Luke Mandato/The Catholic Register
With Christian persecution continuing to rise globally, Open Doors Canada’s One With Them campaign is inviting the faithful to look beyond the troubling statistics and remember the names, faces and stories of Christians suffering for their faith.
Open Doors is committed to supporting and strengthening persecuted Christians in over 70 countries and is reintroducing the campaign with a specific focus on Christians facing captivity, imprisonment, abduction, detention without trial and house arrest because of their faith.
Rooted in Hebrews 13:3 — “Remember those who are in prison as if you are in prison with them, and those who are in captivity as if you yourselves are suffering” — Open Doors Canada will also launch the six-day One With Them Challenge on June 22, designed to help individuals, families, small groups and congregations engage with restrictive realities faced daily by the persecuted Church.
As explained by Jared Vander Meulen, a digital communications specialist with Open Doors Canada, while the campaign forms part of Open Doors’ broader work that includes Bible delivery, pastor training and providing church resources, One With Them is specifically driven by its annual World Watch List, a document created to track persecution globally.
Vander Meulen attests that, even in comparison to bleak levels in 2025, this year’s levels of Christian persecution are at an all-time high.
“ Things are getting worse year over year, which is a trend with persecution in general. Our research indicates that more than 388 million Christians experience high to extreme levels of persecution, which includes captivity, kidnapping or imprisonment for their faith,” he said.
“Over 8,000 Christians just in the past 12-month reporting period were arrested, detained without trial, sentenced and imprisoned in that year. In North Korea, we are seeing 60,000 total estimated Christians who are in the prison system, many of whom are serving life sentences in hard labour camps,” he added.
The 2026 World Watch List goes on to show that 4,849 Christians have been murdered, along with 224,129 forced from their homes. Countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East continue to report troubling trends, with religious nationalism, organized corruption and crime, secular intolerance and post-communist oppression remaining as engines of such persecution.
Throughout the challenge week, faithful will be asked to undergo spiritual disciplines through daily challenges, such as keeping their Bibles hidden for a week, in solidarity with North Korean captives, or spending an hour in complete isolation while reflecting on solitary confinement.
As Vander Meulen puts it, the challenges are set to act as minor ways to realize major injustices in a deeper way.
The campaign week will culminate on June 28 with it One With Them Live Event, a virtual gathering bringing together Canadian Christians in guided prayer and worship, and updates from the front lines of Christian captivity.
While statistics may be useful for scale, Vander Meulen hopes Canadians will see each number represents real people, created and known by God, with families, loved ones and deep faith like themselves.
One With Them deliberately highlights these people, one prominent woman being Leah Sharibu from Nigeria, who was abducted by Boko Haram in 2018 and has remained captive to this day for refusing to renounce her faith.
“Many of these stories people will read about are unimaginable for any parent to go through, and with more than 8,000 individuals who experience imprisonment or abduction for their faith, each of these people has a story like this,” Vander Meulen said. “We wanted to give Canadian Christians an opportunity to learn their stories and affirm that these are people who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are going to stand and pray with them.”
The campaign prides itself on such solidarity. While Canadians cannot physically free prisoners from their cells across the globe, each can stand with them through prayer and remembrance.
One With Them is, in a way, a campaign baked into the identity of the organization as a whole, with Vander Meulen recalling their founder Brother Andrew’s quote — “Our prayers can go where we cannot. There are no borders, no prison walls, no doors that are closed to us when we pray.”
While hopes are high for One With Them’s success, Vander Meulen understands it’s not primarily in the numbers, but rather in the immeasurable believers the world over.
“ A better understanding and more awareness are key, but the hope is that this leads to a more dedicated prayer life. We believe that prayer can open doors, and while we won’t see just how many Christians are praying, if we can get them standing together in dedicated prayer for our persecuted family, that is a success for us,” he said.
A version of this story appeared in the June 07, 2026, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline “Calls for solidarity with persecuted Christians”.
