Are Christians Disappearing Across The Middle East?
(ANALYSIS) It is entirely accurate to say that Christianity continues to thrive as an international religion, spanning vast regions across the world. But it is also necessary to acknowledge that the global Christian community is not without its travails.
And it is increasingly necessary to take a careful look at the “world’s largest religious group,” revealing not only thriving communities across several continents, but also increasing numbers of endangered religious believers who continue to face real threats to their survival.
Historically, Christianity has been viewed as a Western religion, despite its earliest beginnings in the Middle East. However, today, Sub-Saharan Africa has surpassed Europe as home to the world’s largest Christian community. Between 2010 and 2020, the population of sub-Saharan Africa grew by 31% to 1.1 billion.
As of 2020, most people living in the region are Christians (62%), while Muslims make up about a third of the population. Religiously unaffiliated people and followers of other religions (which include African traditional religions) each account for roughly 3% of the overall population.
At the same time, as Pew Research reports, “Places such as Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian Territories, and, to a lesser degree, Egypt and Lebanon have seen a continuation of the historic exodus of Christians during the past decade alone. The decline is especially significant when one considers that these communities are among the oldest Christian communities in the world.
Amid all the modern political forms that have shaped the Middle Eastern geopolitical order, the Christian presence in the region pre-dates Islam, Zionism, Arab nationalism, European colonialism, Western Christianity, and the modern missions movement. It also gives us a unique perspective on geopolitical forces and persecution.”
Persecution continues to be an ever-increasing threat to communities of Christian believers in the Middle East. No doubt the most glaring example of such violence is the ongoing abuse and killing of Christians by the Islamic State, along with other ideologically and religiously hostile groups and organizations. Such violence has been formally recognized as an ongoing genocide by the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom.
However, despite their deeply rooted biblical history, Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the Middle East. In fact, Christians in Iraq are “close to extinction,” Wikipedia recently reported. Meanwhile, according to U.S. State Department estimates, the number of Christians in Iraq has reportedly fallen from 1.2 million in 2011 to 120,000 in 2024, and the number in Syria from 1.5 million to 300,000 — diminishing numbers driven by persecution by terrorist groups and repression by authoritarian regimes.
You can read the rest of Lela Gilbert’s piece at The Washington Stand.
Lela Gilbert is Senior Fellow for International Religious Freedom at Family Research Council and Fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. She lived in Israel for over 10 years, and is the author of “Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner.”