National

This will be my last piece for The Faith Divide. It’s adapted from my Freshman Convocation Address at George Washington University on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. Like my other pieces, it’s about how we learn from the past to make the future better, together.

I’ve enjoyed writing this online column these past several years, and appreciate all that Sally Quinn, David Waters and Elizabeth Tenety at the Post have done to help it be successful. I’m especially grateful to the readers of the Faith Divide. I’m looking forward to contributing to On Faith in other ways.

People stand in the street in lower Manhattan Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011, during a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011, outside the World Trade Center site in New York. (Mel Evans - AP)   I thought about George Washington when I was at the airport this weekend, watching women in Islamic headscarves brave the stares and scowls of some of their fellow Americans on an anniversary no one will ever forget.

President Barack Obama delivers a policy address on events in the Middle East at the State Department in Washington, Thursday, May 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Charles Dharapak - AP) In a little noted paragraph towards the end of President Obama’s speech on the Middle East, he highlighted how the events in that region trace an arc that should sound familiar to Americans: revolution against a dictator, conflict between different ethnic and religious groups, and the challenge of spreading rights to all citizens.

FILE - In this April 13, 2011 file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich arrives for a 2012 presidential exploratory committee fundraising event in Atlanta. (David Goldman - AP)

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and high-profile conservative intellectual, announced today that he is officially in the running for the Republican nomination for president. Along the way he’s been playing the politics of religion.

The pictures the White House did release of Bin Laden are far more important than the one they didn’t.

When the suicide bomb exploded as worshippers left New Year’s mass at a Coptic church in Alexandria, 21 people died and 79 were wounded. It’s hard to imagine a more grim, ghastly, or tragic way to ring in a new decade.