After receiving new evidence, the editor of a prominent compilation of famous quotations now believes that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr most likely is the author of the popular “Serenity Prayer.”
“I think it’s not certain,” Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, said in an interview Novem ber 30. “If I had to put a number on it, I’d say it’s 80 percent. But it’s not 100 percent.”
Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian whose work Andrew Finstuen invokes in this issue, had an interesting relationship with the Christian Century. He started writing for the magazine in 1922 while he was a pastor in Detroit. Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of the magazine from 1908 until 1947, was so impressed with Niebuhr that he brought him to Chicago for a three-day visit in 1925 and invited him to join the staff as an associate editor. Niebuhr declined.
As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, the U.S. finds itself in a mess of historic proportions. Our economic crisis was preceded by a near-universal collapse in judgment about the use of U.S. military force abroad. This mess is profoundly embarrassing because it is of our own making and therefore one that could have been avoided.