The recent unprovoked and brutal attacks at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, left 26 Christians who were in the middle of a religious service dead. The assailant is 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, who had preached atheism online.

The massacre has been well documented and covered so I won’t delve too much into it, but it has led me to look into the plight of Christians around the world.

I’ll start with the state of Christianity here in the United States. Christianity is dying in our country. According to Pew Research data, the number of American adults who claim to be Christian has dropped by close to eight percentage points between 2007 and 2014, falling from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent. During this same seven-year period, the number of American adults who describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic climbed from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent.

It’s important to note that Christianity isn’t the only religion on decline; however, recent data suggests it’s falling at a higher rate than other faiths.

Further examination of the Pew data shows that the millennial generation is the most atheist, at around 30 percent, compared with only 9 percent from Generation X and 6 percent from the baby-boom generation.

As a Christian millennial, I find this data to be nothing short of heartbreaking. There are dozens of factors that have attributed to my generation leaving religion that would take numerous studies to explain, but it certainly revolves around the ever rapidly changing culture in the U.S.

How about in other parts of the world? Christianity in Europe has been in dire straits for quite some time, but the data is truly devastating. The Pew Research Center projects through its research that in 2050, Christians will make up 65 percent of the European population — a drop of about 100 million people between 2010 and 2050.

If the data is accurate, in a mere 33 years Europe and North America will be the home to a quarter of Christians. Now, while much of the decline can be attributed to low birth rates, the numbers are no less concerning as to the overall state of my faith across the globe.

Perhaps the most shocking and sad truth is that the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity and other religions, may have no Christians left in a few short decades. In just 100 years, between 1910 and 2010, the percentage of Middle Easterners who are Christians has dropped from 14 percent to about 4 percent, with Lebanon remaining the only bastion of Christianity left in the Middle East — though the Lebanese Christian population has dropped from 78 percent to only 34 percent over the same 100-year period.

One factor that contributes to this massive drop in the Christian population can be attributed to the brutal campaign of violence and persecution that non-Christian majority nations unleashed against their native Christian populations, especially during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s. This genocide alone killed nearly 2 million Christians.

Christians in the areas occupied by ISIS have been brutally subjugated, and many claim that a new genocide against the native Syrian and Iraqi Christian populations has been taking place in the few recent years that ISIS has controlled territory in eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

The truth is that Christianity is dying everywhere, whether through willingness to leave the faith or because Christians are being actively wiped out. Western nations must take in Christian refugees from areas where they are being slaughtered and persecuted, or at the very least do more to provide relief. The only thing we, my fellow Christians and myself, can do is pray and take action.

Christian individuals can help through local Christian communities by donating to various relief efforts that attempt to bring aid to Christians all over the world.  Christian students on campus have been active in practicing and sharing their faith together, which is a positive step in reviving the faith among millennials. There is no time to wait, or our faith may soon die out.

Clint is a senior in LAS.

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