When Christian Blood Stops Trending:

Nigeria is still the place where Christians die in batches.

• Night attacks in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Taraba.
• Villages hit in sequence.
• Churches burned.
• Men killed first.
• Women and children running in the dark.
• Gunmen on motorcycles or in pickups firing into homes and then vanishing before state forces arrive.

Local pastors call it what it is. Targeted violence against Christian communities. Not a land spat. Not two equal sides. Not an accident. And yet Nigeria sits at number 7 on the current persecution list. People see “7” and relax. They should not do so. Nigeria did not get safer. Other places got tighter.

The six places above Nigeria are there because repression is total, not because fewer people are dying.

• North Korea still treats Christianity as treason against the leader. Get caught with a Bible, a hymn, a meeting, and you can be disappeared along with your family. No court. No media. No pressure campaign.
• Somalia’s tiny Christian community lives under threat from family, clan and al-Shabaab. A convert is treated as a traitor.
• Yemen and Libya are torn up enough that armed actors can make Christianity lethal without anyone being punished.
• Sudan keeps sliding back toward Islamist pressure.
• Eritrea keeps arresting believers from unapproved churches and holding them in miserable conditions for years.

That is the locked-down version of persecution. Quiet. Efficient. No cameras. Nigeria is the messy version. Here the state says the right words but fails to stop the blood.

• Extremist groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP still move.
• Fulani-identified armed bands and raiders move.
• Kidnap gangs move.

They do it because they can. They hit Christian-majority areas. They attack on Christian feast days. They torch churches. They kidnap priests. They focus on communities they know are underprotected. That is not random conflict. That is predatory pattern.

Nigerian bishops, pastors, and civic leaders have said for years that the missing piece is prosecution. If you can massacre 200 worshippers over Christmas and no one goes to prison, every other armed group gets the message. Christian lives are low-risk targets.

This matters outside of Africa, too.

Because while Nigeria is bleeding, the United States, Canada, and Mexico are being slowly trained to treat anti-Christian acts as understandable. Canada watched more than 80 churches burned or vandalized after the residential school grave revelations. There were statements, yes. There was moral framing, yes. What there was not, in most cases, was real, visible consequence. That is how you teach people that churches are in the “you can do this and still be seen as righteous” category. Mexico shows the criminal side. Priests and Christian workers are threatened or killed by cartels because criminals know the state will not make national noise over clergy. That is persecution by neglect.

The United States is in the early phase. Hundreds of churches, pregnancy centers, and Christian facilities have been vandalized, tagged, hit with fire, or disrupted in the last few years. Most Americans cannot name one attacker. At the same time, a federal field office felt comfortable drafting a memo that placed some traditional Catholics near the domestic threat bucket. It was walked back, but the attempt mattered. It showed someone inside law enforcement believed the climate would tolerate putting faithful Christians under extra watch. That is how legal pressure begins. Soft. Technical. Explained as “risk management.” Pointed at churches.

The deeper engine is simple and old. Real Christianity says no.

• No to sexual consumerism.
• No to cruelty toward animals just because they cannot protest.
• No to corruption.
• No to revenge.
• No to self-as-god.

Cultures that are running on appetite and self-branding do not like no. So they attack the messenger. Not always with guns. Often with mockery, with policy, with economic pressure. Entertainment mocks Christians. Politicians fundraise off of resisting Christians. Some academics present Christianity as the eternal oppressor. After 10 years of that drum, the public starts to believe that when Christians are hit, they had it coming.

Here is the part that connects Nigeria to North America. If Western audiences can be bored by 200 murdered Nigerian Christians at Christmas, they can certainly be bored by 30 churches burned in Canada. If they can be bored by 30 churches, they can be bored by one church in Ohio being denied insurance because it still teaches biblical ethics. It is the same training. Remove empathy from the majority faith. Frame it as harmful. Treat its wounds as non-stories. Then when harsher measures arrive, few people resist.

Persecution is rarely a single moment. It is a process.

• First ridicule.
• Then suspicion.
• Then property crimes.
• Then legal pressure.
• Then violence.

Nigeria is sitting in the violence tier. North Korea is in the total-control tier. Canada is in the property-crime-with-moral-cover tier. Mexico is in the impunity tier. The United States is in the ridicule and early-suspicion tier. Different speeds. Same road. The fact that Western celebrities, media figures, and even some politicians are comfortable speaking contemptuously about Christianity while staying quiet on African martyrs tells you which way the current is moving.

Anti-Christian is being made fashionable. Once that is complete, stronger actions become easier to sell.

This is why writing about Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea and then about Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. in one piece is the right move. The persecutors are watching the same internet we are. They see what gets outrage and what gets silence.

As I like to say in the context of this conversaion, "if Christian blood does not trend, Christian blood becomes cheap."

And that is the line people need to read without filters.

Sources That Don’t Suck:

Open Doors World Watch List 2025

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN)

International Christian Concern

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

Religious Freedom Institute

Christian Association of Nigeria

Canadian Catholic News

Centro Católico Multimedial (Mexico)

Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)