Every day, 13 Christians worldwide are killed because of their faith. And every day, 12 Christians are unjustly arrested or imprisoned, and another five are abducted. So reports the 2021 World Watch List (WWL), the latest annual accounting from Open Doors of the top 50 countries where Christians are the most persecuted for following Jesus.

David Curry, president of Open Doors says:

You might think the [list] is all about oppression. … But the [list] is really all about resilience. The numbers of God’s people who are suffering should mean the Church is dying—that Christians are keeping quiet, losing their faith, and turning away from one another. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, in living color, we see the words of God recorded in the prophet Isaiah: “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:19, ESV).

The listed nations contain 309 million Christians living in places with very high or extreme levels of persecution, up from 260 million in last year’s list. This year the top 10 worst persecutors are relatively unchanged. After North Korea is Afghanistan, followed by Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Eritrea, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, and India. China joined the top 20 for the first time in a decade, due to “ongoing and increasing surveillance and censorship of Christians and other religious minorities.”

The purpose of the annual WWL rankings is to guide prayers and to aim for more effective anger while showing persecuted believers that they are not forgotten.

You can read the entire report here.