Persecution of Christians
The persecution of Christians can be traced from the first century of the Christian era to the present day. Christian missionaries and converts to Christianity have both been targeted for persecution, sometimes to the point of being martyred for their faith, ever since the emergence of Christianity.
Early Christians were persecuted at the hands of both Jews, from whose religion Christianity arose, and the Romans who controlled many of the early centers of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Since the emergence of Christian states in Late Antiquity, Christians have also been persecuted by other Christians due to differences in doctrine which have been declared heretical. Early in the fourth century, the empire's official persecutions were ended by the Edict of Serdica in 311 and the practice of Christianity legalized by the Edict of Milan in 312. By the year 380, Christians had begun to persecute each other. The schisms of late antiquity and the Middle Ages – including the Rome–Constantinople schisms and the many Christological controversies – together with the later Protestant Reformation provoked severe conflicts between Christian denominations. During these conflicts, members of the various denominations frequently persecuted each other and engaged in sectarian violence.
In the 20th century, Christian populations were persecuted, sometimes, they were persecuted to the point of genocide, by various states, including the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey, which committed the Hamidian massacres, the late Ottoman genocides, and the Diyarbekir genocide, and atheist states such as those of the former Eastern Bloc.
The persecution of Christians has continued to occur during the 21st century. Christianity is the largest world religion and its adherents live across the globe. Approximately 10% of the world's Christians are members of minority groups which live in non-Christian-majority states. The contemporary persecution of Christians includes the official state persecution mostly occurring in countries which are located in Africa and Asia because they have state religions or because their governments and societies practice religious favoritism. Such favoritism is frequently accompanied by religious discrimination and religious persecution.
According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2020 report, Christians in Burma, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam are persecuted; these countries are labelled "countries of particular concern" by the United States Department of State, because of their governments' engagement in, or toleration of, "severe violations of religious freedom". The same report recommends that Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, the Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Sudan, and Turkey constitute the US State Department's "special watchlist" of countries in which the government allows or engages in "severe violations of religious freedom".
Much of the persecution of Christians in recent times is perpetrated by non-state actors which are labelled "entities of particular concern" by the US State Department, including the Islamist groups Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Houthi movement in Yemen, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province in Pakistan, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State as well as the United Wa State Army and participants in the Kachin conflict in Myanmar.
Antiquity
New Testament
began as a sect among Second Temple Jews. Inter-communal dissension began almost immediately.According to the New Testament account, Saul of Tarsus prior to his conversion to Christianity persecuted early Judeo-Christians.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, a year after the Roman crucifixion of Jesus, Stephen was stoned for what the Jews saw as transgressions of the Jewish law. And Saul acquiesced, looking on and witnessing Stephen's death. Later, Paul begins a listing of his own sufferings after conversion in 2 Corinthians 11:24 "Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned..."
Early Christianity
In 41 AD, Herod Agrippa, who already possessed the territory of Herod Antipas and Philip, obtained the title of King of the Jews, and in a sense, re-formed the Kingdom of Judea of Herod the Great. Herod Agrippa was reportedly responsible for the persecution in which James the Great lost his life, Saint Peter narrowly escaped and the rest of the apostles took flight. After Agrippa's death in 44, the Roman procuratorship began and those leaders maintained a neutral peace, until the procurator Porcius Festus died in 62 and the high priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of the power vacuum to execute James the Just, then leader of Jerusalem's Christians.According to the New Testament, Paul was imprisoned on several occasions by the Roman authorities, stoned by Jews and left for dead on one occasion, and was eventually taken to Rome as a prisoner. Peter and other early Christians were also imprisoned and prosecuted. The First Jewish Rebellion led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the end of Second Temple Judaism.
Claudia Setzer asserts that, "Jews did not see Christians as clearly separate from their own community until at least the middle of the second century" but most scholars place the "parting of the ways" much earlier, with theological separation occurring immediately. Second Temple Judaism had allowed more than one way to be Jewish. After the fall of the Temple, one way led to rabbinic Judaism, while another way became Christianity; but Christianity was "molded around the conviction that the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, was not only the Messiah promised to the Jews, but God's son, offering access to God, and God's blessing to non-Jew as much as, and perhaps eventually more than, to Jews". While Messianic eschatology had deep roots in Judaism, and the idea of the suffering servant, known as Messiah Ephraim, had been an aspect since the time of Isaiah, in the first century, this idea was seen as being usurped by the Christians. It was then suppressed, and did not make its way back into rabbinic teaching till the seventh century writings of Pesiqta Rabati.
The traditional view of the separation of Judaism and Christianity has Jewish-Christians fleeing, en masse, to Pella as a result of persecution. Steven D. Katz says "there can be no doubt that the post-70 situation witnessed a change in the relations of Jews and Christians". Judaism sought to reconstitute itself after the disaster which included determining the proper response to Jewish Christianity. The exact shape of this is not directly known but is traditionally alleged to have taken four forms: the circulation of official anti-Christian pronouncements, the issuing of an official ban against Christians attending synagogue, a prohibition against reading heretical writings, and the spreading of the curse against heretics.
Roman Empire
Neronian persecution
The first documented case of imperially supervised persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire begins with Nero. In the Annals, Tacitus states that Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome, and while it is generally believed to be authentic and reliable, some modern scholars have cast doubt on this view, largely because there is no further reference to Nero's blaming of Christians for the fire until the late 4th century. Suetonius mentions punishments inflicted on Christians, defined as men following a new and malefic superstition, but does not specify the reasons for the punishment; he simply lists the fact together with other abuses put down by Nero. It is widely agreed on that the Number of the beast in the Book of Revelation, adding up to 666, is derived from a gematria of the name of Nero Caesar, indicating that Nero was viewed as an exceptionally evil figure. Several Christian sources report that Paul the Apostle and Saint Peter both died during the Neronian persecution.From Nero to Decius
In the first two centuries Christianity was a relatively small sect which was not a significant concern of the Emperor. Rodney Stark estimates there were fewer than 10,000 Christians in the year 100. Christianity grew to about 200,000 by the year 200, which works out to about 0.36% of the population of the empire, and then to almost 2 million by 250, still making up less than 2% of the empire's overall population. According to Guy Laurie, the Church was not in a struggle for its existence during its first centuries. However, Bernard Green says that, although early persecutions of Christians were generally sporadic, local, and under the direction of regional governors, not emperors, Christians "were always subject to oppression and at risk of open persecution." Trajan's policy towards Christians was no different from the treatment of other sects; that is, they would only be punished if they refused to worship the emperor and the gods, but they were not to be sought out.File:Ignatius of Antioch.jpg|thumb|Execution of Ignatius of Antioch, reputed to have been killed in Rome under the emperor Trajan, depicted in the Menologion of Basil II, an illuminated manuscript prepared for the emperor Basil II in
James L. Papandrea says there are ten emperors generally accepted to have sponsored state-sanctioned persecution of Christians, though the first empire-wide government-sponsored persecution was not until Decius in 249. One early account of a mass killing is the persecution in Lyon in which Christians were purportedly mass-slaughtered by being thrown to wild beasts under the decree of Roman officials for reportedly refusing to renounce their faith according to Irenaeus. In the 3rd century, Emperor Severus Alexander's household contained many Christians, but his successor, Maximinus Thrax, hating this household, ordered that the leaders of the churches should be put to death. According to Eusebius, this persecution sent Hippolytus of Rome and Pope Pontian into exile, but other evidence suggests that the persecutions were local to the provinces where they occurred rather than happening under the direction of the Emperor.
According to two different Christian traditions, Simon bar Kokhba, the leader of the third Jewish revolt against Rome, who was proclaimed Messiah, persecuted the Christians: Justin Martyr says that Christians were punished if they did not deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ, while Eusebius asserts that Bar Kokhba harassed them because they refused to join his revolt against the Romans.