It is three years since I left Baghdad, where I led the city’s last Anglican church till the danger became too great. With the apparent defeat of Isil, order seems to be returning to some parts of the Middle East. But the plight of Christians in the region remains incredibly serious.

The Christian communities here are some of the oldest in the world – many of the people I work with still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. But they are the persecuted minority of the minority: more Christians are dying and being displaced for their faith now than ever before in the 2,000 years of the history of our faith. The only place in the Middle East where Christians live in freedom is Israel, and even...