I had addressed the subject of assisted dying in an edition of Issues on 25 January 2025. But what is occurring in Quebec, Canada is alarming. Hence, I want to return to the topic of assisted dying in this edition of Issues in Perspective.

Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as “not religious” has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in “organized religion” has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents.

In mid-April, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that trans women do not fall within the legal definition of women under the country’s equality legislation. This landmark 88-page ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, is a blow to campaigners for transgender rights. As Lizzie Dearden of the New York Times reported, “[T]he five judges involved in the ruling emphasized that they were not commenting more broadly on whether trans women are women, saying it was not the role of the court to adjudicate on the meaning of gender or sex. Instead, the judgment is limited to the precise interpretation of language in the 2010 Equality Act, which aims to prevent discrimination.”

Over the last several months, President Trump has acted to withhold federal funds from a raft of elite universities: Harvard ($2.26 billion), Cornell ($1 billion), Northwestern ($790 million), Brown ($510 million), Columbia ($400 million), Princeton ($210 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million). His complaint is the “abject failure of these institutions to deal with antisemitism on campus, but the president has also demanded a broader crackdown on DEI compulsions and an expansion of viewpoint diversity among predominantly progressive faculty.”

Anna Louie Sussman of the New York Times writes, “Scientists are doing human embryo research that could, for instance, help prevent miscarriages. Companies are pushing the boundaries of what kind of testing can be done on embryos in the name of optimizing future lives. Embryos are at the center of divorce cases that are part property dispute, part custody battle.

Ideas have consequences and the battle for ideas is important in any age, but especially in our own day, when relativism, secularism and intentional disinformation are rampant in our world. Thus, in an astonishing and shocking act, President Trump, on 15 March 2025, ordered the termination of grants for Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and Television Marti), the Open Technology Fund and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks are also being dismantled.

For my wife, Peggy, and me, one of our favorite pastimes is to visit our local Barnes and Noble bookstore. We spend about 60 to 90 minutes perusing the multitude of books throughout the store. I often read and skim a new book to determine if I wish to purchase it. During a recent visit, I read through the new book by religious writer Elaine Pagels, the Harrington Spear Paine (Emeritus) Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She gives focus to practice and tradition, not necessarily specific theological doctrine or content. She has done extensive research into Gnosticism and its connection to Christianity. She has argued that “belief is overrated” and that is what is most important is what we practice. Perhaps her most important book is The Gnostic Gospels.

The eruption of antisemitism on the left—dressed up as opposition to Israel’s tactics in a war started by its enemies—is the most potent form of antisemitism in America. Wall Street Journal columnist, Gerard Baker writes, “Antisemitism has a strong pedigree on the left: The equation of capitalism’s evils with the supposed avarice of Jewish financiers is a popular theme, and to it has been added the modern ‘settler colonialist’ narrative that alleges Zionist rapine in Palestine.” Baker adds that “our universities are run by leaders who are models of the left-wing ideology that dominates so much of our politics and culture. It deems the rights of certain people less worthy of protection than others, it divides the world into oppressor and oppressed. You can call for the murder of all Jews, but say sex is biological and you will be punished . . . ‘Truth’ has been deposed and replaced with the monomaniacal ideology of the ‘My Truth’ crowd.”

One of my favorite novels is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In one of the central chapters of the book, one of the brothers, Ivan Karamazov, argues, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” The permissiveness of modern American society can scarcely be exaggerated, but it can be traced directly to the fact that modern men and women act as if God does not exist or is powerless to accomplish His will. Furthermore, the church no longer represents the central core of Western civilization. For the most part, the church has been displaced by the reign of secularist, postmodern autonomy.

Attorney, columnist and evangelical Christian David French poignantly observes that it is understood that American elections “could reset our national security strategy, but they did not change our bedrock alliances. They did not change our fundamental identity. Until now.” Donald Trump is upending the entire national security strategy of the United States. His vision is destructive and dangerous. As Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker observes, “Trump’s mendacious contempt for Ukraine and . . . his cringing admiration for Russia and the ‘genius’ in the Kremlin” raise real concerns, but also signify a “new world order,” one that “will come at a steep price.”