Do Christian lives matter?

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the massacre, which left 51 people dead and 40 wounded, an "act of extreme and unprecedented violence" on "one of New Zealand's darkest days." A Muslim prayer service the following Friday was broadcast nationally on radio and television and attended by 20,000 people, and a two-minute silence was observed during a national day of reflection.

The reaction from global leaders was swift and strong. UN Secretary General António Guterres urged the world to "stand united against anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of bigotry and terror." The Queen of England, President Donald Trump, and the prime ministers of Canada and India expressed shock and sadness. Pope Francis prayed for "the healing of the injured" and invoked the "blessings of comfort and strength upon the nation" of New Zealand. Flags in Australia were lowered to half-mast, and a Moscow landmark, the Ostankino tower, was darkened in tribute to the victims.

The world's reaction to the slaughter this month of some 50 worshipers at a Catholic church in Nigeria has been very different.

The attackers who opened fire and detonated explosives at St. Francis Catholic Church in the southern city of Owo just as the weekly Mass was beginning on June 5 left their victims lying in pools of blood. "Only fiends from the nether region could have conceived and carried out such a dastardly act," said Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari.

Unlike the mosque attacks in New Zealand, the butchery in Owo is part of a pattern. Christians in Nigeria, writes Raymond Ibrahim of the Gatestone Institute, are being "purged in a genocide" committed by Islamist extremists. Since 2009, a jihadist insurgency launched by the terror group Boko Haram has sent a horrifying number of victims to early graves. "Over 60,000 Christians have either been butchered or abducted during raids," notes Ibrahim. "About 20,000 churches and Christian schools have also been torched and destroyed during the same timeframe."

According to Open Doors, a California-based non-governmental organization that assists endangered Christian communities worldwide, one Christian is killed, on average, every two hours in Nigeria. In 2021, the confirmed death toll was 4,650, making Nigeria the world's deadliest nation for Christians for the second consecutive year.

Among those who died in the June 5 massacre in Owo was Veginus Nwani, who was killed together with his 11-year-old daughter, Chidiogo. Another victim was Caroline Agboola, 68, a widow who earned a living by making and selling akara, a popular Nigerian street food. The owner of an electronics shop, Umunna Okafor, 37, tried to shield his son with his own body; the BBC reported that the bullets tore through them both.

Such horror stories have become almost routine in Nigeria. "Terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa, attacked population centers and religious targets, including churches and mosques," reported the US State Department in its most recent annual report on international religious freedom. It continued:

According to NGOs such as [the International Crisis Group], the level of insecurity and violence increased, including in the predominantly Muslim North West, where expanded numbers of criminal groups carried out thousands of killings, kidnappings, and armed robberies. . . . For example, in May, criminals shot and killed eight Christians and burned down a church and several homes in Kaduna State. . . . Muslim herders killed at least 49 persons and abducted 27, most of whom were Christian, in several attacks on communities in religiously mixed southern Kaduna State.

There have also been cases of deadly assaults in which Muslims were the victims, such as an August attack on a bus coming from an Islamic prayer gathering that ended with the killing of 27 travelers . But it is overwhelmingly Christians who have been targeted in religious violence. Among the most brutal perpetrators, reported Nina Shea, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, are ethnic Fulani militias, a jihadist terror operation that has become a key "source of mayhem in Nigeria today." In an article last summer, Shea provided background:

While Boko Haram garnered international headlines with the first mass kidnapping of schoolchildren, the enslavement of Christian girls, and ISIS-like beheadings of "infidels," it is widely recognized that in recent years the Fulani militants have surpassed Boko Haram as the most dangerous threat to Nigeria's Christians. Accounts of Fulani herder attacks and growing extremism have come from an all-party parliamentary group in Great Britain, from the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need, and from the Global Terrorism Database, established by the Department of Homeland Security and housed at the University of Maryland.

The Nigerian-based International Society on Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) documented in its midyear report that "jihadist Fulani herders" were responsible for 1,909 of the 3,462 Christians killed in the country in the first half of this year. The remainder, Intersociety reports, were killed by ISIS-affiliated and other Islamist terrorists, their security-force collaborators, and the bandits who will kidnap, rape, and kill any Nigerian. Intersociety further finds that Fulani militias now target Christian areas in all six Nigerian regions.

Among the ghastliest attacks on Christians are those in which the victim or victims are accused of "blasphemy." One such victim was Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a student at Shehu Shagari College in the northern Nigerian city of Sokoto. Eyewitnesses reported last month that she was beaten to death and set on fire by Muslim students who accused her of posting offensive statements in a WhatsApp group. According to Christian Solidarity International, a respected human rights group based in Switzerland, her WhatsApp message had merely asked people not to post religious messages. Someone circulated a rumor that she had insulted Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and she was killed the next day.

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Deborah's murder comes after a particularly bloody week for Nigerian Christians. On May 11, ISIS' affiliate in Nigeria released a video showing 20 Christians being executed. On May 5, eight Christians, including two children , were murdered by Fulani militants in Plateau state. Hundreds of Christians have been killed in Fulani militia attacks in Plateau and Kaduna states in the last two months.

That was more than a month ago. Now that horror has been eclipsed by the carnage in Owo.

Why has there been no global outrage about what is happening to Nigeria's Christians? Where are the flags at half-mast, the expressions of concern by the American president, the plea from the UN secretary general? Why did the Biden administration remove Nigeria from its list of countries with egregious records of engaging in or tolerating violations of religious freedom? Why did the European Parliament last month vote not to appoint a coordinator to investigate the persecution of Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere?

In raw numbers, Christians are the most persecuted religious group on Earth and have been for years. Evidence is all too abundant — from the steady disappearance of Christian communities in the Middle East to the monstrous repression of Christians in North Korea, from the barbaric penalties imposed on Christians in Pakistan to the public lynching of Christians in India , from the bombing of Catholic churches in the Philippines to the jihadist pogroms against Coptic worshipers in Egypt. Anti-Christian bigotry is a leading cause of bloodshed in our time. It should be getting more attention than it does.

Christians today number almost 2.4 billion. Nearly one of every three people alive on Earth is Christian; so are some of the world's most powerful nations. It may be hard for some to square such demographic dominance with the vulnerability of Christians in many regions and countries. But that vulnerability is real.

Far too many Christians are dying for their faith. We should be crying out in their defense.