The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War [Paperback]

Elisabeth Sifton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2005

A landmark work on the liberal ideals of the progressive American tradition, reaffirming their relevance for today: "A major contribution to the intellectual history of modernity."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

In 1943, the renowned theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer for a church service in a New England village. Its appeal for grace, courage, and wisdom soon became famous the world over. Here, Elisabeth Sifton, Niebuhr's daughter, reclaims the true history of the Serenity Prayer and, in a poignant narrative, tells of efforts made by the brave men and women who, like Niebuhr, devoted their lives to the causes of social justice, racial equality, and religious freedom in a world spiraling into and out of economic depression and war. Recalling her father's efforts to warn the clergy of the dangers of fascism, and of America's own social and spiritual crises, Sifton reminds us of what is possible when liberal, open-minded leaders—not zealous fundamentalists or hawkish plutocrats—shape the conscience of the nation. The Serenity Prayer is itself a meditation on the power of prayer in morally compromised, unstable times. A New York Times Notable Book.

"Crossing all religious boundaries, the Serenity Prayer may be the best-loved prayer in America. Why? Elisabeth Sifton gives the best answer by remembering a life lived in fidelity to the prayer, the life of her father, the prayer's author, Reinhold Niebuhr. Candidly observed, brimful of energy and wit, this memoir becomes by its end a moving meditation on the dark heart of the twentieth century."—Jack Miles, author of Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God "Elisabeth Sifton's The Serenity Prayer is in part a memoir of her father, Reinhold Niebuhr, in part a meditation on the dilemmas of religious faith in the contemporary world. Beautifully written, filled with perceptive insights and wry humor, it is a major contribution to the intellectual history of modernity."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The Serenity Prayer is an adventure in applied theology, family history, and a nation's search for meaning. Elisabeth Sifton has written a deeply engaging work of memory and imagination; a broadside critique of politics and religion worthy of the name Niebuhr; a humane meditation on prayer; memoir at its best; nothing less than literature."—James Carroll "It is forbidden to look back with envy upon Reinhold Niehbur and the other religious intellectuals brought back to life so vividly in Elisabeth Sifton's important book, because the world in which they lived was truly dark. But they were, truly, children of light. In their intrepid, learned, and humane minds, ideas of God mingled naturally with ideas of liberalism: so how can one not read The Serenity Prayer without a tremor of nostalgia? Here are men and women praying as intelligently as they were thinking and thinking as intensely as they were praying. Sifton's steadfast and affecting memoir leaves me not just admiring her father, it leaves me also loving him."—Leon Wieselthier "[An] ebullient and shrewd meditation on faith and social action....A peaceable state of mind simply accompanies the reader as he ends this effortlessly elegant, uniformly sensible paean to the human faith that Sifton inherited."—Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer "A timely reminder of the wealth and diversity of the American religious tradition."—Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs 12 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's famous 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") has, Sifton notes, the distinction of being the world's most misattributed text. In a sometimes frustrating, sometimes illuminating and sometimes tedious memoir, Niebuhr's daughter-an eminent book editor and currently senior vice-president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux- sets the prayer in the context of her father's life and work. She traces the prayer's birth to its origins during summer services in a New England village church in 1943. The prayer clearly reveals Niebuhr's Christian realism, which asserts that every human effort is tainted with sin or the inevitable human failure to be perfect. Drawing on her memories of her father and her readings of his books, letters, sermons and prayers, Sifton chronicles her father's development as a theologian who courageously challenged the facile liberalism of American churches, the complicity of German churches with the Nazis and the simplistic solutions of Marxism and socialism. Sifton reminisces about many of the major political, theological, and intellectual figures who were a part of her upbringing (Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, W.H. Auden, Felix Frankfurter, R.H. Tawney, Isaiah Berlin) and with whom her father moved shoulder to shoulder in the world. Despite some unfocused writing as she moves from personal recollection to theological reflection, Sifton offers an intimate portrait of growing up with one of America's most important theologians and demonstrates the timelessness of Niebuhr's struggle for justice and mercy in the world. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

The Christian writer and activist Reinhold Niebuhr has influenced millions with his Serenity Prayer, which was composed in the depths of the Second World War, circulated to the troops, and, in edited form, adopted as the mantra for Alcoholics Anonymous. Sifton, Niebuhr's daughter, sets out to correct misreadings of "Pa's" prayer and to bring to life the extraordinary intellectual community of friends (such as Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Felix Frankfurter) who surrounded Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary and at his summer home in Massachusetts. Sifton's account is not free of a certain Episcopalian hauteur (she itemizes the shortcomings of more uncouth Protestant denominations), but she gives her portrait of the time a resonance appropriate to our own. After Eisenhower's election in 1952, Niebuhr warns his daughter, "You've never lived under a Republican administration. You don't know how terrible this is going to be."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393326624
• ISBN-13: 978-0393326628
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #290,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America: A Spiritual Topography, December 11, 2003

By 

Jonathan Diamond (Shelburne Falls, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (Hardcover)

Easy reading is damn hard writing. The name of the writer who made that observation escapes me but he could easily have been talking about Elisabeth Sifton's THE SERENITY PRAYER, the author's moving, tender memoir of her father theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. In this beautifully written book on the origin of her father's most well known (and widely circulated) words, Sifton provides us with a Rosetta Stone for deciphering some of the most important political and historical events of the twentieth century. Events that inspired men and women like her father to dedicate their lives to the fight against facsism and a world free of bigotry, prejudice, and injustice. Whether standing up to the anti-communist hysteria of McCarthy era America, the oppressive, totalitarian government of the Soviet Union or the insane nuclear weapons programs of both countries, Niebuhr and the circle of activists and intellectuals who were drawn to his side were people who put principles above personalities. As a consequence, Sifton's father found allies in every nook and cranny of the American (and global) political and cultural landscape. Christians, Jews, East, West, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, Southerners, Northerners, black, white, wealthy, poor, Niebuhr's followers and supporters cut across traditional class, color, gender and religious lines.

Unlike other chronicles of this era in American history that use important battles, summits, documents, elections, trials, discoveries, etc. to launch their stories from, Sifton utilizes a nondescript prayer her father delivered at the Heath Church in a quiet town of the same name in Western Massachusetts as the back drop for her narrative. This beucolic New England village where the Niebuhr's spent their summers is the canvas upon which Sifton paints her vivid images and memories of childhood, her father, and the causes he, and, in fact, their entire family, devoted their lives to. A colleague in attendance at the sermon and deeply moved by the prayer asked him the origins of the words and where he might find them. Niebuhr said they were his and responded to this request by simply handing his friend his notes with the prayer written down on them. Eventually the prayer made its way to a (then) fledgling group called Alcoholics Anonymous. AA asked Niebuhr's permission to use his words as a staple of their spiritual "fellowship." Not believing anyone can "own" the words of a prayer anymore than one can own the sea or the air, the great theologian said yes again; and the rest is, as we say, "history".

What Sifton gives us in THE SERENITY PRAYER is an intimate biography of a man who was, arguably, the greatest theologian of his generation, but what she gifts us is a spiritual topography of our nations soul. She accomplishes this by artfully weaving the story of the Serenity Prayer, her father's rich intellectual life and community and world history into a single riveting narrative. This literary device, if you want to call it that, allows us to see how world events can effect the lives of ordinary citizens as well as how the myraid and seemingly innocuous choices we make on an almost daily basis--what philosopher John Shotter calls 'the cultural politics of everyday life'--ultimately shape our world and the outcome of history. Had this exceptional title been published at any other time in our secular nation's short history it, no doubt, would have been highly critically acclaimed and prominently displayed, along with other intellectual and religious nostalgia, on a tall shelf in the back of book stores. However, given current events taking place at home and abroad the author's message is not just an important one, it is a timely one.

THE SERENITY PRAYER offers us more than an insightful look back at our past, it provides us with a road map for our future. I pray we have the courage and wisdom to use it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Subtitle Says It All, March 1, 2005

By 

Yours Truly (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (Paperback)

Author Elisabeth Sifton would be annoyed no end to see that seven items-ranging from mugs to a coat rack, all emblazoned with the truncated version of the Serenity Prayer- are offered alongside her book on Amazon.com. This is just the sort of kitsch she and her mother, Ursula Keppel-Compton Niebuhr, an Oxford-educated theologian and historian in her own right, deplored. The prayer written by the renowned Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, was deeper, broader and less personally soothing than followers of 12 Step Programs might surmise, Sifton asserts.

I often found the tone of Sifton's memoir to be precious and elitist in just the way conservatives often characterize liberals. Nevertheless, I read on, and I would encourage you to do so, because she has written a vibrant history of liberal religious thought, action and inaction in the years leading up to World War II, through the war and into the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations with their virulent McCarthyism.

Reading this book in 2005 gives me a chill as I recall the rhetoric of the contemporary religious right after 9-11, the build-up to the war in Iraq, and the subsequent torturing of our prisoners. Reinhold Neibuhr would be mightily discouraged by our lack of historical memory, and that is what his daughter seeks to restore.

As a son of a first-generation German-speaking midwestern Lutheran minister, Niebuhr had remarkable insight into the dynamics of the fascism that took root in Germany and elsewhere. Niebuhr disparaged the sunny false optimism of most German and American clergy, which masked religious and racial bigotry in mainstream white congregations. An avid ecumenist, he crusaded against anti-Semitism and racism on the right, but he was equally frustrated by a blind adherence to pacifism by many clergy on the left. It was not surprising that he found a home teaching at the multi-denominational Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

We meet Niebuhr's notable friends, colleagues, students and opponents; see them spar, most often against reactionary forces, sometimes with each other, and often with their own consciences. Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrives from Germany an arrogant student only to be humbled by life, which he eventually sacrifices in an failed attempt to topple Hitler.

To the American right, Niebuhr and many of his cohorts were dangerous radicals, unpatriotic and ungodly. They were never, Sifton reminds us, the face of broader Christianity in those troubled times, but they demonstrate that triumph is not the only worthy goal of such work. In fact, Niebuhr warned against unmindful triumphalism at the war's conclusion. By the end of this book, I was grateful for the elite institutions and associations that had given Sifton the tools and intellectual rigor to write this memoir, but I suspect she could learn something from the cruder experience of those who repeat the Serenity Prayer with no tutoring on its subtler meanings.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rich Remembrance of Intelligent Christians, November 16, 2007

By 

wahzoh "wahzoh" (North Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (Paperback)

Author Elisabeth Sifton is the daughter of noted theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Neibuhr wrote the now-famous "serenity prayer", which has been used for decades by various 12-step and other self-help programs. I had not known before reading this book that the prayer itself was originally written in the first-person plural case, giving strength of purpose to a Christian community which had been pummeled by decades of war:

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.

Sifton's book covers the first 45 years of the 20th century, when the world was shaken by two world wars and a great depression. Faith was a different animal back then -- intimately tied to community and social conscience. The world of faith she discusses is a far cry from the "name it and claim it" spiritual narcissism of the 21st century. It bears no resemblance to the prostitution of the gospel for political power which has come to define "American Christianity" in the last couple of decades.

Filled with stories about Niebuhr's contemporaries, such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this book is a wonderful "insider's look" at a period that was rich with Christian thought, forged in a crucible of courage and difficulty. As a Buddhist, I really came away from this book with a renewed respect for American Christianity.