8/12/2026 marks podcast The Global Persecution of Christians

Facts, Countries, and the Double Standard

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Welcome. Today we examine one of the largest and least proportionally covered human rights crises of our time, the systematic persecution of Christians worldwide. This is not a claim that only Christians suffer or that other groups do not face severe religious or ethnic violence. It is data driven, look at a scale that the countries and mechanisms and other reasons why speaking plainly about these facts, especially when Islamic extremism or sharia influence systems are involved. So often triggers accusations of bigotry or racism, while parallel criticism of Christianity occurs almost at no cost in Western public discourse. In Matthew five, ten Matthew five, ten through twelve says blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when you others revile and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for when your reward is great in heaven, for they have persecuted the prophets who were before you. According to Open Doors twenty twenty six World Watch list, more than three hundred and eighty eight Christian million Christians, roughly one in seven worldwide, under high level under live under high levels of persecution or discrimination because of their faith. In the top 50 countries alone, over 350 million face very high or extreme levels. In Africa, the figure is approximately one in five. In Asia, two in five. Tens of thousands were more or more faced physical or mental abuse, abduction, sexual violence, or forced displacement. Open doors recorded 2024, one hundred and twenty nine thousand Christians were forced from their homes, and sub Saharan Africa accounted for ninety-three percent of the global faith related killings. Thirteen Christians are killed for the faith every day on average. That is one every two hours. Then examine the asymmetry and public speech about religion. First we'll talk about the data and methodology. Open Doors has produced the world's watch list for more than three decades. The methodology scores countries on pressure across five spheres of life private, family, community, national, and church. Plus a violence component each sphere can reach sixteen point seven points. The maximum is one hundred. Extreme persecution begins around eighty one. Scores are built from local researchers, researchers, in incident reports, expert cross-checks, and external audits by bodies such as the Internal Institute for Religious Freedom. Because many incidents in North Korea and parts of China and Libya or remote Africa conflict zones go unreported, the published figures, figures are conservative. Trends over the past decade show expansion. More countries at very high or extreme levels, rising absolute numbers of affected Christians. Fourteen sub-Saharan countries appear in the 2026 top 50. Violence scores in the region have more than doubled in a decade. Only three countries scored the maximum possible for violence Sudan, Nigeria, and Mali, all in that region. Other monitors paint a congruent picture, aid to the church in needs religious freedom, and the world and world reports document grave violations affecting billions of people across dozens of countries. Independent trackers such as the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa provide granular multi-year data on Nigeria that reinforce the religious targeting patterns. The largest absolute numbers of persecuted Christians live in places where Christianity is a minority, or where the state ideology or militant groups threaten threat is a threat. This is distinct from the historical European experience of majority Christian societies or contemporary Western pattern of cultural marginalism and occasional vandalism. First, we'll talk about is totalitarianism control as in North Korea and beyond. North Korea has occupied the number one position in the world's watch list for the vast majority of three decades, twenty-four times since 1993, and consistently in recent years with a score near ninety-seven to ninety-eight. The regime threatens threats Christianity and as an extreme existential ideology threat, linked in official thinking to foreign imperialism and disloyalty to the Kim family cult. Possession of a Bible, contact with missionaries, or private worship can result in immediate execution or deportation of the believer and often the entire family to a political prison camps or forced labor facilities. Estimates of Christians in the camps run into tens of thousands. Overall, Christian populations estimate range from roughly one hundred thousand to four hundred thousand, almost entirely underground. The Songbun social classification system places religious believers in the hostile class. Survivors and defector testimony describes torture, sexual violence against women, forced labor under starvation conditions, and public executions for religious activity. Organized religion has been nearly eradicated in the open form. The underground church survives through extreme secrecy and whispered prayers, memorized scripture and absolute compartmentalization. In Matthew ten twenty eight, he says, Do not fear for those who kill the body but cannot who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Enridia, often called the North Korea of Africa, ranks fifth. Infident national service, infidite national service, arbitrarily detention of members of unregistered churches, especially evangelical and Pentecostals, house churches raids, and long prison terms without trial define the environment. China ranks in the mid-teens mandatory registration and ideological alignment for official churches, face recognition, facial recognition, surveillance, and some venues, crackdowns on house churches, and long term pressures on ethnic Christians, minorities. Cuba and Nicaragua illustrate Latin America authoritarianism, authoritarian patterns with culture church closures, surveillance, and harassment of clergy critical of the regime. These cases demonstrate the totalitarian ideology, whether communist or one party nationalist, can produce near total suppression without requiring Islamic doctrine. They also show how persecution is not exclusively a Muslim world phenomenon. Now let's talk about the Islamic extremism, Sharia pressure, and apostasy laws. The majority of the 2026 top ten, however, are Muslim majority countries where or states where Islamic extremism or classical Sharia norms on apostasy, blasphemy, and the status of non-Muslims drive the severity. Somalia is number two, Yemen number three, Sudan number four, Syria six, with a sharp rise after the collapse of the central authority, Pakistan number eight, Libya number nine, and Iran number ten. Illustrate different intensities of the same core problem, conversion from Islam is treated as apostasy, often punishable by death under traditional jurispedance or by family and community violence. Evangelicalism is criminalized and Christian communities, especially converts, live under permanent insecurity. In Somalia and Yemen, the Christian population is tiny and almost entirely hidden. In al-Shabaab the other groups and other groups enforce death for converts. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws are routinely abused to settle scores, seize property, or mobilize mobs. Forced conversions and marriages of Christian girls are not are documented. And Christians face systematic discrimination in employment and education. House churches are raided, converts face national security charges, long prison sentences, and pressure to recant. Yet paradoxically, multiple mission organizations and researchers report significant underground growth estimates of Muslim background believers ranging from several hundred thousand to over a million converting to Christian Christianity, driven by disillusionment with the regime. Growth under pressure is a recurring pattern. But it does not reduce the cost paid by those arrested or the families destroyed. In Acts 4, 13 Acts 4, verse 31, and in verse 6 and 7. And when they had prayed, they uh the place wherewith they had gathered together was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. And the word of God continued to increase and the number of disciples greatly multiplied greatly. Now Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Afghanistan under Taliban under the Taliban, and the Maldives, Algeria, Algeria, and others imposed several legal and social restrictions. In many of those settings, the Hami framework, historically, second class status for Christian and Jews as under Islamic rule, persist and diluted for or modernized for through law, custom or a militant enforcement. Now to Nigeria, the deadliest concentration. Nigeria ranks seventh overall, but body uh by first by body count. Year after year. Um of the 4,849 faith-related Christian deaths recorded globally in the latest period, 3,490 occurred there. Open doors has given Nigeria the maximum violence score for multiple consecutive years. The country contains Africa's largest Christian population and a complex north-south religious divide with Sharia criminal codes operating in many northern states. The violence is multi-sourced. Boko Haram and Islamic state of West Africa province, the iswap, is the north is in the north in the northeast and more lethally in recent years across the middle belt of the Northwest, Fulani ethnic militants and affiliate uh affiliated bandit groups, multi-year data we're covering uh twenty thousand uh two thousand through twenty nineteen through two thousand twenty-five show that Fulani Terry groups um accounted for the polarity of civilian deaths and the majority of Christian civilian deaths in many analyses. Four times more than the combined death toll of Boko Haram and Iswa in some periods. Christians were killed and abducted at high rates uh at rates significantly higher than their population share in the affected states. Actual ratios around two to one are higher. Um proportional ratios are still high higher still. Significant incidents including mass village attacks with a la Akbar chance, church raids, abductions, and entire families or wedding parties forced conversion pressures and captivity and sexual violence. Government response is frequently criticized and is inadequate, selective or compromised by local politics and security force limitations. Displacement runs into the millions in affected regions. The pattern is not the simple farmer herder resource conflict. Religious identity is repeatedly documented as targeting factor by both local witnesses and independent monitors. This is the largest concentration of contemporary Christian martyrdom. It receives far less sustained Western media attention than many other conflicts of comparable or smaller scale. In Hebrews 13 3 it says, remember those who were in prison as though in prison with you were in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you are in the body. India ranks high due to the Hindu national pressures, anti-conversion laws, and multiple states in multiple states, mob violence and social boycotts against Christians and Muslims. Miramar combines military rule with Buddhist nationalist elements and conflict zones targeting. Mexico scores high on violence-driven cartels that view independent churches as threats or revenue sources. Central Asian states show rising authoritarian restrictions. Across these environments, a consistent observation emerges where classical Islamic jurispedience on apostasy and the subdurrent status of non Muslims retains force whether through state law, militant enforcement, or social pressures. Converts and visible Christians communities face the highest personal risk. Where communist When ultranationalist ideology dominates, the suppression is more totalizing and bureaucratic. In most cases, the human cost is measured in lives, families destroyed and churches emptied, and the children raised without open access to their parents' faith. Now we'll go on to the double standard in public discourse. Now the now the second topic of our day is why public criticism of Islam and Islamic doctrines or patterns of Islamic violence so frequently draw accusations of racism or bigotry in Western societies, while Christianity is freely mocked, critiqued, and blamed for historical and contemporary ills with most nonprofessional or social penalty in elite institutions. First, the definal clarity. Islam is a religion, a body of text, doctrines, legal traditions, and historical practices. It is not a race. Race refines or refers to ancestry and physical characteristics of individuals cannot change. Criticizing ideas, scripture, and historical conquest patterns, apostasy rules, blasphemy enforcement, and contemporary statistical patterns of violence is criticism of ideas. Equating that with racism is a category area, category error. The same standard must apply to Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other system. One can reject the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Quran or the cast of implications of certain Hindu texts without being a bigot. The practical asymmetry arises from when several reinforcing factors demographics and power. In Western countries, Christianity or its cultural residue has been historically majority majority tradition. Criticizing the dominant group is lower risk and often status enhancing in progressive circles. Muslim populations in Europe and North America are frequently framed through immigrants and postcolonial or radical racialized minority lenses, even though that the relevant Bible is a religious doctrine and not community norms nor skin color. Fear of a symmetric response. Documented riots, assassinations, and fatwas following cartoons, novels, films, and speeches critical of Islam create a chilling effect. Parallel Christian responses in West and contemporary West are vanishing rarely. Vanishing rare. Institutions respond to the critical credible threat of disruption. The ideological heresy. Many progressive progressive framework ranks rank groups by perceived historical oppression. Muslims are often placed higher on the victim scale than Christians, especially Western or white Christians, producing selective empathy and speech rules. Islamophobia is defined expansively to cover most both genuine anti-Muslim prejudice and legitimate scrutiny of ideas or data. Equivalent language for anti-Christian has far less institutional power. Media and academic norms. Coverage of Christian historical failings, you know, the Crusades, Inquisition, and colonial missions is routine and often one-sided. Parallel examination of Islamic expansion, Dahami systems, or contemporary jihadist ideology is frequently hedged, contextualized and non-existence, into non existence, or labeled dangerous. Reformers and apostates from Muslim backgrounds who offer the sharpest internal critiques are sometimes marginalized. In the West, Western discourse precisely because their testimony is inconvenient. None of these require denying real anti-Muslim prejudice or violence against Muslims, which should be opposed. On the same universal grounds as other bigotry, it does require refusing to grant any religion or ideology a protected status that shields it from its doctrines from real world consequences from open examination. Free societies survive by subjecting all ideas to criticism. The current double standard protects neither the truth nor the most vulnerable. People inside Muslim majority societies, converts, women under certain legal regimes, religious minorities or free thinkers who pay the highest price for the taboos. In Acts 5 29, it says we must obey God rather than men. So in closing today, the data is clear. Hundreds of millions of Christians live under pressure of violence for their faith. Thousands die every year. The deadliest concentration is in Nigeria. The most totalizing control was in North Korea. Many of the highest scoring countries feature Islamic, legal, or militant pressure as the primary driver. Underground growth in many places, such as Iran, demonstrates how faith often intensifies under persecution. But growth does not ease the suffering. Religious freedom is a universal principle, not a Western is not a Western idea or Christian privilege. It protects the right to believe or change belief and to speak about belief, including critically. Applying this standard to Christianity and other another to Islam is incoherent and corrosive. Listeners who want to act and support organizations that provide practical aid, legal defense, and advocacy for the persecuted, open doors, aid to the church in need and others by insisting that the public discourse remain open to comfortable uncomfortable facts. The alternative is selective blindness and leaves the most vulnerable without allies, and leaves the free societies unable to name the ideologies that threaten them. In Revelation 2, verse 10 says, Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. And here in America, we should stand up for your Christian faith. Do not be afraid of being called a bigot or a racist. Stand up for Jesus. He is the only one that matters. And in Romans 8, 35 and verse and seven verse 37, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who have loved us. Thank you for listening and have a blessed day.