22 Dead in Damascus Church; Headlines Call It a “Clash”

(Ifeanyi Immanuel Bakwenye – AFP / Getty Images)

The High Points:

• A suicide bombing in a Damascus church killed 22 while media coverage remained minimal.

• Global Christian persecution is rising as mainstream outlets downplay or mislabel these atrocities.

• Advocates call for honest reporting and stronger action to protect threatened faith communities.

The bombing of the Mar Elias Church should have been front-page news everywhere — a suicide attack during evening prayers, 22 Christians murdered, dozens wounded, one of the oldest Christian communities on earth pushed closer to extinction. Instead, it barely registered. The media shrugged it off as just another “clash” or “incident,” the same soft language that erases victims and hides the reality of persecution.

This isn’t just a Christian issue — it’s a human rights catastrophe. Syria’s Christian population has collapsed from over 2 million to around 300,000. The same pattern repeats in Nigeria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and across parts of the Middle East and Africa. Hundreds of millions globally live under violent pressure because of their faith, and yet stories like these make up only 2 percent of mainstream coverage.

If truth matters, then naming persecution honestly matters. Journalism isn’t supposed to varnish suffering — it’s supposed to expose it. And right now, too many voices are failing the people who need them most.

From Western Journal:

On June 22, 2025, a suicide bomber walked into the ancient Greek Orthodox Mar Elias Church in Damascus during evening prayers, detonating an explosive vest and leaving 22 people dead and 63 wounded.

The attack hardly registered in mainstream media. It was treated as yet another tremor in a region long scarred by conflict. A once-vibrant Christian community of more than 2 million, about 10 percent of Syria’s population before 2011, has now dwindled to roughly 300,000, less than 2 percent of Syrians today. The world looks away while one of the oldest Christian populations on earth is ruthlessly erased.

Religious persecution isn’t just a “Christian issue.” It’s a human rights crisis that should pierce the heart of anyone who cares about justice and human dignity.

Across major outlets, reports soften the horror. They speak of “clashes,” “displacement,” or “unrest.”

Only rarely does anyone name this persecution for what it truly is. When a massacre is described as a “skirmish,” or a deliberate campaign of violence as a “conflict,” the victims are robbed of dignity, and truth itself is distorted.

This is not about semantics. It’s about how media framing shapes moral perception — and how, in this moment, Christians and citizen-journalists alike must demand honesty from the storytellers of our age.

Such euphemisms are part of a persistent pattern. Mainstream outlets routinely ignore or misrepresent stories of persecution that matter to anyone who values human rights and freedom.

As the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has documented, Western media repeatedly downplayed the forced displacement of 100,000 Armenian Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh, even as other conflicts commanded urgent coverage and global outrage.

When we accept the media’s narrative that faith is irrelevant, that believers deserve suspicion, and that persecution is just another political story, we surrender the truth and forsake our calling to defend the oppressed.

The wider truth is sobering: global persecution of Christians and other religious minorities is growing, while media coverage remains uneven at best.

A recent analysis found that stories of Christian persecution accounted for only about 2 percent of headlines in mainstream newsrooms.

More than 380 million Christians worldwide live in situations of “high levels of persecution and discrimination.” That’s roughly the entire population of the United States, plus California a second time, all living under serious threat because of their faith.

Think about that: hundreds of millions facing violence, imprisonment, or discrimination, and only a sliver of that reality ever reaches news sites. When the scale of suffering is that vast, and the media spotlight that dim, the story of human rights itself is being rewritten — and truth is losing its voice.

We have seen some hopeful turns.

Last month, NRB joined dozens of top Christian leaders in signing a letter delivered to the President’s desk urging the administration to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, and we are grateful that the President has acted.

Nigeria accounted for nearly 69 percent of all faith-related Christian killings worldwide last year. The administration has sent a clear message that America will not turn a blind eye to religious persecution and will once again stand with those suffering for their faith.

This moment in history presents something unique. Thanks to the unprecedented availability of media platforms, anyone with a story or camera can bypass traditional gatekeepers. The age of top-down editorial control is fading; we now have the tools to shine light into dark places, hold power to account, and give voice to the forgotten.

For those who believe in truth, justice, and the dignity of every human being, this is the time to stand up and speak out.

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