New Study: 80 Percent of Persecuted Religious Believers Are Christians

By Patrick Goodenough | May 3, 2019

Eighty percent of religious believers who are being persecuted around the world are Christians, and in some regions the scale and nature of the persecution approaches the international definition of genocide, according to a new report commissioned by Britain’s foreign office.

“The main impact of such genocidal acts against Christians is exodus,” says the report’s author, the Anglican Bishop of Truro in southwest England, Philip Mountstephen.

“Christianity now faces the possibility of being wiped out in parts of the Middle East where its roots go back furthest.”

The report released Thursday says the proportion of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa – a predominantly Muslim region – has dropped from around 20 percent of the total population a century ago to some four percent today. In Iraq, the number of Christians has plummeted from 1.5 million early this century to less than 120,000 today...........The report found that “high levels of persecution” were taking place in 50 countries, affecting some 245 million Christians. That’s more than ten percent of the world’s estimated 2.3 billion Christians.............To Read More....