Anti-Christian sentiment, also referred to as Christianophobia or Christophobia, is the irrational fear, hatred, discrimination, or prejudice against Christians and/or aspects of the Christian religion's practices. These terms encompass "every form of discrimination and intolerance against Christians". The presence of anti-Christian sentiment has led to the persecution of Christians throughout history.
In January 2026, the European Parliament recognized the term "Christianophobia" for the first time in an annual human rights and democracy resolution. Lawmakers highlighted an institutional imbalance, noting that while the EU features designated coordinators for antisemitism and Islamophobia, no equivalent office exists to monitor anti-Christian hatred.
Antiquity Evidence shows that anti-Christian sentiment was already present as early as the Roman Empire during the first century AD. The steady growth of the Christian movement was viewed with suspicion by both the authorities and the people of Rome leading to the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
During the second century, Christianity was viewed as a negative movement in two ways: both due to accusations made against adherents of the Christian faith in accordance with the principles held by the Roman population, and because of the supplementary controversy aroused during the intellectual age.
Anti-Christian sentiment is alluded to in the New Testament, and appears to have been anticipated thus by Jesus of Nazareth, being documented by the writers of the gospels. Furthermore, anti-Christian sentiment of the first century was not expressed by the Roman authorities alone, but also by the Jews. As Christianity was, at that time, a sect which was largely emerging from Judaism, much of this sentiment was the result of anger from the well established Jewish faith towards a new and revolutionary faith. Paul of Tarsus, who persecuted Christians before himself becoming a Christian, highlighted the Crucifixion of Jesus as a 'stumbling block' to the Jews: the belief that the messiah would have died on a cross was offensive to some of the Jews because they awaited a messiah who had different characteristics.
Middle Ages On the subject of historical anti-Christian sentiments of early Muslims, professor Sidney H. Griffith explains that "The cross and the icons publicly declared those very points of Christian faith which the Quran, in the Muslim view, explicitly denied: that Christ was the Son of God and that he died on the cross." For that reason, "the Christian practice of venerating the cross and the icons of Christ and the saints often aroused the disdain of Muslims". Because of that, there was an ongoing "campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity [in formerly Christian lands such as Egypt and Syria], especially the previously ubiquitous sign of the cross. There are archaeological evidences of the destruction and defacement of Christian images [and crosses] in the early Islamic period due to the conflict with Muslims they aroused."
The initial expansion of the Islamic Caliphate brought large Christian populations under Muslim rule. The legal framework of the Pact of Umar defined the status of Christians as dhimmis ("protected people"). While this granted them the right to practice their faith, it was contingent upon the payment of the jizya (tax levied on non-muslims) and adherence to restrictive social codes, during which Christians were forbidden from building or repairing churches, displaying crosses, sounding bells, riding horses or camels, bearing arms, taking Muslim names, and using Arabic in religious documents, and were required to yield seats to Muslims, and attach demeaning images to their doors, among other regulations. Early anti-Christian sentiment was often expressed through theological refutation. Scholars such as Al-Jahiz wrote polemics like Al-Radd 'ala al-Nasara ("Refutation of the Christians"), criticizing Christians for their perceived social "haughtiness" and intellectual influence in the Abbasid court. He argued that their doctrine of the Trinity was a logical contradiction and a form of shirk (associating partners with God).
The prominent Andalusian jurist Ibn Rushd decreed that "golden crosses must be broken up before being distributed" (as plunder). "As for their sacred books [Bibles], one must make them disappear", he added. (He later clarified that unless all words can be erased from every page in order to resell the blank book, all Christian scripture must be burned.) An anti-Christian treatise published in Al-Andalus was titled "Hammers [for breaking] crosses."
The Persian poet Mu'izzi urged the grandson of Alp Arslan to root out and wipe out all Christians in the world in an act of genocide:
Marco Polo, who journeyed throughout the East in the 13th century and made an observation of the people of Arabia, stated that "The inhabitants are all Saracens [Muslims], and utterly detest the Christians", and "indeed, it is a fact that all the Saracens in the world are agreed in wishing ill to all the Christians in the world".
Early modern period At the time of the Reformation, anti-Christian sentiment grew with the rise of atheism. During the Reign of Terror, a period of the French Revolution, radical revolutionaries and their supporters desired a cultural revolution that would rid the French state of all Christian influence. In 1789, church lands were expropriated and priests killed or forced to leave France. Later in 1792, "refractory priests" were targeted and replaced with their secular counterpart from the Jacobin club. Anti-Christian sentiment increased during 1793 and a campaign of dechristianization occurred, and new forms of moral religion emerged, including the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason. The drownings at Nantes targeted many Catholic priests and nuns. The first drownings happened on the night of 16 November 1793. The victims were 160 arrested Catholic priests that were labeled "refractory clergy" by the National Convention.
Late modern period
In China, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, particularly in the late Qing period, "教案" (anti-missionary incidents) were frequent. During the Taiping Rebellion, Qing official Zeng Guofan, in his "Proclamation Against the Cantonese Bandits" (《讨粤匪檄》), equated the God Worshipping Society with Catholicism. This led those who hated the Taiping Rebellion to direct their resentment towards Catholicism. The Boxer Rebellion saw attacks on Christians and the destruction of churches. According to official Chinese statistics, "from 1840 to 1900, there were over 400 anti-missionary incidents across China.中央统战部网：对独立自主自办宗教事业的支持
William Kingdon Clifford was outspoken about Christianity as a drag on progress. He was personified by Mr. Saunders in the novel The New Republic by W. H. Mallock in 1878. For example, ‘All our doubts on this matter,’ said Mr. Saunders, ‘are simply due to that dense pestiferous fog of crazed sentiment that still hides our view, but which the present generation has sternly set its face to dispel and conquer. Science will drain the marshy grounds of the human mind, so that the deadly malaria of Christianity, which has already destroyed two civilisations, shall never be fatal to a third.’W. H. Mallock (1878) The New Republic, or Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House
When British writer Charles Montagu Doughty journeyed around Arabia, the local Bedouins said to him, "Thou wast safe in thine own country, though mightest have continued there; but since thou art come into the land of the Moslemin [Muslims], God has delivered thee into our hands to die—so perish all the Nasara [Christians]! And be burned in hell with your father, Sheytan [Satan]." Doughty also records how Muslims in Arabia would, while circling around the Kaaba, supplicate Allah to "curse and destroy" the Jews and Christians.
Many Christians were persecuted and/or killed during the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide. Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi argue that the Armenian genocide and other contemporaneous persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire (Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide) constitute an extermination campaign, or genocide, carried out by the Ottoman Empire against its Christian subjects.
The Affair of the Cards was a political scandal which broke out in 1904 in France, during the Third French Republic. From 1900 to 1904, the prefectural administrations, the Masonic lodges of the Grand Orient de France and other intelligence networks established data sheets and created a secret surveillance system of all army officers in order to ensure that Christians would be excluded from promotions and advancement in the military hierarchy, and "free-thinking" officers would be promoted instead.
The Cristero War was a widespread struggle in central and western Mexico in response to the implementation of secularist and anticlerical articles. The rebellion was instigated as a response to an executive decree by Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles to strictly enforce Article 130 of the Constitution, a decision known as Calles Law. Calles sought to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, its affiliated organizations and to suppress popular religiosity. To help enforce the law, Calles seized Church properties, expelled foreign priests, and closed monasteries, convents, and religious schools.Warnock, John W. The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed p. 27 (1995 Black Rose Books, Ltd) Some have characterized Calles as the leader of an atheist stateHaas, Ernst B., Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The dismal fate of new nations, Cornell Univ. Press 2000 and his program as being one to eradicate religion in Mexico.Cronon, E. David "American Catholics and Mexican Anticlericalism, 1933–1936", pp. 205–208, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLV, Sept. 1948 Tomás Garrido Canabal led persecutions against the Church in his state, Tabasco, killing many priests and laymen and driving the remainder underground.Kirshner, Alan M. "A Setback to Tomas Garrido Canabal's Desire to Eliminate the Church in Mexico". Journal of Church and State (1971) 13 (3): 479–492.
The First Portuguese Republic was intensely anti-clerical. Under the leadership of Afonso Costa, the Minister of Justice, the revolution immediately targeted the Catholic Church; the provisional government began devoting its entire attention to an anti-religious policy. On 8 October the religious orders in Portugal were expelled, and their property was confiscated. On 10 October – five days after the inauguration of the Republic – the new government decreed that all convents, monasteries and religious orders were to be suppressed. All residents of religious institutions were expelled and their goods were confiscated. The Jesuits were forced to forfeit their Portuguese citizenship. A series of anti-Catholic laws and decrees followed each other in rapid succession.
The Red Terror in Spain committed various acts of violence that included the desecration and burning of monasteries, convents, and churches. The failed coup of July 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious, or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial".Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense, p. 126