On Tuesday, 28 April 2015, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges. The Constitutional question being asked the Court is whether the US Constitution requires states to allow same-sex couples to marry. The Court will not hand down its decision until the end of June, but there is little question that this case will change the definition of marriage within the United States; I believe the decision will be a 5-4 decision that will legitimize same-sex marriage in the United States. I also believe that this decision, coupled with the other significant cultural developments dealing with same-sex marriage, will pose a significant threat to religious liberty in this nation.

My wife and I recently visited our son, Jonathan, and his family in London, England, where they live. While there one evening we watched one of this year?s important movies, Christopher Nolan?s Interstellar. At one level it is merely a movie of science fiction, but at another level it is deeply metaphysical and profound. In this edition of Issues, I want to explore some of the themes developed in this unsettling movie.

President Obama, the government of Iran, and other major nations including Britain, France and Russia, recently announced a framework for a deal to slow down Iran?s nuclear program and remove the sanctions that have somewhat crippled the Iranian economy. That it is controversial is an understatement. Even after it was announced, there was evident disagreement between Iran and the US over when and how the sanctions would be removed and over details about inspections and verification as the agreement is implemented. This is astonishing in its own right because the announcement is only about a framework; the specific details about implementing the framework are yet to be negotiated and this is to be completed by 30 June 2015.

In 1993, the US Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the RFRA applied only to the federal government, some 20 states since then have passed their own RFRAs. Another dozen states have adopted RFRA-style protections in other ways. Probably the most important invocation of an RFRA, in a federal case, was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which reached the Supreme Court last year. Recently Indiana passed its own RFRA, which has created a firestorm. The law establishes that the state ?may not substantially burden? a person?s free exercise of religion unless ?it is essential to further a compelling governmental interest? and ?the least restrictive means? of doing so.

Since World War II, three major international financial institutions have facilitated (and dominated) the world?s investment in development opportunities in roads, airports and other infrastructure issues throughout Asia (and much of the world)?the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The leadership of these organizations has been restricted to Europeans, Americans and Japanese; China has been excluded. But China has the world?s largest foreign reserves (an estimated $4 trillion) and is quite eager to invest these reserves overseas.

On 17 March 2015, the Presbyterian Church (USA) [PCUSA] voted to change the definition of marriage within the PCUSA constitution to include same-sex marriage. The language of the constitution was changed from ?a man and a woman? to ?two people, traditionally a man and a woman.? The PCUSA thus joins other denominations/religious associations that permit their clergy to perform same-sex marriages: the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Quakers, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches, and both Reform and Conservative Judaism.

Fifty years ago (1965), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist, Assistant Secretary of Labor, and later one of the most important U.S. Senators of the 20th century, wrote a controversial but prescient report on the importance of the family for African-American children: The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (aka the Moynihan Report). It focused on the deep roots of black poverty in America and concluded controversially that the relative absence of nuclear families would greatly hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.

Genuine, biblical Christianity is colliding with an increasingly militant secularism in western civilization. In fact, western secularism is uncomfortable with religious convictions of any kind. Christianity has always been an integral part of western civilization?but no longer. Hence, secularists tend to lump together Christianity, Islam (in all its varieties), Judaism?indeed all faiths that claim something absolute. Several bizarre developments illustrate this trend toward militant secularism, which dismisses all religious convictions

Two visions for the Middle East?s future are colliding, and the vital center of that collision is Iran. President Obama assumes that the current Iranian regime will choose GDP over ideology. History tells us that the West has assumed that past rogue regimes would choose national interest over ideology and religion?that ?prudent calculation and statecraft would trump megalomania? (per columnist David Brooks). This was the assumption before the summer of 1914, when World War I began. The West assumed the same with Adolf Hitler between 1936 and 1939. Currently, this is the assumption with ISIS and with the growing tension between the Sunni and Shiite extremists active in the Middle East.

Seemingly, out of nowhere, last June, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS or sometimes called ISIL) seized Mosul, Iraq and has gained more territory in Iraq and Syria since then, comprising an area now larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been the leader of ISIS since May 2010. He regards himself as the caliph of Islam and his movement is energized by a deeply-rooted Islamic theology. ISIS is not a group of thugs who simply use Islam to justify their actions. ISIS is an intensely important expression of Islam and it can be only understood if examined from that perspective.