International Christian Concern’s (ICC) 2025 Global Persecution Index outlines how authoritarianism, religious nationalism, mass surveillance, displacement and acts of terror are imperilling believers of Christ around the world.

Hearteningly, the 59-page report also contains accounts of faith under fire. For example, even amid hostile repression, the Gospel continues to spread and take root in countries such as Iran and Indonesia.

Jeff King, the president of ICC since 2003, recalled his experience talking to and working with Iranian pastors in different neighbouring countries when these servants were taking time to breathe and recharge before heading back “into a war zone.” One of these preachers shared his evangelism method.

Advertisement

“(He said) ‘I go to a party, and I announce to everybody, I'm a Christian,’ ” recalled King. ‘“If you're interested in Christianity or Jesus, I'll be sitting here in the corner. I am mobbed for the next five hours.’

“That all sprang from radical Islam and persecution,” continued King. “Wherever persecution's happening, it's very dark. And so, where the light is, the moths will gather. Whoever has water in the desert, everyone will gather around for a sip from that canteen. It's a beautiful story that points to the eternal nature of the Church.”

Experts from Johns Hopkins University, the Hudson Institute, Operation World and Mission to the World have all hailed Iran over the past couple of years for having the highest rate of Christianization in the world. Gamaan, a secular Netherlands-based research group, declared in 2020 there are over a million Christians in the country.

Chelsea Rollman of Mission to the World wrote this past June about how Iranians are experiencing the Gospel in different ways.

“They use the internet, social media, radio and satellite TV to access Western Christian programs,” wrote Rollman. “God often uses dreams to direct them to a church or Scripture. And perhaps most significantly, they learn the truth about Jesus through the witness of other Christians.”

Lela Gilbert, a contributor to the Hudson Institute, chronicled the growth of “house churches” in Iran where 10-15 people would meet in a different nondescript location each week, lock the doors and then begin a worship service.

“The little gathering begins to sing — very softly, accompanied by a quietly strummed guitar,” wrote Gilbert. “They are cautious, not wanting their voices to be heard beyond the apartment’s thin walls. But soon, with closed eyes and hands lifted heavenward, they are lost in praise and worship music. Later a teaching from a Biblical passage is offered and a communion service takes place.”

Advertisement

Though certain house churches have stealthily continued unabated for years, others have been broken up by brutal authoritarian raids. Gilbert added that these officials search for anything that can be used as evidence, such as Bibles, other books and videos to support charges of “insulting Islam” or “conducting deviant activity.”

ICC’s persecution index spotlighted the March 11 arrest of house church member Shabeddin “Shahab” Shahi with “propaganda against the Islamic regime,” article 500 of Iran’s penal code. Shahi was previously imprisoned for several months in 2019 for the same charge. He was re-arrested in December 2023 alongside Milad Goodarzi and Alireza Nourmohammadi, who also spent time in captivity because of their Christian faith.

As mentioned, Christianity is also flourishing in the Muslim nation of Indonesia. According to research from Cornell University, only one per cent of Indonesians were Christians in 1900, but now the percentage has soared to 10.5 in 2024. This figure equates to 30 million Christians (Indonesia’s population is approximately 280 million).

King recalled that when he began his work as a persecution watchdog, an anti-Christian campaign was being waged by the Laskar Jihad militia from 2000 to 2002. Members burned down churches and homes, carried out forced conversions and circumcisions and perpetrated violence in the Maluku Islands.

“I toured and I saw and heard the reports of the fundamentalists coming into villages and they spray down, they take tanker trucks and kerosene and spray the whole village and then burn it up after they raked the village and kill (villagers),” recollected King. "And yet I saw even then the resilience of the Church standing in a bombed-out church. This little green shoot plant was growing up through cracks in the concrete. It just came to me that the Church will be reborn here. It will not be stamped out.”

It appears that time has proven King correct.

Pastor Billy Njotorahardjo of Senayan City Church in Jakarta told christianlearning.com last June that his parish has grown from 400 to 6,000 members over the past four years.

“We pray, ‘Open Heaven, God touch people,' ” said Njotorahardjo. “People are getting healed even outside the Church. They’re getting saved outside the Church. We’re praying for the revival of Jakarta, and of Indonesia. We are thinking that the whole nation is getting transformed by God.”

Advertisement

Pew Research Center noted back in 2015 that the fertility rate of Christians (2.6) was higher than that of Muslims (2.0), and evidently, that trend is continuing. The number of births in Indonesia was praised by Pope Francis in September when he met the then-Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

To read the entire ICC 2025 Global Persecution Index, visit https://www.persecution.org/.