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** What mattered in 2025
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Last week I teased that we would be releasing our list of the 25 most-read articles on the Century website in 2025. I’m excited to share that list today: here it is ([link removed]) . I enjoy discovering and publishing this list every year for a few reasons. For one, it highlights really thoughtful and inspiring essays from our diverse team of contributors. It also serves as a little time capsule into what was happening—and what mattered most to our readers—last year.

I’m almost sad because I want you to take the time to catch any top pieces you missed (from a confession about Trump’s afterlife ([link removed]) to Peter Marty’s tribute to his dad ([link removed]) to a reflection on bad youth group theology ([link removed]) ), but this week we have a lot of brand new writing that I don’t want you to miss out on. We have an essay about how Bonhoeffer might help us make sense ([link removed]) of a church protest in Minneapolis, a biblical defense of wokeness ([link removed]) , a helpful rewrite of a section of the Book of Common Prayer ([link removed]) , and more.

Scroll down for all that, plus a fun video of the week with photographer Ilaria Di Biagio, who tells me about the lessons she learned living with nuns who practice monastic silence ([link removed]) . Thanks for reading—and here’s to many more years together.

Jon Mathieu
Email me (mailto:[email protected]?subject=My%20favorite%20reads%20of%202025&body=Jon%2C%20) : What were your favorite reads (in or out of CC) in 2025?
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** Our top 25 of 2025 ([link removed])
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Here are the Century articles from last year that enjoyed the most online readers.
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** The Cities Church protest and Bonhoeffer’s “promising godlessness” ([link removed])
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“Confronting the crisis in American Christianity means sitting with the unsettling thought that the gospel might be heard in a church not from the pastor standing in the pulpit and preaching from the Bible but in the shouting of an angry crowd bringing a church service to a screeching halt.”

by Mac Loftin
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** The Bible is clear: Stay woke ([link removed])
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“Seeking God’s justice shakes us from the slumber of indifference. In order to heal and restore life, we must respond to the call to wake up.”

by Jennifer Kaalund
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** In the Lectionary for February 8 (Epiphany 5A) ([link removed])
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In those liminal spaces between light’s arrival and its incarnation in the face of my child, I prayed.

by Paul Lutter
Epiphany 5A archives ([link removed])
Get even more lectionary resources with Sunday’s Coming Premium, an email newsletter from the editors of the Christian Century. Learn more ([link removed]) .


** VIDEO: Lessons from a silent convent ([link removed])
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Ilaria Di Biagio chats with Jon about the week she spent photographing (and living among) nuns who practice silence.


** A better prayer for prisons ([link removed])
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“Whenever the Episcopalians get around to revising the Book of Common Prayer, I want to make some suggestions regarding Prayer #37—For Prisons and Correctional Institutions.”

by Phil Christman

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