In the twentieth century there were 44,933,000 martyrs.
In the other nineteen centuries combined there were 23,268,000 martyrs.
It is not even close. The twentieth century had almost twice as many martyrs as the other centuries combined. That is a lot of people dying for Jesus in relatively recent times.
Here is the testimony of a twenty-first century martyr. His name is Shabhaz and he was a Christian politician in Pakistan. He filmed this testimony and it was sent to the BBC – and within a matter of months he was assassinated (specifically for speaking out against the blasphemy laws which are in the news once again right now). Have a watch and listen. The recording can make it difficult to pick up what he is saying and so I have added the words below (as best I can).
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
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Hi Paul,
I agree that it is important to be aware of the suffering of our Christian brothers and sisters. However, a recent BBC programme has made me nervous of figures giving numbers of Christian martyrs. They looked into a commonly cited figure of 100,000 Christian martyrs per year at the moment and found it to be pretty bogus.
The number comes from the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Centre for the Study of Global Christianity. They took the number of people they believe died for their Christian faith between 2000 and 2010 then divided it by ten to get their figure. However, 90% of those people were people who died in the civil war in the DRC: people who died and who were Chrisitans, but few of whom died because of their faith. The global church must surely mourn the deaths of these brothers and sisters, but to name them as martyrs seems pretty inappropriate.
So, I'd be keen to know where the numbers quoted in your Future of the Global Church came from. They may be correct, but I'd like to be sure before quoting them further, having heard of such dodgy numbers gaining such prominence!
(PS if you don't want to listen to the audio version of the BBC programme – which is about 10 minutes – there's a written summary of some of the main points here).
Cheers,
–Heather 🙂