Persecuted behind closed doors

When it comes to the kind of religious persecution men and women face, a lot depends on one’s biological sex.

Just look at Open Door’s World Watch List, which monitors the countries with the highest levels of persecution toward Christians. Its 2024 Gender Report found that, while any faithful Christian may experience persecution throughout his or her life, men and women tend to experience persecution based on the distinct vulnerabilities and nature of their sex.

The worst offenders include nations like North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. For Christian men in these countries, persecution usually happens in public and often through physically violent means. In some of these nations, it is common for these men to suffer torture, public beatings, beheadings, or other forms of public killing. Smaller-scale indignities for men include the loss of their jobs, workplace harassment, or forced recruitment into militia groups. These torments target a man’s ability to protect and provide for his household.

For women, religious persecution tends to be more multifaceted, subtle, and private. Perpetrators are often close family members. The most common examples outlined in the report include forced marriages, sexual violence, abduction, and psychological or physical violence. Forced marriages, in particular, can be a powerful cudgel that fathers wield against daughters who convert to Christianity.

The report tells the story of one such young woman. After she converted to Christianity, her father locked her in her room for 10 days. “Get ready,” he told her when she was released, “tomorrow you will marry your stepmother’s nephew. I did not raise you right, maybe he will.”

Such an act directly targets a woman’s faith, especially since she is expected to identify with the religious worship of her husband. I saw this firsthand on a mission trip to Thailand, where we were ministering to families in the northern mountains. On one visit, our tour guide brought us to the home of a young mother. She was home alone and shared with us that while she had been a Christian for a long time, we were the first believers she had interacted with in years. Each week, her husband required her to worship in the Buddhist temple. If she refused, he threatened to keep her from seeing her children.

The religious persecution of women prioritizes intimidation and control rather than more severe and final forms such as death. It targets a woman’s “perceived sexual and familial honor,” the report notes.

Open Doors presented this report at the United Nations, which has a special program focused on violence against women. But the idea that certain countries tailor religious persecution to the specific vulnerabilities of men and women was a new idea to me—and not the least bit surprising.

In Genesis 3, for example, when God curses Adam and Eve for their sin, verses 16 and 17 use the same root word to describe the “pain” that they will experience. For Eve, this pain is most acute in childbearing, while for Adam it is related to the earth, i.e., his ability to provide. In both cases, this Hebrew word for pain means more than physical pain. It refers to the emotional, mental, and physical pain that, due to sin entering the world, accompanies each aspect of procreation and labor.

Men and women are equal in worth and dignity but have distinct biological abilities and vulnerabilities. These include biological differences, of course, as well as our spiritual nature. It’s interesting that at a time when the opinions of the liberal elite seek to dissolve real sex differences, persecutors attend to those differences when they seek to inflict pain.

If we ignore the distinct ways that men and women are often persecuted for the sake of so-called gender equality, we not only deceive ourselves but we also limit our ability to serve those who are suffering effectively. For women, whose persecution tends to occur in subtle, multifaceted, and private ways, it will require an additional level of scrutiny for Christians and human rights activists to identify the abuse and intervene on their behalf.