Where it's dangerous to believe

In the symbolic heart of a liberal democracy, a list is revealed of where it is dangerous to believe. Belle Tindall reports on the annual World Watch List.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A huge communist monument consists of a red flag wall rising from left to right over a column of statues.

Mansu Hill Grand Monument in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Just as they do at the beginning of each new year, this January saw the charity Open Doors descend upon the House of Commons to officially launch its World Watch List for 2023. That is, the list of the fifty most dangerous countries to be a Christian in the world this year.

As well as producing this list, the advocacy group also revealed a number: 360 million.

That’s the number of Christians who are living under extreme pressure and persecution because of their religious identity. That’s 1 in every 7 of the 2.4 billion Christians in the world right now. For statistical context, that 360 million is larger than the current population of the USA. The enormity of such numbers can be a challenge to digest, so perhaps it would be more effective to summarise the research this way - 2023 the most dangerous year to be a Christian on record.

Only a quarter of the story

It’s a powerful image: there, in the grand epicentre of British government, where a verse from the Bible is literally carved into the floor of the main entrance way, was an evening dedicated to the 360 million people for whom a spiritual alignment to that very same verse exposes them to danger and discrimination.

When we think of religious groups that are facing daily persecution, it’s likely that Christian communities aren’t at the top of our list of assumptions. And that’s relatively understandable when we’re viewing Christianity through the lens of our own Western contexts. In May, the UK is going to come to a communal standstill as we witness the Archbishop of Canterbury, the figurehead of the Church of England, place a crown on the head of our new King, thus ushering in a new phase of history. It can seem as though, as a society, the scent of Christianity is in the very air we breathe. Many of our most cherished landmarks are sites of religious significance, it’s not unusual for our local schools and hospitals to be named after Christian Saints, while our public calendars are shaped by Christian celebrations.

And yet – 360 million people.

While Christianity has a (rather recent) reputation for being a Euro-centric religion, European Christians are actually the minority, making up only one quarter of the global Christian population. We are inclined, because of our own experience of Christianity as enjoying a prominent role in public life, of having a rather narrow understanding of the global Christian reality.

A more global perspective

Christians are by no means the only faith group to face the danger of religious persecution, but year after year, they are continuing to face it on the largest scale.

The World Watch List shows that the global reality for Christians is anything but static. In 2022, Afghanistan was considered the most dangerous country to live as a Christian. However, largely due to the Taliban’s attention being lured away from its Christian population, Afghanistan has dropped to ninth place. North Korea, which is home to approximately 400,000 Christians, has thus regained its position as the most ‘brutally hostile place’ to be.

Following North Korea, the other top nine countries in the list are: Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan.

Not only has this persecution seen a numerical increase, but also a significant increase in the extremity of the danger posed. Violence, imprisonment, and even death, are very real possibilities for Christians living in these countries. However, religious persecution also includes more subtle social segregation, economic discrimination and national isolation. These 360 million people are being exposed to a spectrum of pressures to denounce their Christian identity and cease living out their Christian faith.

A paradox

And yet, one of the most staggering findings that Open Doors continue to present, is that it is in these places that the Christian church is experiencing its most rapid growth. According to their extensive research, the rising danger surrounding the Christian faith doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect; stories of persistence, faith and courage are unceasing.

This pattern is not anomalous, As Brother Andrew, the founder of Open Doors, once famously reminded the world, ‘persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe’.

A dangerous faith does not equate to a disappearing faith.

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Politics

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4 September 2025

3 min read

Who’d be an MP today?

A vulnerable vocation that we should all consider

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

MPs sit and stand in a crowded parliament.

The House of Commons sits, and stands.

Houses of Parliament.

Last year, 132 Members of Parliament headed for the exit. Of course, the reasons for this vary, but the unsustainable nature of the role must be factored in. As the Westminster Parliament returns for another session, who on earth would want to be an MP in today's day and age?

Most starkly, we saw the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, with the latter writing in 2020 that the fear of attacks "rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians". Herein lies much of the issue of being an MP today: accessibility. They might be highly insulated within the Palace of Westminster, but within their phones and outside of those gates they are always available, and always on, with slings and arrows that are verbal and violent.

The combination of abuse and accessibility is a potent force. It's not limited to the MPs themselves. Dr Ashley Weinberg, an occupational psychologist from the University of Salford, said that 49.5 per cent of MPs' staff suffering from distress was double the level experienced by the general population. Those in vocation-based work need some boundaries as capes don't come with the parliamentary pass.

And if the exit sign is so alluring, how do we remove barriers to entry? In Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, Isabel Hardman writes that seeking a seat is 'the most expensive and time-consuming job interview on earth'. Only to be met by remuneration that doesn't quite make up for the package deal. Of course, there's the uber-keen. Morgan Jones, writing in The New Statesman, notes 'People who want to be MPs really want to be MPs. They are willing to try and try again: in the footnotes of the careers of many now-prominent politicians, one finds unsuccessful first tilts at parliament.'

Being adopted, working class, a mum, a carer, and a cancer survivor didn't stop Conservative MP Katherine Fletcher from standing as an MP. In fact, it all contributed to it: 'You stand on a podium and say, "Vote for me please!" To do it properly you have to bring your whole self.' The sense of calling to a vocation comes from a frustration, where she found herself yelling at the TV, intersecting with our core experiences and values.

Even with five-year terms, there's an inherent reactivity in the daily nature of being an MP. Where is the space to think? To really reflect. In a plaintive but not totally despairing summer article, Andrew Marr, the veteran observer of politics, wrote more broadly about British society: 'What is new and disorientating is that we have so few storytellers to shake us or point a way ahead… This means that we push our anxieties, our frustrated hopes and our confusion even more on to the shoulders of political leaders who are entirely unsuited to bearing the weight.' As we lack imaginative drive, 'The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.'

We need everyone from poets to plumbers to make this society work. And there's the question of vocation: where does my gifting and passion meet the needs of our society that solves problems or inspires others to?

We rightly have high expectations of our leaders, and project our hopes and fears onto their blank canvases. But their canvasses aren't blank. They are crammed with the urgent and important. We can't expect our politicians to do and be everything - and we all need to play our part. Our blame-and-shame culture finds hysterical, theatrical representation at Prime Minister's Questions. Sir Tony Blair said that 'A private secretary would come in and say: "Well, Prime Minister, a grateful nation awaits." I would follow him out feeling as if I was going to my execution.' The agonistic, antagonistic design of the House of Commons, where one side is pitted against the other, has ripples in our society with an increasingly antagonistic public discourse.

In pointing the finger we have three pointing back at ourselves. As Jesus famously said, 'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?'

Our vote at the ballot box may be our exercise of judgement. But before scathing our members of parliament, it's worth us first asking 'what have I done as a member of the public?'

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