For many people around the world, practising their religion or belief can be a matter of life or death. While the world has become more, not less religious, the daily practice of exercising one’s religion or belief has become harder.
According to the Pew Research Centre, a US non-partisan think tank, 84% of the of the world’s population believe in the transcendent, either in a specific god or gods, or a broader spiritual framework. The remainder may hold deep convictions from agnostic or atheistic perspectives or have belief systems outside of traditional faith streams.
Since 2010, the Pew Research Centre has undertaken research every year tracking global restrictions on the free practice of faith. Their latest survey in 2024 details how almost two-thirds of humanity live in environments where they face restrictions.
Often when we think of religious persecution, we instinctively recall the violent and cruel atrocities committed by terrorist and non-state actors like Boko Haram in Nigeria or ISIS in Iraq, as well as notorious blasphemy cases such as that of Asia Bibi in Pakistan.
But, restrictions on religious freedom are a lot more mundane and common place with instances occurring in most spheres of society, whether that be in the court room and prisons, in tax offices or immigration centres, in hospitals, in the workplace or at school and even in the family. Context is all important.
In addition to Pew’s in-depth research, Open Doors – an international NGO that supports vulnerable Christians in more than 70 countries – produces an annual World Watch List ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the ‘most extreme persecution.’
In its 2024 report, it concluded that 317 million Christians face ‘very high or high levels of persecution’ across its ranking. This equates to 1 in 7 Christians worldwide. Geographically, it found that one in five Christians face persecution in Africa and two in five Christians face persecution in Asia. The top five countries are: North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea and Yemen.