Christian Syria is Staring Ever Deeper into the Abyss

Christianity in Syria is a story of extraordinary resilience in the face of centuries of hostility, but how much more can it take?

Devastated Orthodox Church in Syria, © Goran / Adobe Stock

If you accepted the words of Western leaders over the past week, you would be under the impression that the seizure of power in Damascus, by a man who commands the principal arm of Al-Qaeda in the country, was a triumph we should all be celebrating.

For the Christians of Syria, however, it represents one of the greatest disasters to befall them since they first became a minority in their homeland, in the wake of the catastrophic Roman defeat at the Battle of Ajnadayn in AD 634, which left near all the Levant at the mercy of the Rashidun Caliphate.

Many in the West are largely unaware that over fifteen million Christians currently live in the Middle East. Of the various communities, that of Syria was until recently third only to Egypt and Lebanon. None however have suffered a collapse quite as traumatic as that of Syria. On the outbreak of war in 2011, as many as 1.5 million Syrians, some 10% of the population, were Christian. By 2022, this had plunged to possibly as low as 300,000.

Given that they have faced ruinous civil war masking an international proxy war, conquest by ISIS and the resulting mass executions, aerial bombings by multiple nations and rampant terrorism, one can only admire the resolve of faith of those who have remained. Yet remain they do, for it is all too forgotten in the West just how central Syria was to both the birth and the growth of Christianity.

How did Syria come to be?

Stage image for the Opera ‘Palmira: Regina di Persia’, Anton Radl, by 1852

‘Syria’ is a term that long held a far broader geographical meaning than the now collapsing borders of the Syrian Arab Republic implies. Indeed, in Classical Antiquity, ‘Syria’ frequently denoted the entire Levant, from Anatolia to Egypt. To Pliny the Elder, it went further, referring to all the Fertile Crescent to the Persian Gulf.

Something approaching a clearer definition did not come about until the Seleucid monarchy, a Hellenistic splinter state of the vast empire of Alexander the Great, established its capital at the city of Antioch in the mid 3rd century BC. As the Seleucid Empire in Asia steadily collapsed to internal revolt and Parthian conquest, by the last century BC the rump state was such that the Basileus was frequently referred to as ‘King of Syria’, while the word ‘Syria’ began to emerge as a western geographical distinction from the eastern ‘Assyria’ in Mesopotamia.

The new reality in the Near East was confirmed in 64 BC when Pompey the Great, after having the last Seleucid monarch, Antiochus XIII, murdered, declared Syria to be a Roman province. While the administrative borders of ‘Syria’ shifted under the Empire, notably following its partition into Coele Syria in the north and Syria Phoenice in the South under the Emperor Septimius Severus, the region remained largely stable and prosperous until the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century BC, in which Syria played a central role.

In AD 270, in one of the most dramatic events in Roman history, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the jewel of Syria, conquered almost a third of the entire Roman Empire in a lightning campaign, before her equally rapid defeat by the Emperor Aurelian two years later. Roman authority was restored, but it was a mere stay of execution for the increasingly unstable Empire.

Syria the Cradle of Christendom

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1680

In the midst of all this, however, rather extraordinary things were happening on the ground in Syria. Particularly around the year AD 35, when Saul, a Romanised Jew of Tarsus who had borne witness to the widespread persecution of Christians, experienced perhaps the most famous epiphany in history on the road to Damascus:

³ And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

⁴ And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

⁵ And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

⁶ And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

⁷ And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

⁸ And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.

Acts 9:3-8

Henceforth known not as Saul, but Paul, he would emerge as a prime mover in the evangelisation of the Gentiles. Following his invitation by Barnabus, and their year of work together there, the primary ‘base of operations’ for the holy mission would be Antioch, the first city of Syria itself. Indeed, the glory and prestige of Syria within the history of Christendom is sealed by the words of Acts 11:26, which confirm that it was in Antioch that the followers of Christ were first called ‘Christians’.

From the missions of Saint Paul to the collapse of Roman rule in the Levant and even beyond, Syria would yield many of the foremost thinkers, ascetics and martyrs of early Christianity - Saints John Chrysostom, Simeon Stylites, Cosmas & Damian and John of Damascus to name but five. Let us not forget either that no fewer than six Bishops of Rome hailed from Syria - Popes Anicetus, John V, Sergius I, Sisinnius, Constantine I and finally Gregory III, following whose death in AD 743 there would not be a Pope born outside Europe again until the election of Jorge Maria Bergoglio as Pope Francis in 2013.

The End of Christian Rule in Syria

Illustration of the Battle of Yarmouk, unknown, c. 1320