Monday’s News & Ideas - 6/1/2026
- Churches older than America
- Talarico’s pastor
- Anti-Muslim hate & antisemitism
- AI on questions of faith
- Soccer as global religion
- Cheese crime
These houses of worship are older than America. How they outlasted wars, schisms and lawsuits.
Religion News Service: Only about 1% of houses of worship in the U.S. today existed in 1776. Here are four that predate the revolution — and still hold services.
Are Texans ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity?*
The New York Times: Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word “God,” is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas.
Anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism are twin crises. We must confront them together
The Guardian: The two hatreds have rarely been seen as related dangers. But they overlap even as Muslim and Jewish communities are pitted against each other.
AI stumbles on questions of faith
Axios: As churches, apps and spiritual chatbots embrace AI, new research suggests general-purpose models may be ill-equipped to handle sensitive questions of faith: grief, forgiveness, marriage, guilt and conversion.
More than just a game: Why soccer is more like a global religion
Religion Unplugged: Soccer’s global reach and emotional intensity have long invited comparisons to religion. Both scholars and fans testify that the analogy is more than just a metaphor.
The Spark
The grate cheese robbery
Longreads writes about how organized crime fell in love with cheese.
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