The Disappearing Middle Eastern Christians

On this Christmas Day, let us spare a thought for the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, arguably the most endangered religious minority in today’s world. I addressed this neglected issue 14 years ago (“A Grim Christmas,” Chronicles, December 2011), and those communities’ position has grown much worse since then.

Counting Eastern Christians is difficult: few reliable surveys have been conducted, and, moreover, religious leaders tend to overestimate their numbers. Statistics thus vary from one source to another and should be considered indicative rather than absolute. It is nevertheless clear that they are leaving their homelands in droves. It is likely that their numbers in Lebanon have fallen to under 20 percent, which is half their share before the civil war there. The most recent exodus is that of the Chaldeans from Iraq since 2003, and the Orthodox from Syria, starting in 2011 but accelerating after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024.

In absolute numbers, there are probably no fewer Christians in the Middle East at the beginning of the 21^st century than a hundred years ago, but their percentage of the regional population has steadily declined, sometimes very significantly. According to recent estimates, in the early 20^th century Christians accounted for between 12 percent and 15 percent of the population in the Arab countries of the Middle East. At the beginning of the 21^st century, their share fell to just 5 percent of some 300 million Arabs.

What happened? As I noted in an online Chronicles article posted in April 2017, the widespread belief in the non-Muslim world that Islam accords respect to the Old Testament and the Gospels as steps in progression to Mohammad’s revelation is mistaken. The Koran makes reference to Jesus, Mary, and events related to them, but with a critical distinction. It explicitly denies that Jesus was crucified and rejects the whole concept of the cross.