Michael Adegoke Nigeria’s public life is shaped by intense religious identity—and by violence, political rhetoric, and community tension that can make “tolerance” sound like an empty word. Yet when researchers ask ordinary Nigerians structured survey questions, a more layered picture appears. Most respondents say they would accept—or at least not object to—neighbours who worship differently. Far fewer … Read More
Nigeria often dominates headlines about Christian persecution in Africa—and with reason. Open Doors’ World Watch List (WWL) 2026 ranks Nigeria seventh globally, records its highest-ever score of 89, and documents more verified Christian deaths there than in the rest of the world combined. Yet Nigeria is not alone. Fourteen sub-Saharan African countries appear on the … Read More
When Open Doors ranks Nigeria seventh on the World Watch List (WWL) 2026 with a score of 89, that single number hides two distinct kinds of hostility: violence—killings, abductions, burned churches, and mass displacement—and pressure—the quieter restrictions on conversion, family life, community access, national justice, and church registration that shape daily discipleship. Understanding both tracks … Read More
Every January, Open Doors publishes its World Watch List (WWL)—an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination. For Nigeria, the 2026 edition carries a sobering headline: the country remains in the global top ten, posts its highest-ever persecution score, and accounts for the majority of verified Christian … Read More
When people ask where Christianity is largest in the world, they often picture the United States, Brazil, or Mexico—countries where Christians form a clear majority and dominate public life. Nigeria belongs in the same conversation for a different reason. Pew Research Center estimates that Nigeria had about 93 million Christians in 2020, ranking sixth globally … Read More
Ask three careful researchers how many Christians live in Nigeria, and you may hear three carefully sourced answers that do not match. That is not a failure of honesty. It is what happens when a country of more than 200 million people has no current official census religion count, while Pew Research Center, the Nigeria … Read More
Schoolbook history often stages the eighteenth century as a duel: philosophers of reason versus churches of superstition. That duel happened in pamphlets. It did not describe most of Europe’s Sundays. The Enlightenment was a family of arguments about authority, evidence, law, and improvement. Christianity was not a single opponent sitting still. State churches, dissenting academies, … Read More
By the late seventeenth century, much of Protestant Europe had won its confessions, catechisms, and state churches—and some of its most earnest pastors worried that the victory felt hollow. Correct doctrine filled books; conversion and love seemed scarce in pews. Pietism named a cluster of renewals—especially in German Lutheran lands—that emphasized Bible study in small … Read More
“Puritan” began as a sneer—for Protestants who wanted the Church of England purified of remaining “popish” ceremonies—and became a historical label for a spectrum of the godly: Presbyterians, Independents/Congregationalists, and related hot Protestants who shared Reformed theology, intense sabbatarianism, and suspicion of bishops’ pomp. In England they fought through pamphlets, Parliament, civil war, and failed … Read More
Spanish Catholicism in the early modern centuries was never only parish piety. It was a monarchy’s identity project after centuries of Reconquista, a legal machinery of orthodoxy centered on the Spanish Inquisition, and an oceanic empire that carried Mass, mendicants, and colonial church law to the Americas and beyond. Black Legend propaganda made Spain a … Read More