Focus 580; The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War

In this part of focus 580 we'll be talking about the origins of the Serenity Prayer. Now you may well recognize the prayer even if you don't know it by that name. It goes like 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. It has been widely reproduced with various changes in wording. It has been embraced by many different organizations particularly 12-Step organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and it's certainly well known. Well I think a lot of people will not know is where this prayer came from. It wasn't. Fact written by one of America's greatest theologians Rheingold neighbor and it was written in 1943 at the height of World War 2. The it was the subject of where it came from. It was the subject of a book that we'll be talking about here

this morning in this part of focus fidelity book by Elisabeth Sifton. She is the daughter of Reinhold Niebuhr and is someone who herself as well known in the world of publishing and has been involved in the business for 30 years. She is currently the senior vice president of Farrar Straus and Giroux and is author of this book that is just out. It's titled The Serenity Prayer. Faith and Politics in times of war and peace. It's published by WW Norton and it is indeed about the prayer and its origins. It is about her father but it's about much more than that in and ultimately what it is about is the role of faith in. Public Life. So we'll talk. Bout that. And as we talk of course questions and comments are welcome from people who are listening. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2

9 4 5 5 at any point here questions are welcome we just ask people to be brief so that we can keep the program moving and getting as many people as possible. But of course anyone would be welcome to call in. Mrs. John hello. Hello. Well thank you very much for talking with us. Great pleasure. You have said that I think in some of the material that came with the book that a that among the many things that you were not really setting out to do is do anything necessarily to polish the image of your father as his image which probably didn't need any polishing. So it would be really about that partly I guess it was your fascination with this particular prayer that he wrote and people's interest in it. But it seems that there's much something much larger here going on and I guess that's a clumsy way of asking here why it is that you decided you wanted to write this book. Well be admitting impulse for it was a correct apprehension about the prayer and who wrote it. I was particularly

amused. I will. Not in Germany for example. It was intended to be by most people an 18th century German printer. I thought that was wildly ironic and entering it had been written by an American at the height of the war against Germany and not only in America but a German-American America from the from the heartland of what had once been very German Illinois and Missouri where he grew up. And who had been an active opposition to much of the Germany spiritual as well as political life from the 20s and 30s. He very much felt my father always felt that faith should be related to political and community life and that the Germans were terribly bad because they failed to do this and felt they purported to be good Christians while being good Nazis as it were which which he regarded as

grotesque and so on. Prince and I got interested in writing about the whole world he came out of because he was not alone. His interest in social betterment. I think it is interesting and I guess it is a tribute to just how powerful these few lines are and how they have grabbed people that so many people have tried to take ownership of it. And first of all as you say people seem to think it must be very very old that it had all the added it that it could have just been written as as recently as about 50 years ago people seem to have trouble with that idea but I would guess that not only do Germans think that German wrote it but probably if you go there please other places and people want to say oh yes we we ultimately we write that it's right it's ours right. And I said in my book I think many Catholics. Clearly my Catholic friend of mine insisted that Francis of Assisi for example well have a kind of clarity and simplicity which is burnished by age doesn't really mean but I think it took a

while for my father to arrive at that formulation of the prayer I find in earlier person he wrote I am full of it and gestures that he was moving toward this formulation but I wanted also to explore in my book. The notion of thinking about this prayer in the first person plural as well as in the first person singular which is the 12 step programs often step of course I don't mean to take away from that or suggest that's wrong I don't think it's a very valuable prayer for personal you know singular use but I think it was written in the third person as you could hear when you responded and I think. When you think about the fact it was written during the war you realize that it is also a prayer about what we together as a society should have the courage to change and or the patience to Lodhi that they are right and I think that it seems to me that often that people when people

think about this and maybe when they say it often the emphasis is on that first part that is the part about accepting with serenity the things that can't be changed. It would seem to me that in his mind I guess that may be the more important part of this was the injunction in the injunction to change the things that should show you changed. Yes and of course the third is the hardest of all which is to figure out which is which. What I think and here I think the people we recited every day in twelfth of progress of thought would instinctively understand this is something that have to be done again and again and again. You get huge. You have to think about the think sions between what needs to be changed and what how to be accepted every day and every day and you know and sometimes you will change about sometimes actuation or condition or circumstance which you think is unchangeable you realize

it's changeable and should be changed by the first. You could talk a little bit about the time that he wrote at Simon the place because this really is is very much bound up with your childhood and a place that when you were growing up you and your family spent the summer. Yeah this was in in a small town in Massachusetts. That's right. That's right. My father but. By the by the 30s and 40s. My father was teaching in New York City. At Union Theological Seminary and we had a long summer holidays as academics do. And so the family went to a small town in north western Massachusetts where they had heard about through friends of theirs all of whom that were friends through very active social action and action. There was an amazing ole lady. I mean she was all to me in the forties.

I think if she were alive today to be a hundred and just a spectacular Boston lady who had very radical politics and was very involved in all sorts of issues having to do with the betterment of workers and the unemployed and poor people and she was she was very vigorous in this respect. And so she approved of much of my father's politics which were pretty socially progressive themselves. She also was a friend. But then in the 1930s Professor Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School because he had to balance the cause of facts on events that in the 1920s famous calls and in this part of the part of the political world. And so she she got from her to come to heave to. And she got my father comment on there were various. Other clerics are that at the New School and even a few bishops.

Otherwise the dam of the farming town and all our friends there were farmers so it was a rather unusual place from. My father used to preach and conduct services at the Phillips church during the summer and it was in one of those services that he first used this prayer. So that's where it all started. And you said that he perhaps had had toyed with the he had had this idea sort of had the sentiment had toyed with the wording just a little bit until he apparently got it the way that he wanted it did he. How did he think about that and did he think that he was somehow creating something that would have such a remarkable life of of its of its own. Or did he really not did that that particular thing not stand out to him like that. I don't I don't know the answer for sure but I think it he may have thought it was. He would never have congratulated graduated himself about the wording of a prayer prayers were like that. But I think he must he must have thought it was OK because one has a

neighbor who with them and he who is the dean of Washington National Cathedral who would compiling prayers for it for a booklet to be printed for the US Army units kept overseas and this was eventually the occupation army in Germany asked him if he could include this prayer and in one of these booklets and and that he said Yeah sure. So he must have you know it was OK then I don't think he had any idea of what we're doing as a consequence of its being printed in the US Army book quote which brought it to the attention of Alcoholics Anonymous and other organizations and then it became super famous. I do remember from my childhood up above all when I was a baby and I didn't know about it at the time. What I remember from my adolescent years later and later in his life he found it rather tiring frankly to constantly have to explain to people that yes indeed he had a right. I suppose for someone who had written as much as he had

and a number of books that are for people who are interested in the study of religion are certainly very important for it to be known for such a small thing even though it was a it's a lovely turn of phrase and it's a wonderful sentiment you know I suppose you set that against everything else. We did it I can understand that it would get tedious after awhile for people just to to to latch on to that one tiny little thing right. Well yes his mind was set on you know on of larger works of course he would have to be sure he had courses to prepare at lectures to give. He preached regularly in college chapel all around the country so there were there were a lot of months and prayers were written for virtually every Sunday of the year. And this was one of many. But I think it also embarrassed him because. Spiritual expression like this is not something that over which you should one take a lot of credit and brag about you know you didn't have that kind of attitude toward it. But on the other hand he was very happy to know that it was from you that you have the right word

to people who found some false comfort and strength in that. SUE Well for people who might have just tuned in I think I should introduce Again our guest We're talking with Elisabeth Sifton. She is the senior vice president of Farrar Straus and Giroux the publisher. She's also the daughter of Ronald Lieber very well-known American theologian who was the author of this particular prayer that we have talked about the serenity prayer and of course a lot of other important works of theology. The book that we're talking about here this morning is by Elisabeth Sifton and it's titled The serenity prayer faith and politics in times of peace and war published by WW Norton. And as she explained that she was interested in reading this and writing this book was interested in part to talk about that where it actually came from where the prayer came from the fact that her father did write it because it had been so often mis attributed. But also it's a lot about a lot more than that. And we'll talk more with her in a second here let me just give our telephone number somebody wants to call

and be part of the conversation 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 1 9 4 5 5. It is very clear that. What that he thought and people that he knew thought it was very important for people of faith to be engaged to be engaged politically and socially and that this is something that I think today we have a hard time deciding how exactly whether that should be and and how it should be. Yeah. And I think that it's the tendency of all of a lot of people now to say to try to say well these words really should be separate. And that and that they think that it's a problem somehow when people of faith which whether they are conservatives whether they're liberals get involved in in politics and I think that you know his his idea was that well you're you kind of have an obligation here that if if you're a

person of faith to be involved in politics and to be involved in social issues and to be engaged and if you were that there was that there was something wrong. And I guess maybe we could talk. Thought maybe that's a that's a well he started to do to how you approach this. This whole thing and how he saw it. Well he said in a way that that many many other clergymen thought too although they were always in the minority. They were members of what are now called the mainstream American Protestant churches both of them Catholic priest who worked with him on these matters and they pope Christian considering the Christian obligation to love one's neighbor and to attend to councils of. Well but the Christian Council of perfection to to love absolutely

carries with it some suggestion that you must you must attend to try to make the world a fairer and better place for everyone. Therefore he thought that this is something that pastors should encourage their congregations to think about. And he found it very very difficult to do this. He found it very very hard to get his congregations when he had a church which was in Detroit. And before that in Illinois to get them to think about that as a real life thing and not just as an abstract thing it was hard to get them to pay attention to these Christian admonitions or injunctions in their real life apart from you. No Sunday morning and so effective that the churches should do something to to to encourage their their congregations to try to make life better for everybody not just for themselves. And he did not think however he

did not think you need vigorously oppose the idea that the churches should have anything to do with with government or with party politics in the sense of forming political parties themselves or attempting to gain control of any kind of government. Our appalled him and appalled everyone that he worked with. There were Crips For example there were Christian parties in Europe. But they tended to be very very conservative and he opposed those. Parties and only in Germany in Spain even. So his view was that one should one should take one's Christianity seriously and apply it across the across the whole spectrum of your life but not two not two and that would require you to have some commitment to programs that will help people. But that doesn't mean that you have to try to seize the

reins of local state or national government on behalf of your church that was quite inappropriate. We have someone here calling from a mobile phone from a car I guess. Let's bring them into the conversation here on our line number four. Hello. I talk a little bit about the relationship between father and Uncle Richard your mother. Oh I'd be happy to. And that's a nice question. Thank you for. Asking it I mention I mention my uncle in my book a little bit but not enough I think I now wish I had spoken about him more. These two brothers were both sons of a pastor in a church in Illinois and they were and they both became theologians. My uncle how moved Richard by the Yale Divinity School while my father was teaching in New York actually their relationship was very close and very affectionate. They loved each other very much. They also had

disagreements and some of their disagreements were about precisely this subject that we've been talking about which was John of how involved in the world should should one be a Christian. How how how should you interpret the gospel more purely or more fully in the world and my uncle tended to feel that his brother was getting too involved in politics and getting too involved in the social fabric problems of the day and was not keeping the appropriate distance. I'm making a very crude description of what was a very complicated and nuanced debate between them which was both about politics and also about theology and about the spiritual life and how one conduct that they were to each other a lot about this. And I wish we had their letters but I didn't nobody said Oh yeah I know what you want. Yeah. Yeah no I don't find them a lot.

Yeah I just offer a testimony of one who went to divinity school in the 80s the day the two brothers just panders the most exciting theologians I regret and they continued to empower I think Generation ministers and you Arjun's out there I like and we hope that's true Frank how much Frank have to talk to you. Thank you for the KO. Other people have questions comments are certainly welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. It is very clear in the book that you are lending the loss of liberal progressive Protestant activism in this country and the fact that it seems that as many as the mainline Protestant denominations have have weathered some wind that you obviously feel that there's something important there that has been lost.

I do feel that I do feel that the actual how a church should behave in the community was in my opinion. The quote Back question of how it should be handled would answer differently by the different denominations Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians and Episcopalians Baptists every Others have different views probably different but importantly different views on how this should be. They have different traditions and structure different notions of how to behave in the world how a church should be part of a community or and how a church should minister to its people. And these are issues that have great significance seems to me and important too to keep in one's heart and alive and when they kind of die I'm a vine and everything gets a modernized into a kind of a thing called Going to church on Sunday and and the and the

sharpness of the terms is from what I think we all know about. And I think what's happening now in public conversation and in America about issues of faith and and Public Life is very incoherent and muggy because we've laughably a certain attention to detail that we want to make any kind of I'm not sure if I'm you know well I guess it I suppose there are some people would say that for her. Conservative Evangelical Protestant denominations it's not smudgy at all and that those people ought to next you know engaged from the direction that they believe is right and that so obviously there seems to be a clarity there yet. Yes but I say in my book and of my father's colleagues this is an old old issue that have clarity.

One of the points I've tried to make in my book because my father made of himself so often and his friends and like minded brother and like minded colleagues but I think that the issue of having a religious faith and sticking to it is never an easy one faces challenge and threatened by life crises by all kinds of problems both inner and outer. And they have a tremendous respect for people who had moments of doubt certainty and they respected that. They quoted scripture to show that even in the Bible Jesus recognizes the moment one when people aren't certain. And I'm not clear what the faith should be. So he always opposed the ministers and the churches who interacted rigidly that way if you went along with them and believe in things the way they believed in them you have it all down pat. And everything was absolutely certain that was a false certainty and he and he didn't like it especially because it came along with rigid and disapproving social

criticism that he didn't find very Christian frankly bigoted often or or harsh about unbelievers about people of different faiths about people who were not going along the way they were toeing the line that he didn't find that kind of Christian community very welcoming or reassuring one. So why do you think that it is the reps who are here to provide an answer that question but but why you think that it is that particularly over the last couple of decades that those more conservative fundamentalist Evan Jellicoe Christian denominations Protestant denominations have whatever kinds of label you want to apply have been the ones that have experienced such dramatic growth and the others perhaps more left leaning mainline Protestant denominations. They they haven't I mean what is the difference do you think

the fact that on the one side there's there is the offer of some absolutes and some real assurance and that the people like that and. And the more the most difficult the more the more smudgy that people just just feel uncomfortable with that. Well I can't say really I think there are a lot of different things going on that there's not one reason that the fundamentalist churches have grown a lot. But one is certainly that devout in a very confusing and difficult and complicated world they seem to offer some simple solutions. They also they also have a lot of money and they also. And so they're able to to proselytize and to gain adherents. The wealthy use television very cleverly and aggressively to increase their numbers and their services. And you know I'm going to sound more conservative than liberal. There are several. Is our

weird race to my mind are weirdly secular. They they feel they don't feel so very different from the sound of the culture in general. Well I have always been brought up to believe that the church service should not it should not be like anything else that it has a special quality or it and I should say this would be certain of true of any ceremony or service in any faith not just a church service but the church services with longer than you and the church services were supposed to do. Propose a different way of thinking about the world and about our community our relations with one another and our relations with our faith. And they shouldn't be too secularized too commercialized to be grouped up with with the sounds of the culture and at large the most extreme example of this would be a Quaker meeting of course where you don't have any sound at all except for people who want to talk about.

But I think. Kind of easy easy reassurance and easy when you have nothing on the doctrines make up of the fundamentalist churches attractive to people who don't want to think too much about any of this. I'm doing my bit. I mean who don't want to think too hard about these deeper questions of one's faith and how it relates to everything. Your faith whether in your father's family that were there other people who were clergyman were or theologians or people whose Moos career was a religion. Well I've mentioned that my daughter. Uncle was also a theologian. My own his or my armed with a teacher of religious education and Chicago McCormick Theological Seminary and before that for years at a church in New York. His father had been

a minister the father came from Germany in 1881 and got religion when he came to America and studied for the ministry and had a past out of church. After that in Lincoln Illinois for decades and it was in his church that my father first preached and worked. And my mother was an I was a scholar of biblical theology and a teacher of religion upon a college in New York. In my generation I have a cousin who's been at the Army doing school and my cousin and his son my first cousin once removed and the war is is a journalist who writes about religion. I think that about covers it. Well I guess the reason I'm asking is that you can see from this and other cases that really. As a profession sometimes does run in families but of course children of ministers are fame are famously I'm

not sure to what extent this is a an unjust area type but are famously wild that often do is it has as much rebel as follow in the footsteps That's right. Which was which was the case with you. Well I was a kind of mild rebel. I I I I I didn't I didn't have a wild youth. I don't think I didn't think of it this particularly wild and I didn't think my parents did. I certainly told them when I was a teenager that I didn't believe in any of this stuff. I didn't believe the story and that you know in the Bible the stories in the Bible the miracles resurrection the virgin birth all the stuff seemed seemed most implausible to me I announced and I didn't want to have any more to do with it and I would I'm going to go to church and everything i patient about that. And that was a difficult thing they were going to practice the point they did not denounce me and run me out of the house for their lack of faith. And I have found myself drifting back to it in

the years progressive when one of my thoughts on this was about 10 or so our local church encouraged him to sing in the choir and I began going back to that church and bringing my children to it. Well I drifted back you know through the way. Our guest in this part of focus 580 Elisabeth Sifton she is the daughter of one of America's best known greatest theologians right old neighbor. She herself has made her living in the publishing world for she's been an editor and book publisher for 40 years she is now the senior vice president of Farrar Straus and Giroux and she is the author of the serenity prayer faith and politics in times of peace and war published by WW Norton which is just out recently and it is as we have explained in part about how it is her father came to compose this this very well-known prayer but also about his feeling and perhaps hers as well that for people of faith it was very important that they be engaged that they be in the world that they pay

attention to political and social issues and that they participate in in that. And if you're interested in reading this story. You can head out to the bookstore and take a. Look at and of course here on this program you have questions. You're welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that's going anywhere. You can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have someone next to talk with locally here in Urbana. Lie number one. Hello. I believe it was Ronald neighbor quoted on it. He should that I have which is unfortunately packed away for the season in the front of my T-shirt. Straight but not narrow and the back is that quote about. And I can't maybe you can teach me another weapon in this. Well I don't know if you happen to know it offhand about it. First they came for the I know it was Jews first and I didn't do anything. And then they came for the and

they have fourth and so on. Do you remember. Can you. I can't quote it exactly and it's not my father but it was somebody you mean you admired. OK. There was there was a German after the name Martin the mall are OK and who had it who had a church in Berlin and he said. And I wish I knew the quotation exactly because you're right it's kind of terrific. But but what he said and he was speaking of German and German Christians and people in his church. First they came meaning the Nazis first they came for the Jews. And we we didn't do anything and then they came for four communists and socialists and we didn't do anything and then they come back and eventually they came for us right. And by that time of course there wasn't any US because the Nazis had destroyed everything. I mean that's the meaning of the phrase if you if you use the two people who k thanks. You see what I mean if you if you if you if you

if you watch while a government or political force of some kind first destroys one segment of the population and you say well that doesn't have to do with me. So I don't have to worry about it. And there destroys another section of the population and you say that still not about me. And then on again and again and then you look around you and realize there's nobody there and you're all loans and then they come for you too. So I would walk anymore with that it was wrong for the Germans to think that just as it would be for any group of people that when when when people are threatened we must all come to their aid and that was what anymore. But that would mean more not need war. Well thank you very much Jim. And not knowing he would he was not he was the fellow he was a he was a fellow anti-fascist fighter and a very brave and good man. Well I think this whole issue of gays is one of those things where we can stand up and prevent

this sort of thing and not develop gradually in Germany but we all have to stand up and and and speak out whenever we have the chance and I think that's exactly right. A few days ago someone out of me what my father would have thought about the issue of of gay clergyman and I don't know I can't say that because I haven't come up with an issue in his lifetime but I do know what he thought about about the issue of women priests which was which had come up during his lifetime and about which he felt quite strongly and what he thought about that crap is just a way of thinking about the issue about gays and the church too. He said about the opposition to having women priests that it was almost never expressed interest in sort of true theological terms it would describe just and for Wallinger an opera faction by the Bible. But then just draw. Well that's the real issue and the reason it became so acrid

even and better was because it was about political power and it was about not wanting to relinquish the kind of political power that it excluded people and that had kept certain categories of people namely women or as we discussed now gays out of political control within the organizations of the church. So with the political it was a political dispute and not really a dispute on the merits. And thank you I thank you for the call let's go next to line number three that will be the next caller and champagne. Hello. Oh it was not Martin who had that who made that quote. Yeah that's that's correct. I you know I've I've met and heard your father was a Union Seminary back in the 60s and he would come out and even though we had suffered this. Effects of a stroke. He he would make periodic leaks about the war in Viet Nam. Yes indeed at the

time and it may be unfair to ask you to just extrapolate a strop leap once again from what you know all of your of your father's views about what he might think of the current administration's Iraq policy. Well I don't think I don't think it's hard to extrapolate at all because his record about comment on American foreign policy and American behavior during the Second World War at the end of the Second World War during the problem in the early years after the war when we were dealing with the rise of nuclear weaponry has been is as you nicely remember his whole dismay about being involved our war in Vietnam very straight line. There's nothing that there is nothing that could persuade me that he would condone in any way respect or form the Bush administration's war in Iraq and the fact that that

Saddam Hussein is a vile trick to it was a vile dictator is incontrovertibly. But there are there were international laws and international sanctions in place against his regime and to to force him. To come to terms with the international community is rebuke of him would require and should have required to kill dogs require international and multilateral efforts to go it alone and in contra in contradiction to international law and custom to go it alone and invade a sovereign country in order to kill or take out its head of state this is not something he would ever ever ever supported. And I should add that the town of Righteousness of righteousness we are godly nation and we know what we're doing and we're we're good at it and people will be thankful for us. With the

town of pride that he always deplored in American actions oversea he thought we should be a lot more modern. When we dealt with when we dealt with the rest of the world actually because we were so powerful rich and strong. Yeah that bad that jibes exactly with what I remember of him and what I I have read about him that you know above all we need even though we must take stands we need to be modest about our own virtue. Absolutely he could always and he always felt that American politicians tended to forget this over and over and over again he didn't think American people forgot it and he thought of. Politicians did. Sure. Well thank you very much it's been a pleasure up put. Thanks for the call let's go to the next person in the file. This is line number two. Hello. Oh yes my father was a student of yours Union. Am I being a preacher's kid I was intrigued by the comment I've

never liked the idea of the terming of preachers children as being wild. We're just you know children of clergymen. Right and sometimes I think people put a different standard on that for some reason. You know if we question the Bible then there's something wrong with this if somebody else does it there isn't so much wrong with it. And I with my father always taught me that there was no absolute truth. That's right and that's what I learned too and I tried to say I was encouraged to believe that it was it was it was never easy to understand exactly what all these mysterious and difficult commands of the faith were and that one could fall at her or forgotten away if I didn't get up and keep trying to keep going. And perhaps it is true that that children of clergymen understand as adult in a little bit more than others. It may also be true that very strict disciplinarian clergymen tend to. Run the risk

of having wild children. I don't know but I agree with you that the whole situation is a good deal more nuanced than a cartoon is allowed. I mean I mean you related the thing are you said that you didn't believe in all that stuff right. And you know I had a maybe not a notice of strident issues used to express it but I did express similar feelings in question and my father's reaction. OK you know we'll see. You know and you know I'm a member of a church I go to church and you know so it's not a problem to question things that's what you should do. And the pope will question how the how the the thing plays out in your mind and heart. I remember when I mentioned that my my son became a choir boy in a local church and I said to my mother who is very approving of this I said yes but don't you realize I've never met a grown person who was a choir boy who wasn't an atheist. We're facing that with my friend and she said yes but it never leaves them

really. Yeah so she understood that even when people say they're atheists they may still have read reviews or remnants of the teachings or they experience the service of the kind of experience of worship which they don't which they get never lose. I think if I remember something my dad said to me once of atheism was a religion to you. That if you are it's the same thing. I mean the same thing but it's the religion of the faith and not believing. That's right that's right and I think I think there's also there's another kind of atheism of that which is strident hatred of all things religious. That makes me very sad because of the so so terrible and being so I'm not terribly harsh. Yeah and if in fact the very idea of faith fight and frighten the people who go on like hot air. So I don't I don't support although I'm a fierce believer in the separation of church and state I don't support the kind of a

the kind of secular people who in any expression of religious faith in the public space is outlawed. I don't think that's a plus in a possible or or plausible. Yeah I mean that brings up the issue be on the god thing in the Pledge of Allegiance. I mean the really necessary to make that such a big deal out of that I me. And you can ask that question. You know I don't know but I think that it made a lot of people really angry. You of all people that are more tolerant of the joke over the front of my office want to say OK that's the way it should be. The Pledge of Allegiance didn't even exist until 1892. And there were many Christians and fundamentalists who at the time thought that the Pledge of Allegiance was a sort of ungodly worship of a flag and therefore inappropriate. But now it's become embedded in a kind of secular in the secular worship of the nation and now is considered sacrosanct. But it went along quite

happily from 1892 to life he's 53 with no mention of God in it. And it was only then when the Knights of Columbus mounted a big campaign to add under God at a time when the United States imagined it was in battle against Godless Communism that they added these two words. And now everybody is out of the parable about keeping that in there. You think these all all these things have been inscribed in stone by George Washington 200 years ago but it's far from true here. Wow. While it talking to the CO coming down to just having a couple of minutes left there there were so many things that we could talk about like this one of the one things that I'm interested in and I think this is striking as the way you describe your you're growing up and your family and the people who were family friends is that you were your dad and mom and were very much involved very close to a lot of really interesting people important thinkers and only some of them were people who were

professionally in the business of religion. That's right. And it seemed very mixed and diverse group. It was next and diverse and and wonderful I must say I was blessed I'm very lucky. I think the culture have had a lively mixture is that it was possible to be a working teacher in a divinity school as my father was and meet poets and writers union organizers and musicians and all kinds of different kinds of people in a way that perhaps our modern life doesn't allow for. But it was also true that his own interest in these different aspects of American life encouraged him to have these friends. So so W.H. Auden the English poet who'd who came to America during the war and he was very interested in theology and returned to the church having got away from it his 20s and 30s became a great friend in the 1940s and he was a wonderfully exciting and interesting person. My father liked the company of politicians and so am

I and he was close to a number of labor leaders notably Walter Ruther of a united home of the workers and victory for his brother and they were they were friends of the family also. And then of course there was stuff the frankfurter he was Jock with by the time I knew him. One in Massachusetts our neighbor and he and I held the matches and he was a very Sparky lively character and I was thrilled to be nice to the children of the friends. They were an amazing bunch. I'm so sorry to say that we've used the time and we're going to have to stop with people who are listening if you're interested in reading more about why an old neighbor great American theologian. You can look for this book that we've mentioned it's titled The serenity prayer faith and politics in times of peace and war by our guest Elisabeth Sifton who is the daughter of Ronald neighbor. She's also worked for a lot of her life in the publishing business she is the senior vice president at the publisher Farrar Straus and Giroux.

Thelma Sifton I want thank you very much for talking with us we we appreciate it. Well thank you so much for having me it's been a great pleasure.