Top Ten Articles of 2025

1. The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be,” David Brooks, New York Times (2024).

  When faith finally tiptoed into my life it didn’t come through information or persuasion but, at least at first, through numinous experiences. These are the scattered moments of awe and wonder that wash over most of us unexpectedly from time to time. Looking back over the decades, I remember rare transcendent moments at the foot of a mountain in New England at dawn, at Chartres Cathedral in France, looking at images of the distant universe or of a baby in the womb. In those moments, you have a sense that you are in the presence of something overwhelming, mysterious. Time is suspended or at least blurs. One is enveloped by an enormous bliss. The art historian Kenneth Clark, who was not religious, had one of these experiences at an Italian church: “I can only say that for a few minutes my whole being was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before.” At least for me, these experiences didn’t answer questions or settle anything; on the contrary, they opened up vaster mysteries. They revealed wider dimensions of existence than I had ever imagined and aroused a desire to be opened up still further. Wonder and awe are the emotions we feel when we are in the presence of a vast something just beyond the rim of our understanding.

1. "Jimmy Carter, Friend of Dictators and Champion of Terrorists," Washington Examiner, excellent survey of his disgraceful life.

Carter likely first met with Hamas leaders in January 1996. In March and February of that year, Hamas participated in a string of suicide bombings, murdering 65 people, including three U.S. citizens. Dead Americans did not move Carter to admonish his friends in Gaza. Carter again met with Hamas in April 2008 as it was launching hundreds of missiles every month at civilian targets within Israel, promising that the group wouldn’t undermine peace. After Hamas first attempted to launch an Oct. 7-style attack in 2014, Carter called on Israel and the U.S. to recognize the offshoot of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood as the “legitimate political actor” that represents the “Palestinian population.”