When U.S. President Donald Trump recently described what he called a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria, many Americans—and many Nigerians—were surprised. Some questioned his framing; others wondered whether such a claim reflected reality. But few paused to consider a deeper truth behind the shock: the very churches now enduring violence across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and North are the same ones that generations of American Christians once supported, prayed for, and partnered with.
For over a century, families in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, California, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and beyond gave sacrificially to support Nigerian pastors, evangelists, and congregations. They listened to missionaries’ stories during Sunday services, eagerly read missionary prayer letters, collected offerings for mission hospitals, K-12 schools, and Bible schools, and prayed for their “partner churches” in places like Jos, Mkar, Takum, Chibok, and Mubi. In countless small-town churches across America, Nigeria was not a distant land — it was part of the family of faith.
Why the mission field was the Middle Belt
The strong American missionary presence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt was not accidental. During the early 20th century, when British colonial authorities governed Northern Nigeria through Islamic emirs under a system of “indirect rule”, Christian missionaries were largely barred from proselytising in the Muslim-dominated emirates. As a result, mission activity — including that of American and European partners — was concentrated in the ethnically diverse and non-Muslim regions to the south of the Caliphate, today known as the Middle Belt.
These communities, long marginalised by both the emirates and colonial authorities, welcomed missionary schools, medical clinics, and Bible teaching as paths to empowerment and self-determination. For many, Christianity became both a spiritual awakening and a statement of cultural independence. Over time, this region became the heartland of Northern Nigeria’s Christian growth — and, tragically, the epicentre of the country’s later conflicts.
The same areas that once hosted mission stations are now at the crossroads of religious, ethnic, and economic tensions, worsened by climate change, land pressure, Islamic insurgency movements, and the spread of weapons from the Sahel following the fall of Libya. The violence that plagues these communities today cannot be understood without that history — nor can the depth of their faith, resilience, and global connections.
A century of partnership, not paternalism
What grew out of those early mission partnerships is extraordinary. In the 1920s and 1930s, small groups of Nigerian Christians and American mission partners began working together to evangelise, educate, and train leaders across the north-central region. Over time, these partnerships flourished into independent, self-governing denominations — now among the largest and most dynamic in Nigeria, and most now much larger than the partner churches in the United States.
Among them are the member churches of TEKAN, the Hausa acronym for Tarayyar Ekklisiyoyin Kristi a Nijeriya—the Fellowship of the Churches of Christ in Nigeria. These include the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria (CRC-N) and Nongo u Kristu u Shiri Tar (NKST) in Taraba and Benue States, both shaped through partnerships with the Christian Reformed Church in North America; the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN) in Adamawa and Borno States, linked to the Church of the Brethren in the U.S.; and the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN) in Adamawa, with historic ties to Midwestern Lutheran congregations.
Alongside TEKAN stands the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) — formerly the Evangelical Church of West Africa — which grew out of partnerships with the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), an American-founded evangelical agency that began work in Nigeria in the late 19th century. ECWA is now the largest denomination in Northern Nigeria, with more than 10,000 congregations and over 10 million members.
ECWA also has one of the world’s largest missionary sending agencies, with missionaries placed across Africa and the Middle East, evangelising across the front lines to Muslim-majority regions.
Across these networks, the scope of American involvement was vast. Thousands of American missionaries and their families served in Nigeria over the 20th century, supported by hundreds of thousands of U.S. donors, contributing the equivalent of billions of dollars in education, healthcare, agriculture, and theological training. In return, Nigerian Christians built strong, self-reliant churches that today lead their own global mission efforts. Nigeria’s Christian population now exceeds 100 million, making it one of the largest and most influential Christian centres in the world.
From shared mission to shared crisis
That shared history now faces its greatest test. Over the past two decades, Nigeria’s Middle Belt has been engulfed in violence, driven by a complex mix of ethnic tension, land competition, and extremist insurgency. Predominantly Christian farming communities and predominantly Muslim nomadic groups have clashed in cycles of retaliation, while jihadist movements and criminal gangs exploit weak governance to spread terror.
The result has been devastating: thousands killed, churches and mosques destroyed, and millions displaced. Many of the worst-hit areas—in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Bornu, and Adamawa States—are the very places where American mission partnerships once thrived.
The moral tragedy is that these are not anonymous communities. They are the same congregations whose stories once filled American pulpits and Sunday school lessons. The same pastors whose predecessors studied in seminaries built with American gifts. The same believers whose faith helped inspire generations of missionaries to serve overseas. But, once the missionaries returned home and the Nigerian churches were on their own, their partner American congregations and denominations often drifted away, and the financial and prayer support dried up.
A deafening silence
And today, the voices of American churches are largely silent. For example, foreign missionary presence for the CRCNA in Northern Nigeria ended with the retirement of the last foreign missionary last year, with no fanfare, after a century of collaboration. Few in the denomination today even know their own missionary legacy there. Few denominations have spoken publicly about the crisis. The mission boards that once coordinated deep relationships have thinned or disappeared. Younger generations in the U.S. may not even realise that their parents’ and grandparents’ churches once prayed weekly for Nigeria.
Trump’s comments, for all their political overtones, inadvertently revealed something far less partisan: the growing disconnect between the American church’s history and its present awareness. The issue is not whether the violence should be labelled genocide or not — it is that over a century of partnership seems to have been forgotten at the moment it matters most.
A call to remember
Nigerian churches do not need rescuing. They are independent, theologically mature, and spiritually vibrant — many far larger and more influential than the U.S. denominations that helped launch them. But they do need solidarity: prayer, advocacy, partnership, and renewed friendship. American Christians once walked alongside Nigerian pastors to plant seeds of faith; today, they must stand beside them as those pastors defend their people’s lives, livelihoods, and dignity.
For generations, American children collected coins for “our missionaries in Nigeria”. Mission families came home on furlough to share stories, photographs, and hymns in Hausa, Tiv, Jukun, Ngas, and Mumuye. Those relationships shaped the global imagination of Christian partnership. To now turn away — when those same communities cry out under the weight of violence — would not only be an act of forgetting but also a failure of faithfulness.
Shared faith, shared responsibility
The story of American and Nigerian Christianity has always been one of mutual growth — of missionaries who became friends, of churches that became equals, and of faith that crossed oceans in both directions. That story is not over. It now calls for remembrance, solidarity, and courage.
As the Middle Belt continues to bleed, American churches must not retreat into silence. They must remember the bonds of faith that once linked them across the Atlantic — and act, not out of guilt, but out of gratitude and shared responsibility.
For a hundred years, the church in Nigeria and the church in America grew together. The question now is whether that fellowship still means something when it is most needed.
