Even as estimates for the bombings in Kano rose from 150 to up to 250, new attacks left churches burning in one part of the northern Bauchi state, while 11 people were killed and 12 injured in a separate incident, also in Bauchi.

Most of the dead in the recent church attacks across the country are said to belong to the Igbo people.  The Igbo are a southern, mostly Christian Nigerian group of an estimated 27 to 30 million people.  An earlier attempt at secession by the Igbo led to the establishment of Biafra, a breakaway government that was crushed in the bloody Nigerian civil war.  Since then, the Igbo (a traditionally mobile and enterprising people) have fanned out across Nigeria and the world; their presence in the North is often resented by native Muslim groups. Boko Haram has ordered all Christians to leave the North and the church bombings and other attacks seem to be part of a concerted effort to stampede them into flight.

For their part, some Igbo in their southeastern Nigeria homeland are beginning to retaliate. Chika Unigwe writes in the Guardian about the news she is getting from the Igbo heartland in former Biafra:

An Igbo group, Ogbunigwe Ndigbo, gave all northern Muslims in the region two weeks to leave or face their wrath. In Lokpanta, where my mother is from, the Muslim Hausa community – which settled there many years ago – were seen leaving in truckloads.

The Hausa are the leading Muslim people in most of the North, and as refugees from the South come North with tales of violence and fear, anger will grow.  Boko Haram appears to hope that a series of reciprocal acts of violence and ethnic cleansing will escalate, leading to a crisis that ultimately divides the country. Presumably Boko Haram would try to use that crisis to get control of the North and impose its own radical and extreme views on Muslims in the country.

Worse, the government seems hopelessly, helplessly overmatched at this point.  A suspect was arrested in the case of the Christmas church bombings; within 24 hours the suspect somehow managed to escape, still handcuffed, from his guards.  There are widespread suspicions, right up to President Goodluck Jonathan himself, that members of the security forces and the military (historically strongholds of northern influence) are secretly helping Boko Haram.

Treason might not be to blame; the Nigerian government is one of the world’s most corrupt organizations, and it is perfectly possible that prisoner escapes can be arranged if the right palms are crossed. But whether it has been hollowed out by secret terrorist sympathizers or simply eaten away by conventional corruption, Nigeria does not seem able to do much about its worst security threat in a generation. Muddle at the top; violence at the grassroots; religion, ethnicity and oil revenue in a toxic brew: Nigeria is not in a good place.

A lot of people only care about Nigerian politics when oil is involved. At the moment, production is not under threat. But while violence in the oil patch can have a direct and disturbing effect on world oil prices, the increasing stress on Nigeria’s somewhat fragile and artificial national unity ia more serious in the long run. If the center doesn’t hold in Nigeria, few sub-Saharan countries divided by language, religion and ethnicity have much hope of hanging together. If ethnically charged religious violence begins to spread in Nigeria, wider confrontations across the volatile Christian-Muslim divide across Africa cannot be ruled out.

At the moment, the Nigerian center looks distressingly weak.

He warned his audience that Boko Haram, the pseudo-Islamic fanatical sect that believes all modern knowledge should be banned, has sympathizers within the Nigerian government itself, including the military and the police. The sect has stunned Nigeria by demanding that all Christians leave the historically Muslim north, killing hundreds of people to back up its threats.

President Jonathan has his own reasons to play up the threat. The government’s decision to drop fuel subsidies has Muslims and Christians enraged across the country; for many ordinary people, cheap gas is the only benefit they ever see out of the country’s vast oil wealth. Many believe that generations of Nigerian politicians, not excluding the current rulers, have grown rich on oil money and corruption. President Jonathan would just as soon Nigerians change the subject, and civil war is even more interesting than the price of gas.

Also, as a Christian whose succession to the presidency is seen by many Muslim northerners as a violation of the compromise by which Christians and Muslims rotate the presidency (Jonathan’s Muslim predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua died before completing his term and many Muslims think Jonathan, vice president at the time, should not have run for a full term on his own), Jonathan needs to keep the base happy.  Boko Haram’s attacks have frightened and enraged Christians across the divided country; Jonathan needs to show that he cares or the reaction could get out of control.

Yet it would be wrong to dismiss President Jonathan as an alarmist. There are Muslims in Nigeria who have nothing but contempt for Boko Haram’s ignorance and fanaticism, but who are genuinely worried that power is slipping out of the north’s hands. Since the Biafran War the Christian population of Nigeria has exploded, with many practitioners of traditional African religions embracing Christianity.  (At independence there were about twice as many Muslims as Christians in Nigeria. Today the numbers are roughly even.) Meanwhile, the oil rich south has developed faster than the north, and the more entrepreneurial and globally savvy southern Nigerians are moving ahead faster than the more conservative north.

For most of its history, Nigeria has been dominated by the north. That era may be ending, and this is what makes Boko Haram such a problem. Many northerners who care nothing about Boko Haram’s eccentric theology feel threatened by the power shift to the increasingly Christian south. Poorly educated young men with a sense of grievance and few economic prospects are the fuel for civil war; both northern and southern Nigeria are rich in this combustible human material. Mix ethnic and religious tensions in with economic competition, and you get a situation where a small match can set off a huge fire.

Boko Haram aims to be that match. In Nigeria today, religion is hot.

Gombe is the capital of Gombe state, one of Nigeria’s smallest and least populated states with about two million people. Like most states in northern Nigeria, it was historically a Muslim-majority state with strong links to pre-British Islamic emirates, but Gombe also has a large and active Christian population.  When sharia law was introduced, there was more resistance in Gombe than in some other parts of the north, and sharia has been restricted to those parts of the state where Muslims are in the majority. The religious tension, as is often the case, has ethnic and economic overtones as well.  There are predominantly Christian tribes who resent the historic power of the leading Islamic tribes and traditional authorities, there are Christian ‘immigrants’ from the south, and in some cases Muslims perceive their positions of power as threatened given the gradual tilt of power in the country toward the more developed, oil rich and increasingly Christian south.

One church attack in Gombe is not necessarily news in a country where religious, ethnic and plain old fashioned criminal violence is depressingly common.  But I have met a number of Nigerian Christians over the years, and in a country in which even the Anglicans are militant, religious hostility can spread. The Gombe shooting may or may not be related to Boko Haram, a fanatical sect which capitalizes on the credulity, insecurity and ignorance of troubled souls and has ordered all Christians to leave the north.  But Christians in Nigeria are both angry and worried about what looks to many of them like a trend of rising extremist attacks.

Nigeria has about one fourth of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and is one of the world’s major oil producers.  Its population is young and restless, and its governance is appalling. It bears watching.

Nigeria had been spending 1.2 trillion naira ($7.3 billion) a year—about a quarter of all government spending in the 2012 budget—to keep petroleum products within reach of its deeply poor population of 167 million people. […]

Many of the 70% of Nigerians who live on less than $2 a day, however, view the subsidy as the only windfall the nation’s poor have enjoyed from the more-than-two-million barrels of oil the nation exports daily.

Nigeria’s top two labor unions called for “strikes, street demonstrations and mass protests across the country,” starting Tuesday, according to a statement quoted by Vanguard, a newspaper based in the commercial capital, Lagos.

Nigeria may be one of Goldman Sach’s “Next Eleven” developing economies, but it remains a laggard. It lacks the consistent stability, good governance and civic infrastructure to maximize its potential. It suffers from a combustible mixture of youth (the median age is 19.2), endemic poverty, acrimonious (recent) history, rapid  population growth, ethnic rivalries, linguistic divides, limited education and hot religion. Throwing fuel on the fire, so to speak, is dangerous.

Sporadic but fierce violence is a staple of Nigerian society. The oil-rich Niger Delta is infamous for kidnappings, militancy and human rights violations. Even more worrying is Nigeria’s religious violence. Annual death tolls are in the low thousands, and incitements and reprisals are common among Muslims and Christians alike. Boko Haram, a pseudo-Islamic sect, may be the most fearsome combatant,  charged with church bombings, mass prison breaks and indiscriminate slaughter.

Nigeria is riven with stark divisions: rich and poor, Christian and Muslim, 250 distinct ethnic groups and double the number of languages. But Nigerians have long been united in their universal dependence on cheap gas. Now that this commonality has become yet another source of conflict, President Goodluck Jonathan will need more than just his first name to navigate Nigeria through the New Year.

Today, Robert George, the man dubbed by the New York Times as “The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker“, and Jennifer Bryson, a colleague at Princeton’s Witherspoon Institute, published an open letter decrying the campaign against the show:

[T]he vast majority of our Muslim fellow citizens are indeed ordinary folks. They are good people and good Americans. They share our fundamental moral values and our commitments to democratic institutions and civil and religious liberty. They do not promote hatred of Christians and Jews and have no desire to establish an Islamic theocracy. They are as appalled as we are at the rhetoric and conduct of those of their religion who do promote hatred and who seek to undermine democratic freedoms.

Please know that in our pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom work at the Witherspoon Institute, we have found strong partners and allies in many Muslims. They have joined with us in promoting respect for human life in all stages and conditions; in upholding the virtues of modesty and chastity; in fighting the plagues of pornography and marital infidelity; and in working to protect religious freedom and the rights of conscience both at home and abroad.

Of course, there are violent extremists and enemies of freedom who act in the name of Islam—no question about that. They preach anti-Semitism in its vilest forms and seek domination. They have no respect for the dignity and equality of women or for religious and civil liberty. One of us (Dr. Bryson) has first-hand experience in confronting them: she spent two years serving our country as a United States Department of Defense interrogator at Guantanamo. Like you, both of us believe that Islamist terrorists and radicals must be resolutely opposed and defeated. But it is important to recognize that this is a view we and you share with the overwhelming majority of American Muslims…Their moral values are our moral values—and yours.

All too often, the media and partisan polemicists reduce religions and their adherents to their worst caricatures. Voices like George’s and Bryson’s put the lie to such portrayals. Read the whole letter and reflect on the role that strong religious convictions have had historically and still have today in promoting ideals of religious tolerance and freedom here in the US.

Religious tensions in Nigeria are rising after a wave of church bombings and other attacks, for many of which Boko Haram claims responsibility.  Nigerian Christian leaders have warned that Christians will defend themselves if attacks continue; there have also been incidents in which Christians have attacked and massacred Muslims.

Nigeria has already had one brutal civil war since obtaining independence from Great Britain.  The Biafran War caused up to three million deaths out of a total Nigerian population of about 60 million at the time.

A new civil war could well be much worse.  Nigeria’s global importance has grown with its oil reserves, and a conflict that saw the mostly Christian (oil rich and more developed) south against the mostly Muslim north could draw in radicals and extremists and generate new sects and new terror groups across the volatile and shifting Christian-Muslim line in Africa.

Any sign that large numbers of Christians were moving south and Muslims north in Nigeria would be worrisome.  In a country where many people are desperately poor and cannot easily uproot themselves, people would move only if they feared for their lives.

The fanatics of Boko Haram (the name means ‘western knowledge is prohibited by God’) may hope to spark this kind of wider conflict.  Let us hope it fails, and wish the authorities in Nigeria every success as they seek to defend people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

Nigeria has a history of avoiding catastrophe, but the appearance of a well organized and apparently well funded terror group like Boko Haram is worrying. Via Meadia will be keeping an eye on this.

In Gaza, ruled by Islamist Hamas, nobody celebrates Christmas (in public anyway), and if any of the handful of Christians remaining in Gaza does something “provocative” like wearing a crucifix on the public street, trouble can follow.

The situation is so bad that even the generally pro-Palestinian Guardian newspaper can’t put a good face on the religious bigotry and foolishness on display in Hamas-run Gaza.  Read it here, and be glad you don’t live where people like this are in power.

The shameful mistreatment of weak and powerless Christian minorities in the Middle East can neither be condoned nor excused.  Thoughtful Muslims object to this barbaric backwardness not only on religious grounds, but also because they know such behavior feeds negative ideas in the west about Islam even as it drives away the talent and diversity that all societies need to prosper and develop.

If Arabs and Muslims want to understand popular American support for Israel, rather than fantasizing about elaborate Jewish conspiracies manipulating clueless American Christians, they should reflect on how the persecution of Christians and wild hate-spewing rhetoric about Jews shapes American perceptions of the conflict.  Americans generally would like the Israelis to work out some kind of a peace deal that would give Palestinians a state, but think of Hamas as a terrorist organization against which the Israelis must defend themselves however they can.

The contrast between Bethlehem and Gaza on Christmas night reinforces those views.  It may be blinkered and culturally insensitive of them, but most Americans tend not to trust people who hate Christmas and Christians — and this isn’t because of the Jews.

The last 150 years have witnessed the steady decline of once flourishing Christian minorities across the region as persecution and discrimination forced many to flee and, in some cases, led to widespread massacres.  As Via Meadia has highlighted, in Syria some Christians find themselves reluctantly backing the status quo with ‘Butcher Assad’ rather than face an uncertain future with Islamists. The Coptic Christians in Egypt meanwhile, are struggling to understand what the new Islamist majority in parliament means for their position in society.

As Christians throughout the world gather together with family and friends, we should spare some thought for Christians living in communities where they cannot safely practice their faith.

Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

That’s how an old missionary hymn begins, and it turns out the missionaries were right.  In the last 100 years Christianity became the most diverse and global religion ever, with Christians from the Global South now outnumbering those from the Global North, and forming a majority in 158 of more than 200 countries and territories surveyed.

A new report from the invaluable Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the most important source for information on religion in today’s world, will make a lot of people unhappy.  The report looks at religious belief worldwide and finds that Christianity in the last one hundred years grew to become the world’s most widespread and diverse religion as well as the largest.  Roughly one third of the world’s almost seven billion people are (or at least say they are) Christian.  The second largest religion, Islam, claims about one fourth of the world’s population.

The most dramatic change in the last 100 years is Christianity’s global surge.  In 1910, there were about 9 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, the Pew survey reports.  Today there are more than half a billion.  This fact is of interest to geopoliticians as much as to believers: sub-Saharan Africa remains the scene of intense Christian-Muslim competition, a competition that frequently breaks out into violence.  The Christians appear to be winning the “race for Africa” at least for now as more than 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africans look to the Cross rather than to the Crescent.  As the US increases its presence in Africa, the common religious orientation will likely make for better and deeper ties.

In another major development, Christianity has achieved a significant presence on the mainland of Asia.  One hundred years ago despite intense missionary effort, Christianity had a negligible presence in China; today China, where an estimated 5 percent of the population (about 67 million people) professes the Christian faith, has one of the ten largest populations of Christians in the world.  In South Korea the rate of growth has been even faster.  Overall, the proportion of Christians in the Asia Pacific region rose only slightly in the last 100 years: from 4 percent in 1910 to 7 percent in 2010.  That growth seems to have accelerated significantly in the last half of the last century; the future of Christianity as a global faith will likely depend on what happens in countries in East, South and Southeast Asia.

Globally, the Catholic Church continues to be the largest single religious organization in the world; slightly more than half of the world’s Christians are in communion with the Bishop of Rome.  The Pentecostal and charismatic movements, which are only about a century old, are the most quickly growing Christian movements, growing from zero to almost 600 million adherents in the last 100 years.

Religious demography has many problems, but the Pew survey is the best information available today.  The entire report can be downloaded; go see the summary and access the download here.  A familiarity with religious history, religious culture and religious demography is essential for anybody who aspires to be a serious student of world affairs; this Pew report is not to be missed.

One interesting speculation: the push toward democracy in many countries has been led by Christian laypeople and religious organizations.  (That was not true 100 years ago; outside the English speaking world at that time many Christian churches and movements were closely tied to premodern, anti-democratic or anti-republican ideas.)  From South Korea to Poland to South Africa by way of Egypt, Christians have been key players in both successful and unsuccessful democracy building movements.  Will the rise of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa promote better, more democratic government there as Christian ideas sink in more deeply among the citizens and leaders of those countries?

That was part of the missionary dream: that the spread of Christianity would lead to the spread of freer, better government.  The reign of Christ would liberate mankind, they hoped, or as the hymn put it:

Blessings abound where e’er he reigns:
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains,
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blest.

We shall see.  Stranger things have happened.   

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Clinton did the right thing and called for the release of Nadarkhani and other “prisoners of conscience”. Around 200,000 Americans also petitioned the State Department seeking US help in releasing Nadarkhani. As the Christian Post reports:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on Iran to release a Christian pastor facing death due to his faith in Jesus…

Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 for speaking out against new policies in the Iranian education system that would force his children to join Muslim students reading from the Quran. The charge against the married father of two was later changed to apostasy, and he was suddenly accused of attempting to evangelize Muslims. Nadarkhani was quickly found guilty and given the death sentence.

The 34-year-old pastor was the leader of a network of Christian house churches, and is a member of the Protestant evangelical Church of Iran.

Bigotry like this, led by a government intent on executing those whose faith they dislike, must be publicized and fought. Religious intolerance in repressive states like Iran and Saudi Arabia (where a harmless, elderly woman was executed for “sorcery” over the weekend) marks a country as barbarous and backward, however much their highly paid western apologists try to hide the truth.  Institutionalized religious persecution will not change tomorrow, and idiotic witch hunts by superstitious bigots in beards aren’t a reason to send in the Marines, but those who do these things, and those who represent these countries in the international arena, should understand the widespread contempt and revulsion such practices inspire.