Trump’s Nigeria Doctrine: the Framework of a New Moral Foreign Policy
Nigeria has tragically become known as the global center of Christian martyrdom. But the massacring of Christians there has gone almost completely unremarked by the world’s most influential leaders – men and women who have it in their power to confront and check the violence.
That is, until President Donald Trump stepped in this week. “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” he said in a statement posted online. “Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter... The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
He named Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) – a technical term that, if formalized through the proper channels, will have meaningful effects, putting the U.S. officially on track to use economic, diplomatic, and political means to put an end to the persecution of Nigeria’s Christians.
Trump deserves the congratulations and thanks of Christians everywhere as we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the faith in Nigeria. Here’s how serious their plight has become: Human rights monitors such as Intersociety reported this year that at least 52,000 Christians have been killed by jihadist factions such as Boko Haram since 2009.
In the past five years, Boko Haram has been joined in this violence by radicalized Fulani militias and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Entire Christian villages are wiped out, churches burned, pastors executed, and worshipers abducted and held in jihadist camps. The Catholic World Report reported this year that 1,200 churches are being destroyed annually in Nigeria. The persecution of Christians in the region has led to a mass exodus, with UN officials estimating 3.6 million Nigerians currently forcibly displaced.
To us at the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), the violence is no abstraction. A young man working with VPP was shot and killed at just 23 years old in July of this year. He died heroically trying to stop the kidnapping of three seminarians. His courage and sacrifice are a searing and painful reminder that the persecution of Christians in Nigeria is not distant news – it is personal, immediate, and ongoing.
A 2025 Hudson Institute report warned: “More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all other countries combined.” Despite billions in U.S. aid, the Nigerian government has failed to protect rural Christian communities, and many attacks occur with impunity. This is not acceptable, and we echo President Trump’s calls for aid and relief there.
But if the U.S. truly “cannot stand by,” as Trump said, then action must follow rhetoric: officially reinstate the CPC designation, impose Global Magnitsky sanctions, fund early-warning systems, and elevate Christian protection in all diplomatic and security dialogues with Nigeria’s government. The situation is dire, and the time to decisively defend our brothers and sisters in Christ is now.
China: Disappeared Shepherds and a Campaign of Spiritual Erasure
Trump warned that Christianity faces “an existential threat” in Nigeria. He stated his case so forcefully that it implies and calls for an official posture of defending Christian minorities wherever they face such a threat. And unfortunately, Christians find themselves under threat in many places throughout the world where America is in a position to exert its influence.
Nowhere is there a more literal “existential threat” to Christians than in Communist China. The CCP openly seeks to erase the faith itself by way of Beijing’s “Sinicization of religion” – a campaign of total control. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and independent monitors describe an expanding system of surveillance, detention, and indoctrination designed to make allegiance to the Communist Party the highest creed.
The Catholic bishops loyal to the Holy See continue to vanish into detention, with the recent example of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu of Xinxiang, who has been missing since 2021.
Several underground bishops have been coerced into joining the state-controlled Patriotic Association. Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 91-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested and prosecuted in 2022 for supporting humanitarian aid to pro-democracy protesters. His arrest sent a chilling message to clergy worldwide: even cardinals are not protected.
The persecution in China extends beyond the pulpit. Jimmy Lai, a Catholic businessman and publisher of Apple Daily, remains imprisoned in Hong Kong for his journalism and activism. His solitary confinement and ongoing espionage charges embody the regime’s message that faith-inspired dissent is treason.
These actions of the CCP are all the more menacing in light of the other atrocities the officially atheist regime has shown itself capable of – attacks on human dignity that reach genocidal proportions: Over one million Uyghur Muslims are held in “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, subjected to forced labor, sterilization, and ideological brainwashing.
The same machinery of repression targets Falun Dafa practitioners. The 2019 China Tribunal concluded “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Chinese state conducts forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience – Falun Dafa practitioners, Uyghurs, and underground Christians. These victims are executed on demand to fuel China’s organ transplant industry – a modern mechanization of evil.
America must impose targeted Magnitsky sanctions on CCP officials and institutions, demand the release of prominent religious figures, and condition all cooperation with China on verifiable religious-freedom benchmarks.
India: Legal Harassment and Mob Violence
India’s Christian minority faces increasing levels of both legal harassment and mob violence. USCIRF has consistently cited India since 2020 as a “Country of Concern,” recommending targeted sanctions and the suspension of security assistance conditioned on human rights compliance. In March 2025, the USCIRF again reported “particularly severe persecution” in India – the only major democracy so designated.
The Evangelical Fellowship of India documented 745 verified incidents of harassment or violence in 2024. The United Christian Forum recorded 245 attacks from January to May 2025 – about two per day. Anti-conversion laws empower mobs and police to target Christians, especially Dalit and tribal converts.
U.S. partnerships should demand the repeal of these laws and accountability for state complicity, and diplomatic pressure must be asserted on our strategic ally in order to restore religious freedom and liberty for our fellow Christians in India.
West Bank and Gaza: Christians Under Siege
Christians in the Holy Land currently face increasing danger, not only from Israel’s campaign of violence against the people (including clergy and civilian churchgoers) of Gaza, but also from settler violence in the West Bank.
In July 2025, Israeli settlers attacked the Christian village of Taybeh, torching cars and homes. The UN reports hundreds displaced amid escalating harassment, and clergy accuse Israeli security forces of complicity or indifference.
The suffering extends beyond the West Bank. In Gaza, Christian aid workers and families are struggling to survive under bombardment. This summer, two men contracted to support VPP’s humanitarian mission – delivering baby formula for vulnerable infants trapped in the conflict – were killed when Israel Defense Forces bombed the warehouse where the formula was being prepared for delivery. The deaths of our contractors testify to the indiscriminate suffering of civilians, the peril of Christian service in wartime, and the moral urgency of protecting those who serve “the least of these” in keeping with the Gospel.
The U.S. must call for full investigations of attacks on churches, clergy, and aid workers, and insist that the protection of Christian communities – from Gaza to Taybeh – be written into every diplomatic conversation in the region.
Turkey: Heritage under Assault
Turkey’s conversion of Byzantine churches for its own uses and harassment of Christian workers continues, largely unnoticed by the world. The government routinely bans long-term Christian pastors from entry and steels historic churches, refurbishing them as mosques. NATO cooperation must be tied to measurable protections for Christian heritage and clergy.
Cameroon, Sudan, and Congo: Forgotten Frontlines
Cameroon’s Anglophone Christians are trapped between separatists and government troops. In Sudan, Christians face starvation and assault amid civil war. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Allied Democratic Forces massacred more than 40 worshipers in Komanda just this July. These crises demand sanctions, humanitarian corridors, and direct aid to Christian networks, as well as awareness and concern from the universal Church.
Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh): Ethnic Cleansing of Armenians
In 2023, over 100,000 Armenian Christians were expelled from Artsakh. Freedom House and international monitors confirm a campaign of cultural and religious erasure. U.S. policy must insist on the right of return, protection of churches, and accountability for Azerbaijan’s actions.
From Rhetoric to Accountability
“We cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening,” Trump said of the ongoing persecutions in Nigeria. That sentiment should form the core of a new moral foreign policy. America must condition its partnerships, trade, and aid on measurable protection of Christians and other vulnerable faith communities. Words must now become vigilance – and vigilance must become action.