Mourners carry crosses and chant slogans during the funeral procession for victims of Sunday’s suicide bombing at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church, outside al-Saleeb Church in the al-Qasaa neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

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by Richard Ghazal, 07/07/25

On June 22, 2025, a suicide bomber entered Saint Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus during a packed evening worship service and unleashed unimaginable carnage. After opening fire on the congregation, the attacker detonated an explosive vest, killing nearly 30 people and injuring more than 60. It was the deadliest attack on Syria’s Christian community since the 1860 Damascus Massacre, and a stark reminder of Christianity’s increasingly perilous existence in its ancient homeland. 

The Jihadist group Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, a splinter of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has claimed responsibility. The attack illustrates a sobering reality: Syrian Christians, who have endured centuries of political repression and sectarian violence, now face an existential crisis. With every suicide bombing, every desecrated church, every community exodus, Syria edges closer to losing a two-millennia-old spiritual and cultural pillar. 

Syria is home to the world’s oldest existing Christian communities, which trace their lineage back to Apostolic times. According to Syriac Christian tradition, the Syriac Kingdom of Osroene (in modern northern Syria) was the world’s first political entity to declare Christianity as its state religion. King Abgar V — known as Abgar the Black — adopted the Christian faith after being healed from a devastating illness by the disciple Thaddeus in 33 AD. On the road to Damascus, the former persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus, was transformed into the Apostle Paul, further rooting Christianity in Syrian soil.   

Syria has played a vital role as a wellspring of Christian thought, culture and civilization. Saint Ephrem the Syriac is renowned as one of the most prolific and consequential poets and theologians of the universal Church. Cities like Maaloula and Qamishli still preserve the Aramaic language of Jesus. Ancient churches and monasteries dot the landscape, bearing silent witness to Syria’s role as a cradle of Christian civilization. 

Prior to the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Christians made up approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population and played key roles in academia, medicine, commerce and in public life. They coexisted with their Muslim neighbors to preserve a fragile but buoyant multiethnic, multiconfessional social fabric.  

The civil war, however, shattered this pluralistic order. Today, fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Syria, down from roughly 2 million prior to the war. What remains is a deeply vulnerable remnant community, surrounded by instability, sectarianism and extremism. The recent bombing of Saint Elias Church is not just another act of terror — it’s a signal of the accelerating cultural erasure of a heritage that predates Islam by centuries. 

For centuries, Christians have served as a moderating force in Syria, exemplifying the “love thy neighbor” ethos, offering Syrian society a model of compassion, coexistence and moral restraint. Their elimination would cause a narrowing of ideas, identities and beliefs, which would enable radical ideologies to reach an otherwise moderate Muslim demographic.   

Christianity’s extinction in Syria would also mark the loss of a vital bridge between East and West. Syriac Christianity provides unique access into the mind, culture and worldview native to Christ and the Apostles, and thus shaped the theology of the early church and connected the Western tradition with its Semitic roots. Its loss would sever a crucial link in this shared civilizational heritage. 

In response to the Saint Elias Church attack, the United States must press the Syrian Transitional Government to bring the perpetrators to justice and implement robust security measures to protect the country’s Christian communities. 

While the Syrian Transitional Government is a coalition of Islamist factions with problematic histories, diplomatic disengagement and isolation by the U.S. risks creating a vacuum, empowering extremists. Diplomatic engagement, if strategically structured, would serve as a powerful tool to establish guardrails for behavior and mechanisms for accountability. Diplomatic engagement does not imply endorsement. It provides a framework for leverage and influence. The U.S. must condition any formal diplomatic recognition on the Syrian Transitional Government’s guarantee to protect minority rights, religious freedom and enshrine constitutional safeguards.

To this end, the U.S. should: 

1. Establish measured diplomatic relations with the Syrian Transitional Government and lift sanctions to promote security, stability and human rights. Diplomatic recognition should be leveraged to compel concrete commitments for reform and representative governance under the law. 
2. Require security guarantees to ensure that the Syrian Transitional Government establishes and enforces robust security protocols to safeguard churches, monasteries, clergy and Christian neighborhoods. Security protocols would include enhanced policing and cooperation with international non-governmental organizations.
3. Require constitutional protections that enshrine equal citizenship and religious freedom for all components of Syrian society. Any new Syrian constitution must guarantee minority religious components’ right to worship freely, run their own institutions and participate fully in public life. 
4. Urge Syrian Transitional Government initiatives for cultural preservation of the Syrian Christian heritage. Such initiatives would include the restoration and preservation of historically and religiously significant Christian sites (many of which have been damaged or destroyed in the conflict), and the preservation of linguistic heritage. These efforts should include Christian leaders and local communities in both planning and implementation.
5. Deliver humanitarian aid to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure, the establishment of stable governance and the implementation of robust security measures. Vetted non-governmental organizations and religious institutions representing vulnerable communities should also receive direct aid for local humanitarian relief and to support the safe resettlement of displaced and devastated communities.

This approach balances moral obligation with strategic interest, and if implemented properly, will incentivize stable post-conflict order in Syria. 

A Syria without Christians is no longer a distant hypothetical scenario. It is a rapidly approaching reality which the world cannot afford. The Christian presence in Syria is a thread in the broader tapestry of human civilization. If that thread is plucked, the whole tapestry frays. 

World leaders and policymakers must move beyond reactive condemnations and adopt proactive strategies to preserve what remains of Syria’s Christian heritage — recognizing its enduring significance to global civilization. The consequences of indifference would not stop at Syria’s borders. The disappearance of pluralism in the Middle East will fuel continued destabilization in the region. 

As the blood stains dry on the pews of Saint Elias Church, the U.S. and international community must reckon with the price of indifference — and resolve to pursue the moral obligation of civilized nations. 

Richard Ghazal is the executive director of In Defense of Christians, a Washington-based advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of Christianity in the Middle East. He is a retired U.S. Air Force judge advocate and intelligence officer.