By Stewart Jackson, CapX
The decline of Christianity is nothing new. Some 150 years ago, Matthew Arnold, in his poem ‘Dover Beach’, mourned the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the ‘Sea of Faith’. And that was in the high noon of Victorian England.
Today, he would have far more to be concerned about. The last 20 years have witnessed an exodus of Christians from many parts of the world, especially the Middle East.
King Charles – still Prince back then – was among the first to highlight the persecution suffered by Christians from Islamist extremists more than a decade ago in the wake of the Arab Spring.
But it took our former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt to codify it. A report he commissioned by the bishop of Truro, Philip Mounstephen, found that the persecution of Christians in some parts of the world amounted to ‘genocide’ and that 80% of persecuted religious believers were Christians. Their numbers in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia had fallen from a historic level of 20% of the population to 4% in recent years.
Now, even avowedly Christian countries on the margins of the Middle East are coming under pressure. Palestine, for many years the scene of bitter conflict between Arabs and Jews, is the birthplace of Christianity. But it is not its homeland. That accolade belongs to Armenia, the first Christian country which dates its adoption of the faith to 301 AD. But even Armenia, just 3 million people, sandwiched between Muslim neighbours in Turkey and Azerbaijan, finds its spiritual life under threat.