the prayer by Theodor Wilhelm, an ex-Nazi professor at the University of Kiel. Wilhelm printed a German version of the prayer as his own work in his book, Wendepunkt der poltitischen Erziehung; he published the book under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oetinger" (the book did not pretend to be the work of the 18th-century Oetinger; the name was merely a pseudonym, apparently chosen because the author's wife was descended from pastors who shared the theology of the 18th-century Oetinger). Theodor Wilhelm was apparently unaware that the US Army and the USO had been distributing the prayer in Germany since the end of World War II, and later writers who were unaware that "Friedrich Oetinger" was a pseudonym (even though the book was clearly written by a 20th-century author) confused this name with the eighteenth-century Oetinger. Wilhelm apparently chose to publish under a pseudonym because his Nazi past was widely known in Germany at the time.

  On a website called Our Special Net, is in an article purportedly reprinted with the permission of a Dr. John Sasser,^[12] photographs are shown, said to be of a tavern, built in 1849 in Bergen-Enkheim, Germany. The words of the Serenity Prayer are shown written in German above three windows of the first floor.^[13] Close examination of the photographs shows distinctive "watermark" type markings around all the texts and also an additional line of text, unaccounted for in the article, which has been obscured; the lettering, with its sharp outlines, seems to have been painted recently, although the article reports a resident remembering the text being there between 1920 and 1930 when she memorised it as an 11 year old. The essay repeats the confused report that the prayer was written by Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, based on the similar pseudonym used by a twentieth-century author who claimed to have written the prayer (see above).

  Other spurious claims for the authorship of the prayer include one that the prayer was written by the Christian philosopher and theologian Boethius just before his execution in the year 524 or 525.

  In the movie Billy Jack, authorship of the prayer is mistakenly given to St. Francis of Assisi.

   Adaptations and expansions

  The prayer was brought to the attention of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939 by an early member.^[14] The prayer was liked by Bill W (William Griffith Wilson), co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and the staff. It was printed out, handed around and has been part of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since. It has also been used in Narcotics Anonymous and other Twelve-step programs.

  Niebuhr's original text, from in Elisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer appears near the top of this page. The slightly edited Alcoholics Anonymous version below omits the word "grace" from the first line, shortens some of the remainder, and sets out the prayer in the form of verses:

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

  courage to change the things I can,

  and wisdom to know the difference.

  From the AA book Twelve and Twelve, Step Three.

  This is the entire prayer:

  God grant me the serenity

  To accept the things I cannot change;

  Courage to change the things I can;

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  Living one day at a time;

  Enjoying one moment at a time;

  Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

  Taking, as He did, this sinful world

  As it is, not as I would have it;

  Trusting that He will make all things right

  If I surrender to His Will;

  So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

  And supremely happy with Him

  Forever and ever in the next.

   Allusions to the Prayer

  • The back cover of the Neil Young album Re-ac-tor has the prayer in Latin: 'Deus, dona mihi serenitatem accipere res quae non possum mutare, fortitudinem mutare res quae possum, atque sapientiam differentiam cognoscere.'
  • On the back cover of Whitney Houston's self-titled debut album.
  • In the song, "Higher Power", by Boston.
  • In the song, "Feel so different" (1990), by Sinéad O'Connor.
  • In the song, "Gotta Make It To Heaven," by 50 Cent.
  • In the song, "What I Cannot Change," by LeAnn Rimes, from her album, Family.
  • In the intro, "Loving" of India Arie's third album "Testimony Vol 1 - Life And Relationship."
  • As a track on Goodie MOb's debut album Soul Food.
  • In the book, "Angels & Demons," by Dan Brown, quoted by the Camerlengo (although credited to St. Francis).
  • In the book, Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.
  • AA's book, "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions", has the prayer: 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done.'
  • In the game World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, one of the Blood Elves' speech recordings has one elf reciting the prayer. He breaks down half way through, overcome with a craving for magic, which Blood Elves are addicted to.
  • The Israeli Rapper Subliminal adapts the prayer into his song "Tikvah" (Hope) about the Israeli wars and terrorism.
  • The hardcore punk band Blood for Blood has an album named after the prayer, and the first and last tracks of the album are the serenity prayer being recited by the band's lead singer.
  • Olivia Newton-John's CD Stronger than Before includes a setting of the prayer, titled "Serenity".
  • In Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Season 6, episode 22 entitled "Renewal" first aired Monday, May 21, 2007. It was recited during a prayer group.
  • In the film Billy Jack, the lead female character, Jean Roberts, recites the prayer.
  • In the King of the Hill episode How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alamo, Principal Moss says 'Are you familiar with the serenity prayer Hank? Cuz this is one of those things I can't change.'
  • In the episode of the TV show Summerland titled "The Wisdom to Know the Difference," Eva teaches the prayer to her nephew Derrick to console him.
  • In the novel, ’Salem's Lot, by Stephen King
  • In the movie: Changing Lanes, Samuel L. Jackson, in the character of Doyle Gipson, recites the first section - with possible reference to the fact that he is an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Another movie in which Samuel L. Jackson recites it is Kevin Reynolds' 187.
  • Recited by the character Ted Schmidt in the Queer as Folk episode 405, then quoted by character Melanie Marcus.
  • When they are on tour, Robbie Williams and his band recite the prayer together before every gig, replacing "God" with "Elvis".
  • In the book, Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, when Richard Wakefield and Nicole Desjardins are back together in New York.
  • Recited by the character Owen Harper in the Torchwood episode Adrift.
  • It can be heard in the Weeds episode "Dead In The Nethers", during the MA meeting scene.
  • It can be heard in the Dexter episode "An Inconvenient Lie", at the end of the NA meeting scene.
  • It can be heard in an episode of Brothers & Sisters at a support group scene.
  • A variation of this was used in Grand Theft Auto IV
  • The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes made a reference to this prayer: "Know what I pray for? The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't and the incapacity to tell the difference."
  • In the 2007 movie "Mr.Brooks", the character Mr Brooks (played by Kevin Costner) recites the Serenity prayer to himself throughout the movie- alluding to his 'addiction', albeit not to the conventional addictions of alcohol or drugs, despite the ties this prayer has with both AA and NA.

  References

  1. ^ See, e.g., Justin Kaplan, ed., Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 735 (17th ed. 2002) (attributing the prayer to Niebuhr in 1943).
  2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Fred R. Shapiro, Who Wrote the Serenity Prayer, Yale Alumni Magazine (July/August 2008).
  3. ^ The Grapevine. "The Serenity Prayer", The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, January 1950.
  4. ^ ^{a b} The Origin of our Serenity Prayer, AA History & Trivia (visited July 14, 2008).
  5. ^ The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robert McAfee Brown, page 251, Yale University Press; New Ed edition (September 10, 1987)
  6. ^ The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War, Elisabeth Sifton, page 277, W. W. Norton & Company (January 30, 2005)
  7. ^ [1]
  8. ^ The Serenity Meme, Language Log (visited July 14, 2008) (contrasting various early versions of the Serenity Prayer).
  9. ^ Fred R. Shapiro, New Evidence, Yale Alumni Magazine (July/August 2008).
  10. ^ Elisabeth Sifton, It Takes a Master To Make a Masterpiece, Yale Alumni Magazine (July/August 2008).
  11. ^ W.W. Bartley, The Retreat to Commitment, p. 35, Open Court Publishing Company; New Ed edition (April 1990)
  12. ^ Dr. John Estep Sasser [2][3]
  13. ^ F.C. OETINGER AND THE SERENITY PRAYER [4]
  14. ^ The Grapevine "The Serenity Prayer"