Sound the alarm: Adam Gopnik is writing about Christianity again. Where is David Bentley Hart when you need him?

Gopnik writes (sneer veiled by smooth prose): “People seek faith, and faith, by its nature, demands the embrace of what reason resists.” Good to know!

The biggest howler: “The humanism [that pagan critics of early Christianity] championed was always plural—there are many plausible ways to live. But, in its refusal of certainty, their humanism also produced enormous anxiety, and anxiety is always drawn toward the reassurance of authority.”

I don’t mind Gopnik’s views, which are a dime a dozen, whether in the world of elite journalism or in the academy. I mind the omniscient tone and Olympian perspective that cannot condescend to read, much less to mention, a single dissenting view. Why not engage other scholars than these? Why rehearse the same old liberal Protestant pieties? Why give credence to a single Jesus-never-existed writer and YouTuber but not one glance at the serious, sizable, substantial body of research disagreeing with everyone cited in the story?

But I’m glad to know it’s only the religious who demand embrace of what reason resists.