By J.B. Shurk
American Thinker
November 4, 2025
In 2025, there is no part of the world that is safe for Christians. Leftist prosecutors in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States criminalize fundamental tenets of the Christian faith as discriminatory forms of "hate speech." Chinese communists replace images of Jesus Christ with portraits of Xi Jinping. Hindus beat and murder Christians in India. Islamic nations sentence Christian converts to death. Nigerian Muslims attack Christian churches during prayer services and torture and murder so many Christian worshipers as to constitute genocide. The assassin who murdered Christian martyr Charlie Kirk allegedly did so because he believes that Charlie's Christian teachings were "hateful."
It is a dangerous time to be a Christian. Michael Snyder wrote an illuminating article a couple weeks ago entitled "Most of the Population of the World Lives in a Nation Where Christians Are Being Persecuted." In a sober analysis, he takes the reader on a tour of Christian persecution, torture, and mass slaughter around the planet.
Children in China are prohibited from attending Christian church services, and the Chinese Communist Party rewrites Bible verses to support official pronouncements from the State. Sharing the gospel online is a crime, and Christian pastors are regularly arrested and "disappeared." In India, Hindu terrorists set Christian churches and Bibles on fire and beat up and murder Christian parishioners. Muslims in Indonesia hunt down Christians as if they were animals. Muslims in Nigeria have massacred or abducted a hundred thousand Christians over the last six years and have destroyed some 20,000 Christian churches and schools. Islamic governments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran discriminate against Christians, punish them ruthlessly for their beliefs, and execute anyone brave enough to convert to Christianity. In North Korea, Christianity is outlawed, and practicing Christians who are discovered are summarily executed or condemned to death in labor-intensive concentration camps.
The corporate news media do not report on the systematic persecution and killing of Christians around the world. On Friday, President Trump attempted to do journalists' jobs for them by addressing the ongoing genocide of Christians in Nigeria. On Truth Social, the president wrote, "Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.... The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!" Nigerian Christians desperately hope that President Trump will find a way to save their brothers and sisters.
Muslims' slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is so horrific that even left-leaning commentator Bill Maher describes it as a genocide much worse than anything that is happening in Gaza. "They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country," Maher told his studio audience a few weeks ago. "Where are the kids protesting this?"
The "kids" are nowhere to be found. Their college professors brainwashed them to see "systemic racism" everywhere it is not but to view Christians as "fascists," "nationalists," and even "Nazis." Leftist billionaires and taxpayer-funded NGOs organize riots to "protest" Israel, "climate change," duly elected conservative politicians, and "white supremacy." Those same billionaires and NGOs are completely silent as Christians are massacred because, for many leftists, Christians are the "enemy."
Western universities and institutions have discriminated against Christians for so many years that leftist lawmakers and leftist voters now openly endorse anti-Christian bigotry.
A new California law mandating that foster parents "affirm a child's self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity" effectively bans Christian couples from helping children in need. The state of California argues that Christians who object to the "trans" ideology are a "danger" to kids. In other words, only Californians who embrace chemical castration, bodily mutilation, the enabling of mental illness, hormone poisoning, and made-up pronouns are considered sufficiently stable to look after children. As Kevin Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute warns, "there is now a very small step for the state to deem any parent as unfit to raise [his] own children if the family holds a view that contradicts the state's ideology on gender and sexual orientation. This could result in a visit by Child Protective Services with tragic consequences for the home." California is coming for Christians' children.
In Finland, government prosecutors continue to harass Christians for quoting the Bible. In 2019, Päivi Räsänen - a medical doctor, longtime member of Parliament, Finland's former Interior minister, and the wife of a pastor - used a Bible verse to criticize Finland's state church for sponsoring an LGBT "pride" parade. After the prominent Finnish Christian publicly stated that males and females are biologically different, police investigators interrogated her for some thirteen hours, forced her to justify her Christian worldview, and demanded that she publicly apologize and recant her Christian beliefs. Because she would not do so and instead defended the authority of God's Word, she was criminally charged for illegal "hate speech." Prosecutors have repeatedly asked Finnish courts to "wipe the internet" of Räsänen's media appearances and writings, in which she has used her medical education and Christian faith to distinguish men from women and to promote the Bible's moral teachings.
Although two lower courts have acquitted her, prosecutors have appealed and now argue before Finland's Supreme Court that quoting the Bible should be considered a criminal offense under the country's war crimes laws. One of Räsänen's attorneys, Lorcán Price, argues that the outcome of the case will reverberate across Europe because it addresses directly whether a Christian can publicly express the tenets of Christianity. "Can you speak the truth as you see it freely, even if it might offend somebody, or will you be prosecuted for hate speech?"
However Finland's Supreme Court decides, governments across Europe continue to persecute Christians and criminalize Christianity. In addressing the implications of Räsänen's ordeal in Finland, The Federalist's Joy Pullmann noted recently that citizens in the United Kingdom are regularly arrested for praying silently near abortion facilities, citizens of the Netherlands are arrested for publicly expressing a pro-life worldview, and the mayor of Brussels mobilized riot police last year to shut down a conference whose scheduled speakers recognize the scientific reality of two distinct biological sexes. Free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association are under sustained attack in Europe. Censorship and discrimination against Christians are pervasive.
If there is a silver lining to this global campaign of persecution against Christians, it is this: Lukewarm Christians and even non-Christians have begun to recognize that they cannot hide and hope for the best during the worldwide war against Christians. The battle between good and evil does not spare the cowardly, the weak-willed, or the naïve. Those who champion the toleration of sin or advocate for the acceptance of incompatible beliefs lay down a red carpet of moral relativism that invites evil to triumph.
One Christian pastor in Ohio, Michael Clary, wrote an essay in which he describes how Charlie Kirk's assassination roused him from hypnotic conditioning to be "inoffensive" and made him realize that only bold defenses of the Christian faith can confront and defeat evil. Weak Christians not only invite sin into the world, but also invite greater persecution against Christians. What Charlie Kirk proved through his short time on Earth is that Christian courage and strength must be renewed. Or, as writer Michael Austin eloquently observes, "Christian leaders must pave the way in confronting the works of darkness with the gospel of light, without compromise or cowardice."
Christ's followers are suffering around the world. They are hunted, beaten, raped, burned, hanged, and slaughtered. The governments of formerly Christian countries insist on making Christ's teachings a crime. Chinese, European, and American officials wish to censor the Bible. Christians must find faith and courage to face these evils now. Because much worse is sure to come.
This article was originally published on American Thinker.