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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The Serenity Prayer
Topic: Wisdom & Understanding
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, born Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr on June 21, 1892, in Wright City, Missouri, was a prominent American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. After graduating from Elmhurst College in 1910, he earned his seminary degree from Eden Theological Seminary in 1913 and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1914. Ordained in the German Evangelical Synod of North America, Niebuhr served as a pastor in Detroit before joining Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1928, where he taught Christian ethics for over three decades. His work bridged theology and social ethics, addressing pressing issues of his time.
Niebuhr’s major works, including Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941-1943), explored human nature’s complexities, balancing creativity with destructiveness and altruism with self-interest. His reflections on original sin and humanity’s limitations shaped his critiques of political and moral systems. He argued that justice was achievable through democracy, famously stating, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” His ideas deeply influenced responses to historical events like the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.
Niebuhr’s influence extended beyond academia. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, he remains well-known for penning The Serenity Prayer, embraced by recovery communities and others. His reflections on the intersection of faith, politics, and human nature left a lasting impact. Niebuhr passed away on June 1, 1971, but his ideas continue to shape ethical and theological discussions today.
The Serenity Prayer
Niebuhr, Reinhold, and Robert McAfee Brown. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 251.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Theme: Wisdom
About This Reinhold Niebuhr Quotation [Commentary]
Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer is a concise appeal for grace, discernment, and balance in life’s complexities. The opening lines—“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”—capture the tension between human agency and the inevitability of life’s challenges. True wisdom, Niebuhr suggests, is understanding when to act and when to let go. By invoking divine assistance, he emphasizes the humility required to navigate these choices.
The broader context of the prayer offers guidance for living with intention and grace. Lines such as “Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace” encourage embracing life as it is—imperfect and unpredictable—while trusting in a higher order. Niebuhr highlights the courage needed not only to change circumstances but also to endure trials with faith. His reference to Jesus—“Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it”—underscores the surrender of personal will to divine will as a source of peace.
The Serenity Prayer resonates widely because it addresses universal struggles: the desire for control, the challenge of acceptance, and the need for meaning. Niebuhr shows that acceptance, courage, and discernment are interconnected. Acceptance requires courage, courage demands discernment, and discernment stems from humility. This prayer, grounded in Christian faith, has also found relevance in recovery programs and spiritual communities, offering guidance for navigating life’s uncertainties with grace and trust.
Elisabeth Sifton Niebuhr’s Commentary About The Origins of the Serenity Prayer [Commentary]
Reinhold Niebuhr is credited with authoring The Serenity Prayer, a piece deeply rooted in wisdom. His discussions in “The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses,” along with his daughter Elisabeth Sifton Niebuhr’s extensive exploration in “The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War,” affirm this connection. Elisabeth’s book examines the prayer’s history, variations, and the embodiment of wisdom within its core message. She recounts her father’s experience with the prayer, including its adoption by the Federal Council of Churches and Alcoholics Anonymous.
”… The embarrassment, particularly, was occasioned by the incessant correspondence about a prayer I had composed years before, which the old Federal Council of Churches had used and which later was printed on small cards to give to soldiers. Subsequently Alcoholics Anonymous adopted it as its official prayer. The prayer reads: ‘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.’”
—Reinhold Niebuhr [Elisabeth Sifton Niebuhr in The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War].
Robert H. King About Niebuhr’s “Eloquence and Authority”
On the question “Who wrote the Serenity Prayer?” Reinhold Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, has the better of the theological argument. The famous prayer succinctly captures the tension at the heart of his ethics, which to the consternation of his critics of both the left and the right combined a realistic view of human nature (“serenity to accept the things that cannot be changed”) with an idealistic commitment to social justice (“courage to change the things that should be changed”) in a situation of profound moral ambiguity requiring humility and discernment (“the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other”). This ethical framework underlies his classic work Moral Man and Immoral Society, published in 1932, the book that first brought him to national attention. No one in America was espousing such a theological perspective at that time, certainly not with the eloquence and authority that he did. It is not surprising that the prayer might have gone through many variations of wording before it found its definitive formulation or that persons hearing the prayer following one of his powerful talks or sermons might have been moved to share it with others.
—Robert H. King [Yale Alumni Magazine, ’60 B Div, ’65 PhD].
Commentary About Reinhold Niebuhr by Arthur Schlesinger Jr:
Niebuhr brilliantly applied the tragic insights of Augustine and Calvin to moral and political issues. He poured out his thoughts in a stream of powerful books, articles and sermons. His major theological work was his two-volume “Nature and Destiny of Man” (1941, 1943). The evolution of his political thought can be traced in three influential books: “Moral Man and Immoral Society” (1932); “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense” (1944); “The Irony of American History” (1952).
In these and other works, Niebuhr emphasized the mixed and ambivalent character of human nature — creative impulses matched by destructive impulses, regard for others overruled by excessive self-regard, the will to power, the individual under constant temptation to play God to history. This is what was known in the ancient vocabulary of Christianity as the doctrine of original sin. Niebuhr summed up his political argument in a single powerful sentence: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” (Niebuhr, in the fashion of the day, used “man” not to exculpate women but as shorthand for “human being.”)
—Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr, Sept. 18, 2005].
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