This episode was recorded on August 22nd, 2025.
"Because in Christendom, all roads lead to Syria”
Host Jamil Khoury—Founder and Director of Polycultural Institute at Chicago’s Silk Road Cultural Center—threads personal history and deep scholarship to map a faith that took root in Damascus and Antioch and never stopped shaping the world. From St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus to the rich mosaic of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Eastern and Roman Catholic, Protestant, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Chaldean, Greek, and Syriac traditions, Syria’s churches emerge as both ancient wellspring and modern bellwether.
Khoury speaks passionately about persecution, the dhimmi legacy, and the staggering post-2011 exodus of Syrian Christians. He refuses eulogies. Instead, he argues for equal citizenship, constitutional guarantees, and a coalition of Christian and Muslim allies to stabilize communities and open pathways for return migration—permanent or periodic. The vision is unapologetically ambitious: a renaissance of Christians of the East that strengthens Syria’s pluralism, benefits all Syrians, and recommits the region to genuine coexistence. No euphemisms, no nostalgia—just a clear case for renewal, responsibility, and a Christian faith that still breathes in Arabic.
Along the way, Khoury draws hard lessons from the near-total exile of Syrian Jewry, insisting that Syria’s future must welcome back the very communities that made its culture cosmopolitan. If you care about heritage, human dignity, and the rebuilding of a country’s moral architecture, start here.
Polycultural Institute is the Think-and-Create Tank of Chicago’s Silk Road Cultural Center. We generate art and ideas that promote polyculturalism and connect people, cultures, and communities.
Polyculturalism is the theory that cultures continuously evolve and transform through dynamic interchange. It assumes that cultures are fluid and flexible, not static and fixed, and that as cultures interact, they redefine themselves.
Silk Road Cultural Center is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary arts organization rooted in the modern communities of the historic Silk Roads, including our diaspora communities. We embrace the arts as a catalyst for connecting people, places, histories, and futures.
