But I do believe that we, perhaps with careful education as children, are capable of rising above our immediate selfish desires and doing things that are altruistic, and I DON’T believe that such actions require the intervention of supernatural entities. People have the potential to be terribly evil, but we also have the potential to be wonderfully good. It’s all up to us. There is no god to drive us to good, and no devil to drive us to evil. It’s all our choice.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

It is my understanding that Niebuhr’s prayer was actually this:

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.

which removes the “I” from the prayer completely.

I also came across a longer version of the prayer on a couple of websites that goes like this:

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Amen.

Also, there is a lot of speculation about whether Niebuhr actually wrote the prayer.

Here are a few more links about Niebuhr for anyone who’s interested and got time to research more fully. Enjoy!

http://www.uuca.org/sermon.php?id=92

http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=3279&C=2735

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/12/14/beyond_serenity/

Thank you for your response (for those of you who don’t know me, I am the author of A Load of Bright and the article in question).

First of all, I must plead guilty to the charge of lumping all Christians together as fundamentalists. I should have specified at the beginning that only fundamentalist Christians believe the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God, and that many people interpret the stories as allegories. It is also really only dangerous, fundamentalist religion about which I was speaking at the end, the harm that it has done and continues to do, and it’s decline, revival etc. I can’t stress enough how strongly I believe that people have every right to practise their religion, provided that they harm nobody else in the process. Having been quick to moan when people have generalised about atheists, I sincerely apologise for having committed the same crime. It was not intentional, just an oversight.

My knowledge of Niebuhr himself was sketchy, and I found your run-down of his life, work and beliefs fascinating. I have to point out though, that the fact that he wrote the prayer has no relevance to my interpretation of it. Just as a poet leaves the text to his readers, and they will often find meaning there that he never intended, Niebuhr’s intententions when writing the prayer can be quite rightly discarded. He may well have believed, as you say, that it is impossible for us to achieve serenity, courage and wisdom without God, but all I can say in response is that I strongly disagree. I believe we can achieve all three, and use them selflessly to serve the interests of other human beings, and not God.