Religious freedom and persecution are challenges starting to face believers in the West, but it has been a reality for Christians globally for a long time. In many parts of the world it is getting worse. What should the church know about, and how should we respond, to the crisis of religious freedom?

To help answer these questions Biola Magazine spoke with David Curry of , an international Christian ministry that supports and strengthens persecuted Christians around the world. Open Doors serves in every country in the world where Christians are persecuted, equipping believers with Bibles and educational materials as well as helping meet basic needs. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

David, we’re seeing a lot in the news these days about ISIS and religious persecution in the Middle East. What is happening now in Iraq and Syria? What are the needs of the Christians there?

What Iraqi and Syrian Christians are facing with the terrorist group ISIS is one of the most dramatic examples of Christian persecution today, though it’s by no means the only situation.  There are a number of factors there. In the north of Iraq for some time they’ve had a lot of incidents of persecution for Christians. There was at one point at the end of the Iraq war about a million Christians in Iraq. Before this crisis there were about 300,000 and now we believe there are about half that, maybe less, in Iraq as a whole. We’ve seen a mass exodus of Christians over the last 10 years and it has to do with the constant pressure from Sunni extremists in that region. ISIS is the ultimate manifestation of that. So we have all these refugee Christians being forced out of their homes and their businesses, and they are not peasants; they are lawyers and doctors and the whole swath of a civilization. They are being forced out under the threat of death. Many have been killed for their faith in Syria and Iraq.

I recently heard about one story of a Syrian family where the parents decided that, with all that was going on in their country, they needed to sit down and explain to their children: If anybody ever knocked on the door wearing shrouds and carrying swords, you need to say to them that “Jesus is Lord” and that “you forgive them.” The parents said to the children, “It’s gonna hurt for a while, but then we’re gonna meet each other in heaven.” The unfortunate part of that story is it happened. We heard that story recently in Syria because a family member who was there and had seen what happe