Craig T. Owens

I found some of the statistics reported in The Global War On Christians by John L. Allen, Jr., to be quite eye-opening. You can read my full book review by clicking here, but these are some of the stats that caught my attention—

“Open Doors… estimates that one hundred million Christians worldwide presently face interrogation, arrest, torture, or even death because of their religious convictions.” 

“Two of the world’s leading demographers of religion, David B. Barrett and Todd Johnson, have performed an exhaustive statistical analysis of Christian martyrdom, reaching the conclusion that there have been 70 million martyrs since the time of Christ. Of that total, fully half, or 45 million, went to their deaths in the twentieth century, most of them falling victim to either Communism or National Socialism. More Christians were killed because of their faith in the twentieth century than in all previous entries combined. … Christians today are, by some order of magnitude, the most persecuted religious body on the planet, suffering not just martyrdom but all the forms of intimidation and depression mentioned above in record numbers. That’s not a hunch, or a theory, or in anecdotal impression, but an undisputed empirical fact of life.”

“In 1919, just 9 percent of Africa was Christian. As of early 2013 it was 63 percent, for a grand total of 380 million Christians on the continent. These folks are scattered across a stunning 552,000 congregations and 11,500 denominations…. Most of this growth has occurred since the last quarter of the twentieth century and is the result of indigenous African evangelizing efforts rather than Western missionaries.”

The top five most hazardous nations on earth in which to be a Christian:

1. North Korea
2. Afghanistan
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Somalia
5. Iran

“One estimate is that there are 47 million Pentecostals in China alone, despite the best efforts of the officially atheistic government to rein in their expansion. … The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which issues the much-consulted World Christian Database, says there are 111 million Christians in China, roughly 90 percent Protestant. That would make China the third largest Christian country on earth, following only the United States and Brazil.” 

“Open Doors… estimates the total number of Christians in North Korea to range from 200,000 to half a million, with at least a quarter of those believers currently behind bars in prison camps.”

“In the 1990s… conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism in Latin America during the twentieth century actually surpassed the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century.”

“A September 2012 report by the Pew Forum concluded that ‘a rising tide of restrictions on religion [has] spread around the world.’ Among other points, the study found that 37 percent of nations in the world have high or very high restrictions on religion, up from 31 percent a year ago, a six-point spike in just 12 months, and that three-quarters of the world’s population of 7 billion, meaning 5.25 billion people, live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion. That’s up from 70 percent from the previous year.”

You can also read some quotes from this amazing book by clicking here.