The Serenity Prayer or State Directed Development

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

Author: Elisabeth Sifton

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. 12 illustrations.

Author Biography: Elisabeth Sifton, senior vice president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, lives in New York City and in Princeton, New Jersey.

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.”

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. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The senior vice president of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux here offers a loving memoir of her father, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Union Theological Seminary professor and social philosopher who, in 1943, composed the popular "Serenity Prayer" as a response to Nazism and other 20th-century horrors. The prayer, now the motto of Alcoholics Anonymous, can be found on T-shirts and coffee mugs around the world. Niebuhr explained that he had never copyrighted his creation because "prayers weren't something to make claims on." Set in rural Massachusetts and New York City in the 1930s and 1940s (the golden days of mainline churches), Sifton's nostalgic reminiscences depict the Niebuhr home as the Algonquin Round Table of liberal intellectuals. The book is full of anecdotes of childhood encounters with W.H. Auden, Felix Frankfurter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alan Paton, and other luminaries. At the same time, Sifton dismisses Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham as fundamentalist zealots. A tender, often humorous, and occasionally slow-moving account of the dusk of Protestant hegemony in North America in the last third of the 20th century, this is not leisurely reading but will be useful in academic and seminary libraries. A good, basic biography of Niebuhr is Charles C. Brown's Niebuhr and His Age. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/03.]-Joyce Smothers, Divinity Program, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Harold Bloom
"Reinhold Niebuhr's spiritual greatness is demonstrated memorably in Elisabeth Sifton's remarkable book. Not only is the sermon itself a of permanent intellectual value, but it could not be more appropriate for the United States at this very bad time in our national political and religious life."

See also: Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande or Adams Navel

State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery

Author: Atul Kohli

Why have some developing countries industrialized and become more prosperous rapidly while others have not? Focusing on South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria, this study compares the characteristics of fairly functioning states and explains why states in some parts of the developing world are more effective. It emphasizes the role of colonialism in leaving behind more or less effective states, and the relationship of these states with business and labor in helping explain comparative success in promoting economic progress.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : states and industrialization in the global periphery	1
1	The colonial origins of a modern political economy : the Japanese lineage of Korea's cohesive-capitalist state	27
2	The rhee interregnum : saving South Korea for cohesive capitalism	62
3	A cohesive-capitalist state reimposed : Park Chung Hee and rapid industrialization	84
4	Invited dependency : fragmented state and foreign resources in Brazil's early industrialization	127
5	Grow now, pay later : state and indebted industrialization in modern Brazil	169
6	Origins of a fragmented-multiclass state and a sluggish economy : colonial India	221
7	India's fragmented-multiclass state and protected industrialization	257
8	Colonial Nigeria : origins of a neopatrimonial state and a commodity-exporting economy	291
9	Sovereign Nigeria : neopatrimonialism and failure of industrialization	329
	Conclusion : understanding states and state intervention in the global periphery	367