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A woman is caught with a Bible and publicly shot to death. An elderly priest is abducted and never seen again. Three buses full of students and teachers are struck by roadside bombs.  These people are not casualties of war.  They are just a few examples of pervasive anti-Christian persecution documented in the new book, Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers, March 2013), a project of the �����'s Center for Religious Freedom.

Authored by the Center's scholars Nina Shea, Paul Marshall, and Lela Gilbert, Persecuted notes that a diverse range of institutions and media outlets, from the Vatican, Open Doors, and the Pew Research Center to Commentary, Newsweek, and The Economist, have identified Christians as the most widely persecuted religious group in the world today.

The book chronicles this persecution, analyzes patterns of repression, abuse, and violence, and explores the reasons that specific ideological, religious, and political groups, as well as governments, target Christian believers as enemies.

Eric Metaxas, who wrote the bestseller Bonhoeffer and penned the foreword for Persecuted, moderates a timely and much-needed discussion on Christian oppression with the book's authors.