Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Serenity Prayer" in English language version.
I discovered eight instances of the prayer's being printed in newspapers and books between January 1936 and April 1942 — none of which mentioned Niebuhr — I concluded that he appeared to have drawn unconsciously on earlier versions of unknown authorship. / The year after the Times story, Stephen Goranson of the Duke University Library posted a message on the American Dialect Society's Internet discussion list stating that he had found an occurrence of the Serenity Prayer in a 1937 Christian student newsletter, which referred to 'the prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr.' / I quickly contacted the Times editors and alerted them that, in my view, Goranson's discovery had significantly increased the likelihood that Niebuhr was, indeed, the original author. The Times then published a second front-page story reporting my reaction to the new information. / By searching Newspapers.com, I found that the Santa Cruz Sentinel of March 15, 1933, quoted Winnifred Crane Wygal: 'Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.' / The newspaper gave as its source an article by Wygal in The Woman's Press, a publication of the National Board of the YWCA. I was able to verify that article, 'On the Edge of Tomorrow,' in The Woman's Press of March 1933. The wording there was the same as in the Sentinel: It appeared as an epigraph and Reinhold Niebuhr was discussed, but no connection was made between the prayer and Niebuhr. / Although she did not link up prayer and theologian in her article, Wygal was clearly associated with Niebuhr. A biographical note about her from the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard states that Wygal did postgraduate work at Union Theological Seminary, studying there with Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. / Wygal [made] the crucial connection in her 1940 book, 'We Plan Our Own Worship Services.' On Page 25 she wrote, '"O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other." (Reinhold Niebuhr).' / That attribution by Wygal might in and of itself be viewed as the final confirmation of Niebuhr's coinage. There is an even stronger confirmation, however, located at the Schlesinger Library in its 14 volumes of Wygal's diaries, which, at my request, the library generously assigned a staff member to skim, looking for references to the Serenity Prayer. / Schlesinger's staffer, Sarah Guzy, struck gold when she read Wygal's diary entry for Oct. 31, 1932. / Wygal wrote there: 'R.N. says that "moral will plus imagination are the two elements of which faith is compounded." [and] "The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered."' / The second of those Niebuhr quotations does not fully match the components of the tripartite Serenity Prayer, lacking the 'wisdom' or 'insight' element, but definitely does include the elements involving 'serenity' and 'courage.' / The 1932 partial Serenity Prayer is the data point that clinches the argument for 'R.N.' (Reinhold Niebuhr) as Wygal's source for the prayer and as its originator. / ... Fred Shapiro is an associate library director and lecturer in legal research at Yale Law School and editor of 'The Yale Book of Quotations' from Yale University Press. This is an abridged version of an article that appeared in the April 28 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Serenity Prayer (Origin is debated)... This is the famous "Serenity Prayer", and it has a very complex and rich origin story. It's usually attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr... I've done a lot of research on this prayer, and almost 20 years have been studying this. If you search newspaper indexes... it was used as far back as 1933. The earliest record we have of someone using it was a woman named Winifred Wygal, an official of the YWCA, wrote the Serenity Prayer, we believe... And this is actually a pattern that I found in preparing my book, that there are many famous quotes by obscure women that are attributed to famous men... and this I think is the most interesting example of that...
