The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "For about twenty years, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, my family spent our long summer holidays-from Memorial Day to Labor Day, if we were..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Serenity Prayer, United States (more...)

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.

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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; illustrated edition edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393057461
• ISBN-13: 978-0393057461
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,037,464 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 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)

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.

5 of 5 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

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A disappointing book, October 22, 2006

By	William R. Baar "Bill Baar" (St Charles, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A disappointing book. Far too much opinion without analysis on today's politics and aggravatingly few recollections of the interesting people who filled Sifton's youth.

I had to keep repeating the prayer for serenity-of-mind to get through it, hoping I'd find nugget or two of insight, or a story about some of the great thinkers in Sifton's life, before hitting the back cover.