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President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.

Here's a separate top-12 list of just our paid content—i.e., the most popular articles of the year that were read online only by Century subscribers.

Obama embraces both the idealistic and realistic poles of Christian action. He recognizes with Niebuhr that politics is inherently tragic.

For sermon-prep help, I frequently look at hymns, paintings, novels, poems, etc. Also Bach cantatas. Meinen Jesus laß ich nicht, written for the first Sunday after Epiphany, has intrigued me with its interpretation of Luke 2:41-52.

Here are this year's most popular bloggers and posts from the CCblogs network.

Here are the Century magazine articles that were most popular online this year. Thanks for reading.

Normally my siblings and I spend December 26 goofing around together. This year, however, we felt the need to create something that addresses an important issue facing our Christian sisters and brothers elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

I’m not always enamored with our traditional, staged pictures of the nativity—with Mary on her knees in adoration. 

I once preached a Christmas sermon that struck out with one family. I had underestimated the peril of tampering with holiday sentiment.

On Sunday I attended a worship service at which the air was heavy with a sense of loss. But I saw the church being the church at its best.

I used to write a lot of very personal songs. Confessional stuff, bewilderingly specific and self-consciously literate. I grew out of it. Now I write mostly church music.

New today from the Century: Peter Marty on Christmas unvarnished, Carol Howard Merritt on Sandy Hook and public theology, more.