Monday Miscellany, 10/20/25

Trump doubts his salvation. Christianophobia. Percentage of young adults identifying as “Non-Binary” plummets.

Trump Doubts His Salvation

We blogged about how President Trump has been trying to make peace in the world as a way to get into Heaven. Well, now he has achieved his greatest triumph, making peace in the Middle East. But he thinks that will not be enough, that he will not get into Heaven after all.

As reported in the Washington Post,

“I don’t think there’s anything going to get me in heaven,” Trump told reporters en route to Israel on Air Force One, after being asked if the peace deal he helped broker between Israel and Hamas has boosted his chances. “I think I’m not, maybe, heaven-bound.”

He’s right, of course. We can’t get to Heaven by our good works, simply because we never have enough of them to deserve eternal life. And we are weighted down by our bad works, which because of our fallen condition will always outnumber the good works. We need atonement. But God has provided that, freely, in His incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. By faith in Christ and what He has done for us, we can be justified.

It’s healthy that President Trump is realizing that even bringing about world peace, if he could do that, will not get him to Heaven. He needs the next step. He needs to repent of his sins–which he has famously refused to do, insisting that he doesn’t need forgiveness–and turn to Christ, who will take his sins into Himself, impute to him His righteousness, and bring him to Heaven.

I take President Trump’s spiritual musings seriously. I find the doubt and the fears of this powerful, egotistical man extremely poignant. I refuse to mock him for this, dismiss it as a joke, or heap up all of his offenses to prove that he is indeed Hell-bound as many of his critics will do. Nor will I excuse him and insist that he will go to Heaven after all because he is such a good person, as many of his more fervent supporters are likely to do.

Let’s do this: Let’s pray for this man. Whether you are a supporter or a critic, pray that President Trump will come to the salvation that is in Christ. If you are a supporter, you want the best for him. If you are a critic, this is your chance to pray for your enemy, as Jesus instructs us to do. Not just pray for him as the president, though do that too (1 Timothy 2:2), but as a human being. Pray for the salvation of Donald Trump.

Christianophobia

You’ve heard of Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia. . . .To those words we can now add Christianophobia.

So reports the Catholic News Agency: “The term ‘Christianophobia’ has returned to the forefront of public debate in Europe, fueled by a growing number of incidents targeting churches, religious symbols, and believers.”

The term Christianophobia isn’t new, but it gives a name to realities documented by statistics.

According to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, the attacks ranged from the desecration of churches and Christian symbols (62% of cases), to arson (10%), threats (8%), and direct acts of violence (7%).

In a written response to a European Commission inquiry, it was revealed that in 2023 alone there were 2,444 incidents of violence against Christians across 35 European countries, including 1,000 cases in France.

So now they are giving a name for it.

Actually, as the article says, the term Christianophobia was used in a United Nations religious freedom resolution in 2017, which deplores “discrimination, intolerance and violence. . .motivated by Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia.”

The -phobia suffix in this context does not mean “irrational fear of,” as in psychiatric conditions, such as acrophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), agoraphobia (fear of public places), dentophobia (fear of dentists), and coulrophobia (fear of clowns).

Rather, using the suffix with Islam, homosexuality, transgenderism, and now Christianity means “hostility against,” or even “opposition to,” while keeping the psychiatric connotations that implies such opposition is due to a mental illness.

So now Christians can wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood. When secularists criticize us, we can accuse them of Christianophobia, whereupon, if they are woke enough, they are likely to back down.

Percentage of Young Adults Identifying as “Non-Binary” Plummets

Half as many college students identify as “non-binary”–that is, neither male nor female–as there were two years ago.

That’s the finding of a study discussed by social scientist Eric Kaufmann in his article for Unherd entitled Why are fewer young people identifying as trans?

Kaufmann reports:

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which conducts a large annual survey of US undergraduates, polled over 60,000 students in 2025. My analysis of the raw data shows that in that year, just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023. In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.

This trend is especially marked in elite institutions. Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston surveys over three-quarters of its students annually. In 2023, 9.2% identified as neither male nor female. This year, that number has crashed to just 3%. A similar story emerges at Brown University: 5% of students identified as non-binary in 2022 and 2023, but by 2025 that share had dropped to 2.6%.

More surveys ask about sexual orientation than gender identity. And while there is a broader spread of data points, the basic pattern looks similar: rising non-conformity from 2010 until 2023, with a near 10-point return to the norm in the ensuing two years in most datasets.

Kaufmann seems to be conflating “trans” with “non-binary.” Someone who is “transgender” does identify as either male or female, despite what biology would indicate. A look at the actual study shows that the dramatic decline is in the percentage of young adults who had considered themselves neither male nor female; that is, to use the parlance, “queer.”

The findings are indeed significant, though. Bi-sexuality, as well as the panoply of gender identities such as “pansexual,” “asexual,” and the other categories signified by the “+” in LGBTQ+, is way down. Regular homosexuality is pretty stable. Basically, LG is the same, but BTQ+ is dropping.

How can that be? These gender and sexual categories were said to be innate characteristics that could not be changed. Why are non-binary sexual identities dropping, while the binary of male and female is reasserting itself?

The study tries to account for its findings, but propose answers–mental health improvements, the vibe shift against wokism, rise in religion–don’t seem to correlate.

Kaufmann concludes, “For young people, gender and sexual identity are now independent fashions that rise and fall separately from other cultural and political currents.” Fashions? Gender and sexual identity are fashions?

The study is even more emphatic: “It appears that trans and queer are going out of fashion among young people.”