Monday’s News & Ideas - 8/10/2026

After Charlottesville, a historian asks: Did America miss the point?
Religion News Service: Antisemitism has been here before, argues James Loeffler, a historian of modern Jewish history, in a new book. But public understanding of it has not necessarily grown.

A new bipartisan bill in Congress would create protest-free buffer zones around houses of worship
Religion News Service: The bipartisan bill is intended to prevent protests. It follows a rowdy demonstration outside a Manhattan synagogue last year.

When German Catholics and Protestants share a church
DW: Each year, dozens of churches are decommissioned, demolished or repurposed in Germany. But there is a new, unique development.

A Democrat sounds the alarm on Christian Nationalism in Congress*
The New York Times: Representative Jared Huffman of California, the only self-declared “humanist” in Congress, writes in a new book that the separation of church and state is in grave danger.

The idea of ‘sin’ can cause shame and trauma. But what if it’s used as a cue to act?
The Guardian: Instead of “being” or “doing” the wrong thing, a more useful understanding of sin may be of “missing the mark” — a sense of not quite right-ness.

The Spark

The case for aesthetic education
Friedrich Schiller believed art belongs at the heart of education, JSTOR says.

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