How Many Christians Are Killed for Their Faith? 4,849 in a Year

Open Doors, the Christian charity that publishes the World Watch List, counted 4,849 Christians killed “for faith-related reasons” between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025. Its researchers count only the deaths they can tie to the victim’s faith, and Open Doors calls the total an “absolute minimum figure”, so at least that many died in that one year, and very likely more. The 100,000 a year that is often quoted is an older estimate of Christian martyrs, the yearly average for 2000 to 2010 from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and it counts something wider. The center calls a martyr any believer killed “in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility”, which takes in a Christian killed while simply living as one. Its latest table gives 900,000 martyrs by that definition for the ten years to 2026, which is about 90,000 a year.

Of the five figures people quote for persecution, Open Doors’ 4,849 is the only count of the dead. The other four count other things: Christians facing hostility of any kind, from pressure and discrimination to violence; countries where Christians were harassed; and two counts of people of every faith. Our page sets all five side by side with what each one counts.

When the fifth seal is opened in John’s vision, he sees “under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held,” and hears them cry, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” Each of them is given a white robe, and they are told to rest “yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (Revelation 6:9–11). More of our brethren were to be killed as they had been, and in our own day two groups of researchers try to count them, each by its own rule. Neither claims to have found them all.

How does Open Doors count Christians killed for their faith?

Open Doors counts a death when its researchers can tie it to the victim’s faith and the report stands up to checking. They gather the figures for every country that scores 41 points or more on the World Watch List, so deaths in countries that score lower are left out, and some countries are listed without a name, mainly for security reasons. In its report on the 2026 list, Open Doors spells out what this means for Nigeria, where its figure “refers to civilian Christians whose deaths can be linked to their Christian identity or Christian community affiliation.” Soldiers and fighters killed in battle are not in it, nor is ordinary crime where nobody can show that the victim was targeted for faith, nor any report it cannot confirm. When two accounts of an attack give different tolls, it takes the lower one.

Where nobody could count exactly, the researchers enter a round number such as 10 or 100, and Open Doors warns that “a symbolic number of 10 could in reality be (much) more than 10”. Nearly every total has some of these in it, and so, it says, “the numbers presented are (much) lower than in reality.” Its research notes name one kind of death that seldom reaches the count at all, since “Christians killed in conflict areas are unlikely to be reported separately,” and they give Sudan and the Nuba people as an example. Spread across the twelve months to September 2025, Open Doors’ 4,849 Christians killed for faith-related reasons come to about thirteen a day, at the least.

Where does the figure of 100,000 Christians killed a year come from?

The figure comes from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, whose staff keep the World Christian Database, and Open Doors itself uses that database for its population figures. On its page of quick facts the center takes the question “Why do you report such high figures for Christian martyrs?” and answers, “In the early 21st century we estimate that on average over the 10-year period from 2000–2010 there were approximately 100,000 Christians killed each year (1 million total).” So the figure people repeat is an average for the ten years from 2000 to 2010. The center’s newer figure is in its Status of Global Christianity, 2026: 900,000 Christian martyrs for the ten years to 2026, about 90,000 a year. That is the center’s long-term trend, and it gives the same 900,000 for the ten years to 2020.

The table takes its definition of a martyr from World Christian Trends, the 2001 work of David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson: “believers in Christ who have lost their lives prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility.” Martyr, as they point out, “is derived from the Greek martys, which carries the meaning ‘witness’ in English,” and the King James Bible translates martys as “witness” 29 times and as “martyr” only three, two of them for Stephen and Antipas. “Ye shall be witnesses unto me,” Jesus tells his followers at the start of Acts (Acts 1:8). Paul, in a trance as he prays in the temple, says to the Lord, “when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by,” and remembers that he “kept the raiment of them that slew him” (Acts 22:17–20). In his letter to the church in Pergamos the Lord remembers the days “wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you” (Revelation 2:13). That witness ended in death so often, Barrett and Johnson write, that by the end of the first century martys “had come to mean a Christian who witnessed to Christ by his or her death.”

For Barrett and Johnson a Christian’s whole way of life is witness, whether or not he or she is speaking of Christ at the moment of being killed. The first thing they ask is whether a believer lost his or her life to human hostility, and who did it, or why, they treat as secondary. Yet where many Christians die together, in a massacre or a war, they count only the share whose deaths came from some form of Christian witness. Their table records 300,000 Christians killed in Colombia’s civil war of 1944 to 1958, La Violencia, and counts 120,000 of them as martyrs. They know, too, that they see “only the tip of the iceberg,” and their tables add an estimate for what they call background martyrdom, the Christians killed one at a time whom nobody else hears about.

Why are the two counts so far apart?

Open Doors asks of each death whether its researchers can tie it to the victim’s faith from reports they can check. The center asks whether a believer, living as a believer, lost his or her life to human hostility, and it puts the killer’s motive second. It also adds an estimate for the deaths no report reaches, so its question finds far more dead. Open Doors has answered the larger figure in its research notes: “While some organizations published numbers often as high as 100,000 Christians killed for their faith per year, or ‘one Christian killed every 5 minutes’, research by WWR reveals much lower numbers.” WWR is World Watch Research, Open Doors’ own research department. One death every five minutes is the same 100,000 a year, worked out by the minute. The two counts answer different questions, so we can quote either truthfully as long as we say which one it is.

How many Christians are killed in Africa?

When we add up the twenty African countries on Open Doors’ list of Christians killed for faith-related reasons in the twelve months to 30 September 2025, they come to 4,492 of its 4,849, about 93 in every hundred. Nigeria’s 3,490 are the most, and Muslims are killed there in large numbers too: the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa counted 2,243 Muslim civilians killed by armed groups in Nigeria over the same twelve months. The Democratic Republic of the Congo follows with 339 and Burkina Faso with 150. The Central African Republic and Cameroon are each entered as 100, one of the round numbers used where nobody could count. Outside Africa the largest figures for named countries were Myanmar’s 99, Mexico’s 39 and Syria’s 27, and 132 deaths are listed under countries Open Doors leaves unnamed. The countries themselves, list by list, are the subject of where Christians are persecuted today.

How many Christians are killed in Nigeria?

Open Doors counted 3,490 Christians killed for faith-related reasons in Nigeria in the year to September 2025, up from 3,100 the year before, and it says Nigeria “remains the country where more Christians are killed for their faith than all other countries put together.” That figure is built from incident reports sent in by the churches, community leaders, human rights defenders and local researchers Open Doors works with across Nigeria, and checked against other reports. Open Doors also draws on the work of the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa, ORFA. Muslims die there in large numbers too, and Open Doors says so itself: “Open Doors findings do not diminish the suffering of other groups (such as Muslims) in the context of violence in Nigeria. In fact, ORFA’s data show that thousands of Muslims have also been killed and abducted.” The Observatory counts the civilians killed in Nigeria in attacks by what it calls terror groups, and for October 2024 to September 2025 it recorded 5,977 of them: 3,339 Christians, 2,243 Muslims, and the rest followers of African traditional religions or people whose religion it could not establish. Who the attackers are, whether the violence is about religion, ethnicity or land, and how each count is made are set out in Nigeria’s 1,200 churches a year: who counted, and how, and our map of what is happening in Nigeria shades the states where each of three conflicts is reported.

Are more Christians being killed than before?

By Open Doors’ count more were killed in the latest year than in the year before. Its count of Christians killed for faith-related reasons rose from 4,476 on its 2025 list to 4,849 on its 2026 list, each list covering twelve months that end in the autumn before it is published. Over its fourteen lists since 2013 the count has risen and fallen, from 1,201 on the 2013 list to 7,106 on the 2016 list, and of the last five lists the highest was the 2022 list, at 5,898. The center’s estimate covers a longer span and has come down since 1970. Its table gives 3,770,000 martyrs, by its definition, for the ten years to 1970, 1,600,000 for the ten years to 2000, and 900,000 for both the ten years to 2020 and the ten years to 2026. In 2001 World Christian Trends put the rate of that time at 160,000 martyrs a year.

How many Christians have been martyred in all of history?

The center “estimates that there have been over 70 million Christians martyred in history,” and adds, “Over half of these were in the 20th century under fascist and communist regimes.” World Christian Trends put the total at 69,420,000 from AD 33 to AD 2000, with 45,400,000 of them in the twentieth century. So if you have seen 60 million, the estimate we can trace to its makers is about 70 million, and like the 90,000 a year it counts martyrs by the same wide rule.

The souls under the altar were given white robes and told to wait. A chapter later John sees white robes again, on “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues,” standing “before the throne, and before the Lamb.” An elder asks him who they are and then answers his own question: “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, 14).

Related reading

• What is the most persecuted religion in the world?
• Nigeria’s 1,200 churches a year: who counted, and how
• Muslim persecution of Christians: facts and figures
• The 21 martyrs of Libya, killed at Sirte in 2015
• Where are Christians persecuted today? The countries, list by list
• Prayers for persecuted Christians, new and very old