Business Insider: This chart shows how protest votes are shaping the political landscape in Europe

The refugee crisis that has struck Europe is the worst the continent has seen since the Second World War, and with it has come the resurgence of political parties that have not enjoyed this kind of support since 1945.

Support for far-right —and to a lesser extent far-left— parties has spiked in recent months as hundreds of thousands of refugees have come to Europe and a huge chunk of the population has once more felt their concerns were ignored or belittled by the ruling political class. [...]

The "contagion risk" from the UK to the rest of the continent is still possible too. Le Pen announced last week that if elected she would hold a referendum on France's membership of the EU. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' far-right anti-EU Dutch Freedom Party keeps gaining in popularity as well.

The aftermath of the UK referendum in Britain has also had the opposite effect in other European countries. Seeing the chaos brought about in Britain, support for the EU has surged in a number of countries throughout the continent. [...]

Risks appear more linked to referendums on a ratification of a new EU treaty or other EU-related issues, rather than questioning the EU membership outright, as support for EU membership appears fairly rooted. Only 21% of the people surveyed by Ipsos MORI in nine EU countries wanted to leave the EU... Even where protest parties are gaining momentum, it appears unlikely that they will garner sufficient votes to muster a majority.

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The Guardian: David Jenkins: the bishop who didn’t believe in the Bible

In the mid to late 1980s the bishop of Durham was a public figure in the way no church figure has quite managed since. He had been a wholly unknown theology lecturer when he went on a scarcely watched television programme to say that he didn’t believe in the literal truth of the virgin birth. He also said that the resurrection “was not just a conjuring trick with bones”. This was reported, with a dishonesty that is still astonishing, as “comparing the resurrection to a conjuring trick with bones”. [...]

Jenkins had brought to public attention the great shift in Bible reading that occurred among educated Christians in the 19th century, at first under the influence of geology and literary criticism. Since that great shift they no longer read the Bible as a collection of unambiguously historical facts and asked what these facts revealed about God. They read it as stories, and asked what those stories were trying to say. You may object that this is to read the Bible like a work of fiction. So it is. But it’s not just the Bible. If you believe in a personal God you are, I think, compelled to read the whole universe as a work of fiction – or at least as something with an author, who has arranged it to convey a meaning. So the Bible, if it is true, cannot just be a database of facts. [...]

This seems to me a profound category mistake. If the truths of religion can in principle be established by historical enquiry, then it’s dead. Faith has to be concerned with the stuff that is radically unknowable and that the methods of empirical or scientific enquiry simply can’t touch. You can’t prove or disprove the existence of God, but Jenkins was trying, I think, to show what it might mean if it were true. That really isn’t something that can be captured by a video camera.

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The New York Times: ‘I’ve Become a Racist’: Migrant Wave Unleashes Danish Tensions Over Identity

Bo Lidegaard, a prominent historian, said many Danes feel strongly that “we are a multiethnic society today, and we have to realize it — but we are not and should never become a multicultural society.”

The recent influx pales next to the one million migrants absorbed into Germany or the 163,000 into Sweden last year, but the pace shocked this stable, homogeneous country. The center-right government has backed harsh measures targeting migrants, hate speech has spiked, and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party is now the second largest in Parliament. [...]

There is tension, too, over whether the backlash is really about a strain on Denmark’s generous public benefits or a rising terrorist threat — or whether a longstanding but latent racial hostility is being unearthed. [...]

Many analysts saw Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union as an angry expression of concern that British — or, especially, English — identity was being diluted by the nation’s growing diversity. Debate is raging anew over whether certain Islamic modes of dress — full-body swimsuits, known as burkinis, in France and face veils in Germany — inherently contravene countries’ values.

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AP: Poll: Support for Black Lives Matter grows among white youth

Asked specifically about recent killings of black people by the police, 72 percent of African-American young people, 61 percent of Asian-Americans, 51 percent of Latinos and 40 percent of whites said they consider those killings part of a larger pattern, rather than isolated.

But young blacks are much more likely than young whites to call killings of black people by the police a very or extremely serious problem, 91 percent to 43 percent. Sixty-three percent of young whites think that violence against police is a serious problem, similar to the 60 percent of young African-Americans who say so.

Young whites also are more likely to say they trust Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump more than Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to handle attacks against the police, 45 percent to 28 percent, though they prefer Clinton for handling police violence against African-Americans, 44 percent to 20 percent.

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Deutsche Welle: 'If you don't have European answers, you don't have effective answers'

Enrico Letta: I think there are many things to be concerned about today, not only in terms of the economy but also the political instability and the uncertainties surrounding the constitutional referendum that we are having in Italy in November. Furthermore, there is the migrant crisis, which is severely affecting Italy again because after the closing of the Balkan route, the migration has shifted towards the central Mediterranean route. And then there is the big news about the zero growth we have had in Italy during this past quarter. So overall there are many things to be concerned about but I think that Italy has skills and assets and opportunities to recover from this. But we have to work harder. [...]

The problem is more fundamental than that. I don't see the European Union having a clear approach to dealing with the migrant problem. We continue to work step by step, dealing with one problem after another without developing a strategic approach. We have to create a sort of toolbox for the migrant crisis, as we did for the Euro-crisis. For the Euro-crisis we changed our treaties, we created the ESM and we need that kind of approach for the migrant crisis as well. We need some treaty changes, the harmonization of the rules pertaining to refugees, a coast guard and border patrol at the European level, measures like that. [...]

Absolutely. People are less enthusiastic about Europe and the consequence is that their leaders, the politicians, think that they have to be less enthusiastic too, so they can get votes. And that means there will be less European integration. You know, there are many areas where there are no national answers. Issues like the fight against terrorism or the management of the flows of migration. They are separate issues but what they have in common is that we need European solutions for both. If you don't have European answers, you don't have effective answers, just political fighting. And that is why today, populist parties are polling so well. There are no clear solutions to the problems affecting the people and the citizens respond to that.

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