Christians remain a small but symbolically central minority across the Middle East and North Africa in 2025, with demographic research showing their share of the region’s population continuing a long, slow decline even where their absolute numbers are steady or slightly rising.
Drawing on thousands of censuses and surveys, a study by the Pew Research Center estimates that Christians now account for around 3% of the region’s inhabitants, down from roughly 3.3 percent in 2010 and a far cry from the situation at the start of the 20th century, when the Middle East was estimated to be close to 13% Christian.
Analysts say the pattern is driven by a familiar mix of factors: outward migration from unstable states such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; lower birth rates than their Muslim neighbors; and, increasingly, disaffiliation or conversion away from Christianity in some of its oldest homelands.
In Egypt, home to the region’s largest Christian community, the numbers remain fiercely contested, but recent reporting continues to place Christians at around 10% of the population, even as long-term trends show their share has edged down over the decades.
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In Lebanon, once the Christian stronghold of the Arab world, emigration and the mass arrival of predominantly Muslim refugees from Syria have undercut the demographic and political weight of Christian parties and institutions, feeding a growing sense among young believers that their future lies abroad.
Meanwhile, Iraq and Syria remain the starkest examples of Christian exodus, as successive rounds of war, sectarian violence, and economic collapse have driven hundreds of thousands into permanent exile, leaving historic towns and villages with only a fraction of their previous Christian population.
The picture looks different in the Gulf and parts of North Africa. In oil-rich monarchies such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, large inflows of foreign workers from Asia and Africa have swelled migrant Christian congregations. Citizens remain overwhelmingly Muslim, but the total number of Christians on Gulf soil has grown.
Overall, analysts caution that, absent major political and economic changes, the proportion of Christians in the Middle East is likely to keep shrinking, even if global Christianity continues to grow elsewhere.
In Nigeria, West Africa, the situation is very different, with Christians and Muslims now making up roughly similar-sized blocks, with research putting Christians at approximately 44-48% of Nigerians and Muslims at about 50-56% depending on the source and methodology used.
While Nigeria uniquely ranks among the top 10 countries worldwide for both Muslim and Christian populations, it is also one of the deadliest countries in the world to be a Christian. A 2025 European parliamentary briefing estimates that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in targeted attacks during the first seven months of 2025 by Boko Haram, Islamic State groups, and other militias, and the violence shows no sign of abating.