As a rule, the foreign desk of The New York Times does high-quality work when covering religious stories that are clearly defined as religion stories, frequently drawing praise here at GetReligion.
However, when an international story is defined in political terms — such as Donald Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish communities in northern Syria — editors at the Times tend to miss the religion “ghosts” (to use a familiar GetReligion term) that haunt this kind of news.
The bottom line: It’s hard to write a religion-free story about news with obvious implications for Turkey, Syria, Russia, the United States, the Islamic State and a complex patchwork of religious minorities. The Times has, however, managed to do just that in a recent story with this headline: “In Syria, Russia Is Pleased to Fill an American Void.”
Included in that complex mix is the ancient Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, based in Damascus. Let me state the obvious here: Yes, part of my interest here is rooted in my own faith, since I converted into the Antiochian church 20-plus years ago. Click here for my 2013 column — “The Evil the church already knows in Syria” — about the plight of the Orthodox Church in a region ruled by monsters of all kinds.
This brings me to this particular Times feature. One does not have to grant a single noble motive to Russian President Vladimir Putin to grasp that secular and religious leaders in Russia do not want to risk the massacre of ancient Orthodox Christian communities in Syria. And there are other religious minorities in the territory invaded by Turkish forces. This is one of the reasons that American evangelicals and others have screamed about Trump’s decision to stab the Kurds in the back.
How can the world’s most powerful newspaper look at this drama and miss the role of religion? Here is the overture:
DOHUK, Iraq — Russia asserted itself in a long-contested part of Syria … after the United States pulled out, giving Moscow a new opportunity to press for Syrian army gains and project itself as a rising power broker in the Middle East.
Russian and Syrian troops drove through a key town where the United States had held sway and picked over abandoned American outposts to announce their presence in the area and deter the Turkish incursion that began last week.
The Russian advance, enabled by President Trump’s decision … to withdraw, may boost Russia’s Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, while blunting the Turkish incursion. It was a telling demonstration of how influence over the eight-year-old conflict in Syria has shifted from the United States to Russia. But in this case, there appeared to be little balance left in the Americans’ favor. …
The abrupt order by Mr. Trump to remove United States military personnel from the area set off days of violence that sent more than 150,000 civilians fleeing, shattered the American partnership with Syria’s Kurds, raised fears about an Islamic State revival and allowed Mr. Assad’s troops, backed by their Russian allies, to sweep up new territory without a fight.
Please understand that I am not saying that concerns about the Orthodox and other religious minorities should dominate this report. After all, the Times team did run a story with this headline the other day: “‘Shame on Him’: Evangelicals Call Out Trump on Syria.”
However, note the familiar emphasis. Is the big religion story here the potential political impact of angry evangelical Protestants on the current occupant of the White House? If that is the case, it’s certainly an interesting clue as to the priorities of editors in that newsroom.
Buried way, way down in that particular story is this short passage:
Churches across Christian traditions — Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant — often share spiritual and personal ties to congregations in the Middle East, praying for their pastors or families by name, or inviting them to speak when they visit the United States. Many church leaders galvanized support in 2014 when ISIS fighters targeted, killed and raped fleeing religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis.
Oh, right. There are ancient Christian communities in Syria linked to Rome and the Orthodox East — the world’s two largest Christian communions. But, wait, 81% of white American evangelicals voted for Trump!
Let’s go back to the Times piece about Syria and Russia. As it should, it summarizes Russian political interests in the region, including strong support for Assad. Then it quotes Aleksandr Shumilin, a Middle East specialist at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, noting that: “What’s happening now is a very complicated knot being untied. … This is an unexpected gift for Putin.”
That’s true. But doesn’t religion play a role in that knot?
Throughout the war, Russia has used means ranging from military force to creative diplomacy to make itself a central player in Syria — at the expense of the United States. In 2015, it dispatched forces to help Mr. Assad by heavily bombing his rebel enemies, turning the overall battle in his favor and away from the opposition supported by the United States. …
Mr. Shumilin, the analyst, said Russia also had found ways to benefit from Western missteps.
“It must be said that all of Russia’s most significant successes in Syria have not been reached as a result of deliberate efforts by Moscow,” he said. “They simply crashed down onto Putin and Moscow as manna from heaven as a result of the peculiar behavior of the Western countries and of Turkey.”
So that is that. I promise you that Christians and others threatened by a Turkish invasion believe that religion is part of this drama.