Christianity in Pakistan

Christianity is the third-largest religion in Pakistan, with results from the 2023 Census recording over three million Christians, or 1.37% of the total population in Pakistan. The province of Punjab has the largest population of Christians in the country. The majority of Pakistan's Christians are members of the Catholic Church or the Church of Pakistan, with the remainder belonging to other Protestant groups.
Around 75 percent of Pakistan's Christians are rural Punjabi Christians, while some speak Sindhi and Gujarati, with the remainder being the upper and middle class Goan Christians and Anglo-Indians.
As Punjabi Christians are mainly Dalit Christians—descendants of lower-caste Hindus who converted during the colonial era in India. Their dire socio-economic conditions facilitate religious discrimination; for example, it is estimated that Christians fill about 80% of the manual sewer cleaning jobs in the whole of Pakistan. Blasphemy allegations have led to several cases of mob violence against Christian households and churches.
Thomas the Apostle is credited with the arrival of Christianity to the Indian subcontinent, establishing the community of Saint Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast; Saint Thomas Christian crosses (Mar Thoma Sleeva) have been found all over the Indian subcontinent, including one near the city of Taxila in what is now Pakistan.
In 1745, the Bettiah Christians, the northern Indian subcontinent's oldest surviving Christian community, were established by the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin under the patronage of King Dhurup Singh; the Hindustan Prefecture was raised in 1769 at Patna and later shifted to Agra, which was elevated to the status of a Vicariate in 1820. The Capuchins, through their Agra Diocese and Allahabad Diocese, expanded their ministry and established in the 1800s Catholic churches in colonial India's northern provinces including Rajasthan, UP, CP, Bihar and Punjab, the latter of which now includes Pakistan.
In 1877, on Saint Thomas' Day at Westminster Abbey, London, Rev. Thomas Valpy French was appointed the first Anglican Bishop of Lahore, a large diocese of the Church of India, Burma and Ceylon, which included all of the Punjab, then under British rule in colonial India, and remained so until 1887; during this period he also opened the Divinity College, Lahore in 1870. Rev. Thomas Patrick Hughes served as a Church Missionary Society missionary at Peshawar (1864–84), and became an oriental scholar, and compiled a 'Dictionary of Islam' (1885).
The Christians of colonial India were active in the Indian National Congress and wider Indian independence movement, being collectively represented in the All India Conference of Indian Christians, which advocated for swaraj and opposed the partition of India. The meeting of the All India Conference of Indian Christians in Lahore in December 1922, which had a large attendance of Punjabis, resolved that the clergymen of the Church in India should be drawn from the ranks of Indians, rather than foreigners. The AICIC also stated that Indian Christians would not tolerate any discrimination based on race or skin colour.
Following the death of K. T. Paul of Salem, the principal of Forman Christian College in Lahore S. K. Datta became the president of the All India Conference of Indian Christians, representing the Indian Christian community at the Second Round Table Conference, where he agreed with Mahatma Gandhi's views on minorities and Depressed Classes. On 30 October 1945, the All India Conference of Indian Christians formed a joint committee with the Catholic Union of India that passed a resolution stating: "In the future constitution of India, the profession, practice and propagation of religion should be guaranteed and that a change of religion should not involve any civil or political disability."
This joint committee enabled the Christians in colonial India to stand united, and in front of the British Parliamentary Delegation "the committee members unanimously supported the move for independence and expressed complete confidence in the future of the community in India." The office for this joint committee was opened in Delhi, in which the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University M. Rahnasamy served as president and B.L. Rallia Ram of Lahore served as General Secretary. Six members of the joint committee were elected to the Minorities Committee of the Constituent Assembly. In its meeting on 16 April 1947 and 17 April 1947, the joint committee of the All India Conference of Indian Christians and Catholic Union of India prepared a 13-point memorandum that was sent to the Constituent Assembly of India, which asked for religious freedom for both organisations and individuals.
When Pakistan was created on 14 August 1947, the organization and activities of the Christian community changed drastically; the Catholic Union of India granted independence to its branches in Sindh and Balochistan in its Second Annual General Meeting in Bangalore in October 1947. Some Christians in Punjab and Sindh had been quite active after 1945 in their support for Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League. Even before the final phase of the movement, leading Indian Christians like Pothan Joseph had rendered valuable services as journalists and propagandists of the Muslim League.
Jinnah had repeatedly promised all citizens of Pakistan complete equality of citizenship, but this promise was not kept by his successors. Pakistan became an Islamic Republic in 1956, making Islam the source of legislation and cornerstone of the national identity, while guaranteeing freedom of religion and equal citizenship to all citizens. In the mass population exchanges that occurred between Pakistan and India upon independence due to conflict between Muslims and followers of Indian religions, most Hindus and nearly all Sikhs fled the country. Pakistani Punjab is now over 2% Christian, with very few Hindus and Sikhs left.
Christians have made contributions to the Pakistani national life. Pakistan's first non-Muslim Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court was oJustice A. R. Cornelius. Pakistani Christians also distinguished themselves as great fighter pilots in the Pakistan Air Force. Notable amongst them are Cecil Chaudhry, Peter O'Reilly and Mervyn L Middlecoat. Christians have also contributed as educationists, doctors, lawyers and businessmen. One of Pakistan's well-known cricketers, Yousuf Youhana, was born Christian but later converted to Islam, taking the Islamic name Mohammad Yousuf. In Britain, the Bishop Emeritus of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, is a Pakistani Christian.
In 2016, it was reported that Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) had banned all of the Christian television stations. PEMRA doesn't allow landing rights for religious content, allowing airing of Christian messages only on Easter and Christmas.
Since 1996, the small community of Eastern Orthodox Christians in Pakistan was placed under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the newly formed Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia that was set up by the decision of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 2008, the Diocese was divided, and Pakistan came under the jurisdiction of newly formed Eastern Orthodox Metropolitanate of Singapore and South Asia.
According to journalist Pamela Constable, in the 1980s and 1990s tensions between Christians and Muslims in Pakistan began to "fester". Constable credits the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the rise of military dictator General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq and the influence of stricter religious teachings from the Gulf states as catalysts for the change. After the 9/11 attacks on the US, things grew worse with many Pakistani Muslims seeing the American response to the attacks "as a foreign plot to defame their faith."
Pakistan's Christian community developed a "growing sense of concern", particularly over the strict blasphemy laws – which restricts any insults against Muhammad and makes the crime punishable by death. In the 1990s, some Christians were arrested on charges of blasphemy, and for protesting that appeared to insult Islam. John Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Faisalabad, committed suicide to protest the execution of a Christian man on blasphemy charges.
In 2009, a series of attacks killed eight Christians in Gojra, four women, three men and a child. In 2013, a suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar left more than 100 people dead, and a series of attacks at churches in Lahore in 2015 left 14 dead. On 27 March 2016, over seventy people, mostly Muslims, were killed when a suicide bomber targeting Christians celebrating Easter attacked a playground in Lahore.
On 16 August 2023, rumours began to spread in the Punjabi city of Jaranwala, Faisalabad, that a Christian had desecrated pages of the Quran. The resulting riot led to the destruction of 26 churches in the Christian quarter of the city, and thousands of Christians fled, with some spending the next few nights in open fields, afraid of returning to their homes. Local Christians complained of inaction by security forces in Jaranwala, but eventually reinforcements were called in and around 100 Muslims were arrested for participating in the violence. No Christians were killed in the riots, as most managed to flee due to warnings from Muslim neighbours.
On the Sunday after the riots, Mass was celebrated in the street outside the burned-out St. Paul's Catholic Church. The Pakistani Catholic Bishops' Conference denounced the act and asked that the Government bring the culprits to justice, regretting that "the Christian community has been terrorized and frightened by a small group of miscreants to make them believe that Christians are in fact second-class citizens of Pakistan and will remain so". Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need helped address the emergency needs of those whose livelihoods was destroyed, providing a support package for 464 families, including replacement rickshaws and motorcycles for drivers who had lost their vehicles.
Christianity (%) in Pakistan by decades
Christianity in Pakistan is growing fast, going from 1.27% in 2017 to 1.37% in 2023, making it one of the religions in Pakistan growing faster than Islam, alongside Hinduism. Today, most Pakistani Christians live in Northern Punjab.
Apart from Catholics, Christians of other denominations re-organized themselves, in India, into the Churches of North and South India respectively, and as the Church of Pakistan in 1970. Politically, groups like the Pakistan Christian Congress have arisen. The New Apostolic Church also has followers in Pakistan.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) reports over 4,000 members in 13 congregations throughout Pakistan. LDS members are most prevalent in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
According to a Minority Rights Group International report published in 2002, the average literacy rate among Christians in Pakistan was 34 percent compared to the national average of 46.56 percent.
After the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan in 1947, many Sikhs were forced to migrate to an independent India. Many Christians worked under Sikh landlords and when they departed the western parts of the Punjab region, the Government of Pakistan appropriated Sikh property to Muslims arriving from East Punjab. This caused over 300,000 Christians in Pakistan to become homeless. Christians faced judgement living in Pakistan, with local Muslims even stating that they had to live a life of servitude and perform sanitation work. Some Christians were therefore murdered for refusing to pick up garbage. In 1951, seventy-two Muslims were charged with the murder of eleven Christians after communal riots over agricultural land erupted.
Many churches built during the colonial Indian period, prior to the partition, remain locked, with the Pakistani government refusing to hand them over to the Christian community. Others have been victims of church arsons or demolitions. In 1971, East Pakistan became independent as Bangladesh, and the majority of Pakistan's Hindus, who lived in Bangladesh, were severed from Pakistan. Pakistan became a culturally monolithic, increasingly Islamic state, with smaller religious minorities than ever.
With the governments of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq, more stringently Islamic laws transformed Pakistan. Conversion to other faiths than Islam is not prohibited by law. Extremely controversial were the blasphemy laws, which made it treacherous for non-Muslims to express themselves without being accused of being un-Islamic. Zia also introduced the Sharia as a basis for lawmaking, reinforced by Nawaz Sharif in 1991. Coerced conversions to Islam from Christianity are a major source of concern for Pakistani Christians, and the minority faces threats, harassment and intimidation tactics from extremists. The Christian community in Pakistan encounters significant challenges, discrimination, and persecution solely based on their religious identity. The law enforcement and justice system, as well as the presence of "blasphemy" laws and bonded labor, are often exploited to target, trap, and imprison religious minorities, with a particular focus on Christians.
Missionaries accompanied colonizing forces from Portugal, France, and Great Britain. Jesuit missionaries sent from their Portuguese-held Goa built a Catholic church in Lahore, the first in Punjab, around 1597, two years after being granted permission by emperor Akbar, who had called them to his court in Fatehpur Sikri for religious discussions. This church was later demolished, perhaps during Aurangzeb times. Later on, Christianity was mainly brought by the British rulers of India in the later 18th and 19th century. This is evidenced in cities established by the British, such as the port city of Karachi, where the majestic St. Patrick's Cathedral, one of Pakistan's largest church, stands, and the churches in the city of Rawalpindi, where the British established a major military cantonment.
The Europeans won small numbers of converts to Anglicanism, Methodism, the Lutheran Church and Catholicism from the native populations. Islam was very strong in the provinces of Punjab, Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province, but small native communities of converts to Christianity were formed. The largest numbers came from resident officers of the British Army and the government. European and wealthy native Christians established colleges, churches, hospitals and schools in cities like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. There is a large Catholic Goan community in Karachi that was established when Karachi's infrastructure was developed by the British before World War II, and the Irish (who were subjects of the British Empire and formed a large part of the British Army) were an important factor in the establishment of then the Catholic community of northwestern colonial India (now Pakistan).
The Christians in Pakistan have long been active in various fields of public service. Many Christians have served in the Pakistan Armed Forces, civilian services and other organizations. Some have received high civilian and military awards.