Briefing
How to read this desk
Sanctuary Shield keeps Incident Reports so church leaders can see documented attacks on sanctuaries — parish churches, cathedrals, monasteries, and church-run campuses. It is a curated record, not a live intelligence feed and not a complete count of anti-Christian persecution.
Each filing is a public-record event with a date, a place, a conservative casualty figure, and a named source. Campaign entries (a season of arson, a wave of demolitions) are labeled as such so they are not mistaken for a single night’s attack.
What is in — and out
- In: attacks, arson, raids, vandalism, and conflict strikes on church sites.
- In: Western cases (Charleston, Sutherland Springs, Nice) alongside Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria.
- Out: general crime next to a church, theological controversy, and unsourced social posts.
- Out: every killing of a Christian. Open Doors counts those separately.
Open Doors WWL 2026
Independent of this ledger. Quoted so the desk is not mistaken for the whole field.
- Killed
- 4,849
- In Nigeria
- 3,490
- Churches attacked
- 3,632
- Facing persecution
- 388m
Sources
Incident files cite contemporaneous reporting (Reuters, BBC, AP), court and government statements, and monitors including Open Doors, Aid to the Church in Need, OIDAC Europe, Human Rights Watch, and the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Casualty numbers prefer the lower widely reported figure when sources disagree.
Accounts
The desk is public. Incident files, maps, and this briefing do not require an account.
We prayed to our God and posted a guard.