Modern Persecution
Arrest records, death reports, court documents, and the scale of documented Christian persecution in the 21st century.
The Scale of Modern Christian Persecution
The argument this exhibit makes is not theological — it is demographic and juridical. Approximately 365 million Christians live in contexts that Open Doors classifies as 'high persecution' or above in its World Watch List. That number is not a claim about the supernatural; it is a sociological finding derived from multi-source annual surveys, cross-referenced against government records and NGO field reports.
What "Persecution" Means: Four Operational Tiers
These tiers are not equivalent in severity. The exhibit documents all four but distinguishes them.
The aggregate 365M figure is L2 evidence: methodology-dependent survey data (Open Doors World Watch List annual survey, cross-referenced against government records and NGO field reports), not case-by-case verified. The named case studies in Section 3 are L1: court records, death certificates, and published government documents verified by multiple independent sources. This distinction is explicit throughout the exhibit.
Historical Baseline
Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo (World Christian Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., Edinburgh University Press, 2020) estimate approximately 70 million Christians have been killed for their faith across two millennia, with the 20th century alone accounting for the plurality. This contextualizes the current data within a pattern that spans the documented history of the movement.