Despite experiencing several wars over the last year as well as heavy religious persecution and ostracization from the Islamist regime, insiders say that the small community of Christians within Iran is growing against all odds.
In 2020, a rare survey of the Iranian people was conducted by the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN). They noted that since Iranians “live with an ever-present fear of retribution for speaking against the state,” researchers “cannot simply call people or knock on doors seeking answers to politically sensitive questions. That’s why the anonymity of digital surveys offers an opportunity to capture what Iranians really think about religion.”
GAMAAN noted that despite the fact that the regime’s census claims that 99.5% of the population is Muslim, their survey revealed a far different reality. Only 32.2% said they are Shi’ite Muslim, the official state religion imposed on the country by the Islamist regime. The survey further found that secularization has made strong inroads in the population, with 22.2% saying they have no religion, 8.8% saying they are atheist, and 5.8% saying they are agnostic.
An additional revealing statistic from the survey is that 1.5% reported that they are Christian, which would amount to over 1.3 million people in a nation of 92 million. Iran’s mullahs officially recognize small numbers of ethnic Armenian and Assyrian Christians, with most analysts estimating that there are less than 200,000 present in the country. But converting to Christianity from Islam is considered apostasy and is strictly forbidden. Muslim converts to Christianity often face imprisonment and torture, and in some cases execution. In addition, underground house churches are heavily persecuted, and Christians are frequently arrested arbitrarily and are banned from sharing the faith.
Despite this, Christianity in Iran has grown significantly since the ayatollahs took power after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when there were only a few hundred believers. Groups such as Elam Ministries and Transform Iran estimate that there are now up to three million Christians in the country.
“[T]here is a church in Iran, and it’s a beautiful church,” remarked Elam Ministries Executive Director David Yeghnazar during “Washington Watch” last week. “It’s a church that over the last 47 years has grown rapidly. … [W]e don’t know the exact numbers, but what we do know is that there has been very rapid growth. … [I]t’s a church that has been persecuted, it has suffered, and it has shown itself to be resilient.”
Yeghnazar went on to highlight how recent wars and persecutions have only galvanized Christians in Iran to share their faith more boldly.
“[The Iranian church] has suffered a lot in the last year,” he noted. “In June 2025, there was the 12-Day War with Iran and Israel. [T]here’s [also] been severe economic pressure. And then early in 2026, before the war broke out, some of the darkest days in Iran’s history [occurred] when tens of thousands of Iranians were killed by the regime as they violently suppressed the protests, [and] many others were arrested or incarcerated. So there has been national trauma in Iran. And yet in the midst of that, the church has continued to be a witness. They are comforting those who are suffering. They’re sharing Jesus Christ. In fact, one of the people told me that when people find out that you are Christians in these days, they are so encouraged. They say, ‘Oh, you’re not a Muslim. Please, will you tell me about Jesus? Thank God we met you.’ And so many people want to hear about Jesus.”
Yeghnazar further detailed how many Iranians who have “longed for freedom” found “hope” as a result of the ongoing U.S. strikes on Iran’s leadership and military that began on February 28. “[N]obody likes war, but the reality is on the ground right now [that] the church, I believe, is continuing to shine.”
Yeghnazar related the recent story of a new believer. “He contacted his pastor and said, ‘I want to give my tithe to those who are suffering.’ … So he actually ended up sending his little bit of money to a family in a city called Kerman [in] another part of the country. Separately, a house church felt led by the Lord to do an evangelistic trip to Kerman. They ended up in that same home. And when they got to the house, [they] recognized how deeply God had led them there. And so what that shows in this time [is that] the church in Iran is in the midst of war, ready to witness, ready to take risks, ready to share Jesus Christ with people in the nation. [P]eople are worried [about] what’s going to happen, but they’re still witnessing for the Lord in the country.”
Yeghnazar concluded by urging believers to pray for the church in Iran. “It’s important for people to pray for what comes next, [to] pray for righteousness [and] for a just country. But we must pray for the church [and] for Christians who are witnessing. Pray for Christians who are comforting people and pray especially for the persecuted, because we don’t know what’s happened to the persecuted at this time. Some are in prison. We haven’t heard from them. Their families haven’t heard from them. So it’s really important to pray for the church and especially the persecuted right now.”
