Christian Persecution Is a Global Crisis. The World Must Stop Looking Away.

During his speech at the UN general assembly, President Trump rightfully brought up an underreported and overlooked issue: “Christians are being persecuted all over the world.” Countries all over the world from Latin America, to  Asia, to the  Middle East, to Africa are killing, detaining, and intimidating innocent people for exercising their fundamental human right of practicing religion. Through the President’s leadership and the  White House Religious Liberty Commission, the Trump administration is working to fight this, but the lack of attention this has received from the mainstream media is inexcusable. Allowing Christians around the world to be continuously persecuted threatens our very way of living.

In Nigeria, jihadist groups, Fulani militias, and bandits have been allowed to kidnap, abuse, and kill Christians, as the Nigerian government has failed to protect them or bring their attackers to justice. Between October 2024 and September 2025, 3,490 Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria, accounting for 72% of all such killings worldwide. The most recent attacks came only last month, when Fulani gunmen killed at least 12 Christians across several villages in Plateau State and seriously injured two more. These killings came just days after a Baptist pastor and his church secretary were shot dead on their way to Sunday service in the same county. The Nigerian government needs to take a zero tolerance stance towards these terrorist groups. Just under half of the population of Nigeria is Christian. Failing to protect these citizens is a failure of one of the fundamental duties a government has. 

Similarly, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)--an Islamic State affiliate–has waged one of the most brutal campaigns against Christians anywhere in the world. In February 2025, ADF fighters marched captured Christians to a Protestant church in Kasanga and beheaded them; the bodies of 70 were found inside, including women, children, and elderly people. Five months later, they attacked worshippers at a Catholic church in Komanda during a night vigil, killing about 43, and after massacring dozens at a funeral in Ntoyo that September, the ADF itself claimed to have killed nearly 100 Christians. The killing continued into 2026, including 43 people killed in Bafwakao village. The attacks have only grown deadlier, yet the violence draws little international attention.

Syrian Christians also face a growing climate of fear under the transitional government that took power after the fall of Assad. In June, 2025, a suicide bomber attacked worshippers at the Greek Orthodox Mar Elias Church in Damascus, killing 25 and wounding more than 60. Since then, Christians have faced arbitrary arrests, ransom demands, and sporadic killings despite repeated promises from President Ahmed al-Sharaa that they would be safe. The starkest case is Suleiman Khalil, the former mayor of the Christian town of Sadad, who led its defense against ISIS in 2015 and has been imprisoned by the new government since February 2025 without charges or access to a lawyer. The United States lifted sanctions after receiving assurances from Syria’s government that it would protect religious minorities. Yet conditions for Christians continued to worsen in 2026 .

In India, the persecution of Christians is driven less by militias and more by law. Christians make up only about 2.3% of the population, and about a dozen states have anti-conversion laws so vaguely worded that prayer meetings and charity work can be prosecuted as illegal "inducement" to convert. There have been over 1,600 recorded arrests and detentions of Christians in India in a single year. In June 2026, seven Christians in Dindori, Madhya Pradesh, were sentenced to five years after a neighbor accused them of luring people to convert at a child's birthday party. They spent two months in prison before the state High Court released them on bail in August while they appeal, and they're due back in court in January 2027. If the appeal fails, they will return to prison for celebrating a birthday with their neighbors. India may not see the massacres of Nigeria or Congo, but its laws are steadily turning ordinary Christian life into a criminal offense. 

In Nicaragua and Cuba, the persecutors are the governments themselves. Since churches sheltered protesters in 2018, Nicaragua's regime under Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has jailed, exiled, and stripped the citizenship of priests and pastors, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was sentenced without trial to 26 years for treason before being expelled to the Vatican in 2024. The regime has also confiscated dozens of Church properties and shut down scores of churches. In Cuba, the Communist Party's Office of Religious Affairs controls religious life, and pastors who step outside what the state allows risk arrest or exile. In March 2026, police detained Pastor Ronaldo Pérez Lora while he prayed with his family and congregation in a public park. In both countries, regimes determined to silence the Church have turned faith into an act of defiance. 

In China, the Communist Party allows Christians to worship only in state-registered churches under its control, and it treats independent "house churches" as a threat. In October 2025, authorities launched one of the country's largest crackdowns on a single church in decades, detaining 28 leaders of Beijing's Zion Church in coordinated raids across 11 cities. Its founder, Pastor Ezra Jin, was charged with "illegally using information networks" for preaching online after authorities shut down the church's building in 2018. He was released and allowed to join his family in the United States in July 2026, less than two months after President Trump requested his release, a reminder that sustained American pressure can work. But at least eight Zion Church leaders remain in detention, and others, such as Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church, are still serving long prison sentences for their faith. For China's tens of millions of Christians, worshipping outside the Party's control remains a crime.

From massacres in Nigeria and Congo to prison sentences in India and crackdowns on churches in China, Nicaragua, and Cuba, the persecution of Christians takes many forms, but the pattern is unmistakable. Whether the threat comes from jihadist militias or from governments determined to control faith, millions of Christians are being killed, jailed, and silenced for what they believe. The past year has also shown that American pressure works: Pastor Ezra Jin walked free after President Trump called for his release, and U.S. pressure pushed Nigeria to deploy forces that deterred a feared massacre in Plateau State. Those successes should be the beginning, not the end. As President Trump reminded the world at the United Nations, Christians are being persecuted all over the world, and it is long past time that policymakers and the press treat it with the urgency it demands.