Christians have historically comprised a small community in Afghanistan. The total number of Christians in Afghanistan is currently estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000 according to International Christian Concern. Almost all Afghan Christians are converts from Islam. The Pew Research Center estimates that 40,000 Afghan Christians were living in Afghanistan in 2010. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan did not recognize any Afghan citizen as being a Christian, with the exception of many expatriates (although, Rula Ghani, the country's First Lady from 2014 until 2021, is a Maronite Christian from Lebanon). Christians of Muslim background communities can be found in Afghanistan, estimated between 500-8,000, or between 10,000 to 12,000.
Current status Taliban Rule Afghanistan was number one on Open Doors’ 2022 World Watch List, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. In 2023 the country was ranked number 9; this was mainly due to the Taliban focusing on politics rather than non-Muslims.
After the Taliban retook control of the country in August 2021, the USCIRF warned that Christians in the country were in "extreme danger." Many fled and sought asylum, while the few Christians left in the country reported that they were in hiding from Taliban sweeps. The Taliban falsely claims that there are "no Christians" remaining in Afghanistan.
Closet Christians Despite societal restrictions, many sources claim that there is a secret underground community of Afghan Christians living in Afghanistan. The US Department of State has stated that estimates of the size of this group range from 500 to 8,000 individuals. However, estimates of the size of the Afghan Christian community in Afghanistan are not reliable. Due to Afghanistan's hostile legal environment, Afghan Christians secretly practice their faith in private homes. The complete Bible is available online in Pashto, in the Yusufzai dialect.
Christian converts There are a number of Afghan Christians (both converts and their descendants) who live outside Afghanistan, including Christian communities in India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Finland,Hundreds of asylum seekers in Finland converting from Islam to Christianity. Retrieved August 13, 2017. and Germany.Muslims Converting to Christianity by the Hundreds in Finland. Retrieved August 13, 2017.Christian refugee converts in Germany face violent attacks. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
History
The Apostle Thomas and early Christianity
According to the Acts of the Apostles () in the Bible ethnic Jews and converts to Judaism from the Parthian Empire (which included parts of western Afghanistan"Legendary horsemen and battlefield tacticians, willing to travel vast distances and strike at a moment's notice, the Parthians took advantage of the collapsing Seleucid Empire to carve out an empire during the late 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD that, at its peak, covered a vast region — from the Caspian Sea in the north to Syria in the west, the Persian Gulf in the south and the western half of present-day Afghanistan to the east —making it second only to the Roman Empire in size and economic might.") were present at Pentecost. According to Eusebius' record, the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia.A. E. Medlycott, India and The Apostle Thomas, pp.18–71; M. R. James, Apocryphal New Testament, pp.364–436; A. E. Medlycott, India and The Apostle Thomas, pp.1–17, 213–97; Eusebius, History, chapter 4:30; J. N. Farquhar, The Apostle Thomas in North India, chapter 4:30; V. A. Smith, Early History of India, p.235; L. W. Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas, p.49-59
A legend that is contained in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and other ancient documents suggests that Saint Thomas preached in Bactria, an ancient region in Central Asia that was located on flat land which straddles modern-day northern Afghanistan. An early third-century Syriac work known as the Acts of Thomas connects the apostle's ministry with two kings, one in the north and the other in the south. According to the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and compelled him to accompany an Indian merchant, Abbanes (or Habban), to his native place in northwest India. There, Thomas found himself in the service of the Indo-Parthian (Southern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Northern India) King, Gondophares. The Apostle's ministry resulted in many conversions throughout the kingdom, including the king and his brother.
Bardaisan, writing in about 196, speaks of Christians throughout Media, Parthia, and Bactria"We are Christians by the one name of the Messiah. As regards our customs our brethren abstain from everything that is contrary to their profession. ... Parthian Christians do not take two wives. ... Our Bactrian sisters do not practice promiscuity with strangers. Persians do not take their daughters to wife. Medes do not desert their dying relations or bury them alive. Christians in Edessa do not kill their wives or sisters who commit fornication but keep them apart and commit them to the judgment of God. Christians in Hatra do not stone thieves" (quoted in Mark Dickens: The Church of the East ). and, according to Tertullian (c.160–230), there were already a number of bishoprics within the Persian Empire by 220. By the time of the establishment of the Second Persian Empire (AD 226), there were bishops of the Church of the East in northwest India, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, with laymen and clergy alike engaging in missionary activity.
The Church of the East In 409, the Church of the East (also sometimes called the Nestorian Church) received state recognition from King Yazdegerd I (reigned 399–409), of the Iranian Sassanid Empire which ruled what is now Afghanistan from 224 to 579.
In 424, Bishop Afrid of Sakastan, an area covering southern Afghanistan including Zaranj and Kandahar,Sakastan attended the Synod of Dadyeshu. This synod was one of the most important councils of the Church of the East and determined that there would be no appeal of their disciplinary or theological problems to any other power, especially not to any church council in the Roman Empire.
The year 424 also marks the establishment of a bishop in Herat. In the 6th century, Herat was seen as a Metropolitan See the Apostolic Church of the East, and from the 9th century Herat was also the see of the Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan. The significance of the Christian community in Herat can be seen in that till today there is a district outside of the city named Injil, The Arabic/Dari/Pashto word for Gospel. The Christian community was present in Herat until at least 1310.
The Apostolic Church of the East established bishops in nine cities in Afghanistan including Herat (424–1310), Farah (544–1057), Zaranj (544), Bushanj (585), Badghis (585) Kandahar, and Balkh. There are also ruins of a Nestorian convent from the 6th–7th centuries a short distance from Panj, Tajikistan on the north bank of the Amu Darya very close to the Afghan border, near Kunduz. The complex was discovered and identified by Soviet archeologists in 1967. It consists of dozens of small rooms carved into a rock formation.
Ahmed Tekuder, also known as Sultan Ahmad (reigned 1282–1284) was the sultan of the Ilkhan Empire, a Mongol Empire that stretched from eastern Turkey to Pakistan and covered most of Afghanistan. Tekuder was born Nicholas Tekuder Khan as a Nestorian Christian; however, Tekuder later embraced IslamA history of the crusades By Steven Runciman, pg. 397 and changed his name to Ahmed Tekuder. When Tekuder assumed the throne in 1282, he turned the Ilkhan empire into a sultanate. Tekudar zealously propagated his new faith and sternly required his ranking offices to do the same. The Ilkhan Empire ultimately adopted Islam as a state religion in 1295. The Church of the East was almost completely eradicated across Afghanistan and Persia during the reign of Timur (1336–1405).Apostolic Church of the East
Early Jesuit explorers In 1581 and 1582 respectively, the Jesuit and Spanish Montesserat and the Portuguese Bento de Góis were warmly welcomed by the Islamic Emperor Akbar, but there was no lasting presence by the Jesuits in the country.
The Armenian Apostolic Church There were Armenian merchants living in Kabul as early as 1667 who were in contact with the Jesuits in Mughal (modern day India). It is unclear if these Armenian merchants were Christians but their presence suggests an Armenian community in Kabul in the 17th century. Kabul was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Armenian Apostolic Church Perso-Indian diocese in New Julfa, Esfahan (modern day Iran), which sent Armenian priests to the community; however, no Armenian priest came after 1830.
In 1755, Jesuit missionaries to Lahore Joseph Tiefenthaler reported that Sultan Ahmad Shah Bahadur took several Armenian gunmakers from Lahore to Kabul. Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff preached to their descendants in Kabul in Persian in 1832; by his account, the community numbered about 23 people. In 1839, when Lord Keane marched to Kabul, the Chaplain, the Rev. G. Pigott, baptised two of the children at the Armenian church.The Rev. J. N. Allen's account of his visit to the Armenian Church at Cabul in 1842 states: "1842, 1 October.I went into the town and accompanied by Captain Boswell, 2nd Regiment, Bengal N.I. set forth to make inquiries respecting a small community of Armenian Christians, of whom I had heard from my friend the Rev. G. Pigott, who had baptized two of their children when he visited Cabul in 1839, as Chaplain to the Bombay Army under Lord Keane. After some inquirey, we discovered them in a street in the Bala Hissar, leading from Jellalabad Gate; their buildings were on the North side of the street. We went up an alley and turned into a small court on the left, surrounded by buildings and filled with the implements of their trade. A little door led from this court into their church, a small dark building, but procuring lights, I found it was carpeted and kept clean, apparently with great care.", as cited on https://www.angelfire.com/hi/Azgaser/kabul.html And in 1842, the Rev. J. N. Allen, Chaplain to General William Nott's force, baptized three others.
The only reported baptism of an ethnic Afghan in the Armenian Church was said to be a robber who broke into the church through the roof and fell three times while attempting to leave with the valuable silver vessels stored there. When he was discovered, he begged for mercy and later asked to be baptized. The Armenian church building near Bala Hissar was destroyed during the Second Anglo-Afghan War by British troops; the community received compensation from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office for their loss, but the church was never rebuilt.
As late as 1870, British reports showed 18 Armenian Christians remaining in Kabul. In 1896, Abdur Rahman Khan, Emir of Afghanistan, even sent a letter to the Armenian community at Calcutta, India (now Kolkata), asking that they send ten or twelve families to Kabul to "relieve the loneliness" of their fellow Armenians, whose numbers had continued to dwindle. However, despite an initial reply of interest, in the end, none of the Armenians of Calcutta accepted the offer. The following year, the final remnants of the Armenians were expelled after a letter from Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to the Afghan ruler questioning the loyalty of the Armenians.
The Armenians of Kabul took refuge in Peshawar. These refugees carried their religious books and ancient manuscripts with them. An article on this issue in the Englishman (Calcutta) dated 11 February 1907 stated: