Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan sits at the heart of ancient Central Asia — a land of staggering historical weight. Samarkand was one of the great cities of the ancient world, a crossroads of the Silk Road where Chinese silk, Persian ideas, Indian mathematics, and Roman coins all passed through. Alexander the Great conquered it and reportedly said it was more beautiful than anything he had imagined. Timur made it the jewel of his vast empire in the 14th century, filling it with architects and craftsmen from across the known world — and the result was some of the greatest Islamic architecture ever built. Christianity came through these roads early: Nestorian Christians traveled the Silk Road deep into Central Asia, planting communities as far as China, long before Islam swept westward and extinguished their witness. Arab conquest brought Islam in the 7th century, and the region became a heartland of Sunni scholarship. Russia absorbed the territory in the 1860s. Soviet rule suppressed all religion for seven decades and enforced collectivization. Independence in 1991 brought authoritarian rule under Islam Karimov, and since 2016 under his successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev — slightly more open, but still tightly controlled.
37,053,000
People live in Uzbekistan today in Central Asia's most populous nation — 97% Muslim, with Islam woven into the culture for fourteen centuries. The government tightly regulates religious activity; evangelical Christianity exists in a legal gray zone, and proselytism is criminalized. Yet a small but real church has taken root: estimates suggest tens of thousands of Uzbek believers meeting in homes, navigating a careful dance of faith and legal risk. These are not people who inherited Christianity — they paid a real price to find it. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Uzbeks have never had a genuine encounter with the gospel, and the great Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, which once carried so many ideas across the known world, have not yet heard the most important one.
Prayer points
Islam Fourteen Centuries Deep
Pray for Uzbekistan's 37 million Muslims — a people whose daily rhythms of prayer, whose architecture, whose very sense of identity has been shaped by an Islam that has been here for fourteen centuries. Ask God to work within this deep religious heritage to awaken a hunger for what Islam cannot provide: a personal Savior who has conquered death. Ask for wisdom for those who carry the gospel in contexts where conversion is illegal and apostasy is a family catastrophe. "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
The Silk Road's Ancient Witness
Pray for Uzbekistan — where the gospel once traveled the great Silk Road and Nestorian Christians planted communities across Central Asia long before Islam arrived. That ancient witness was extinguished, but the roads are still there. Ask God to send workers along those roads again, to raise up Uzbek disciples who will carry the news from city to city and village to village in a land that was once, however briefly, touched by the name of Christ. "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news." (Isaiah 52:7)
A Generation Searching
Pray for Uzbekistan's young people — a generation that has inherited both Soviet atheism's skepticism and Islam's cultural weight, who are now navigating a rapidly changing world through their phones, through travel, through global ideas arriving faster than any government can filter them. Many are asking deeper questions about meaning, identity, and truth. Ask God to use this moment of cultural searching to draw Uzbek hearts toward the One who answers those questions fully. "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)