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In church with my ancestors: The changing shape of religious memory in the Republic of Armenia and the North American diaspora

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In church with my ancestors: The changing shape of religious memory in the Republic of Armenia and the North American diaspora

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Content IN CHURCH WITH MY ANCESTORS:
THE CHANGING SHAPE OF RELIGIOUS MEMORY IN THE REPUBLIC
OF ARMENIA AND THE NORTH AMERICAN DIASPORA
by
Timothy Norman Fisher
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIOLOGY)
August 2005
Copyright 2005 Timothy Norman Fisher
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UMI Number: 3196805
Copyright 2005 by
Fisher, Timothy Norman
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DEDICATION
For their love and support, I dedicate this to my parents.
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iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study would not have been possible without the help of many
individuals. Jon Miller, Donald Miller, and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo from
the Department of Sociology provided guidance, helpful criticism, and support
at all stages of the project. And many of their suggestions have been
incorporated into this work. I am also grateful to the 120 people who agreed to
be interviewed and who shared their stories with me. They exemplified a level
of generosity and openness that is admirable and that made the research truly
enjoyable. A special thank you is extended to David and Ani Bogosian and
Father Vazken Movsesian who proved to be valuable resources and who
endured my questions on multiple occasions.
I would also like to thank the various institutions, agencies, and
programs that offered me financial support. Doctoral fellowships from the
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the
Graduate School at the University of Southern California enabled me to focus
more time on the writing process. Research grants from the Center for
Religion and Civic Culture and the Department of Sociology provided funds
for equipment, travel, and transcription.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Abstract
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Engaging memory among Apostolics:
Revealing the Divine Liturgy, strengthening commitments
Chapter Three
From reformers to conservatives:
Situating Armenians in a new lineage of believers
Chapter Four
Finding a new religious memory:
The process of leaving the Armenian Church
Chapter Five
Faith-based NGOs
and the rebuilding of religious memory in post-Soviet Armenia
Chapter Six
Conclusion:
Competition, lineage, and the tensions shaping ethno-religious memory
Bibliography
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V
ABSTRACT
Focusing on the Armenian community in the United States, Canada,
and the Republic of Armenia, this project examines how religious memories
survive under duress and are shaped into new forms. The resilience of the
Armenian community in the face of repeated pressure to fragment and dissolve
make it a particularly good case for examining how religious memories persist
and are reproduced by subsequent generations. O f primary interest are the
various forces that shape and constrain Armenian religious memories. Three
forces in particular prove most prominent: religious competition, states of
tension, and the experience of diaspora.
The study is based on 120 semi-structured interviews conducted with
Armenians in California, Ontario, and the Republic of Armenia. One of this
study’s unique elements is its comparative angle that explores two major
religious traditions - Apostolic and Evangelical - within the same ethnic
group. Four case studies are at the center of the analysis. In the first case, the
Apostolic Church in the United States and Canada is charged with the task of
perpetuating ethno-religious memories on behalf of the larger community that
remains, for the most part, disengaged. The second case reveals that a new
generation of Armenian evangelicals, interacting with the wider American
evangelical movement, are placing themselves within a new “conservative”
lineage. The third case explores the experiences of Armenians who have left
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the ethnic church to join mainstream, American evangelical churches. In the
process of leaving, ethnicity becomes secularized and subjugated to religious
pursuits. Finally, the fourth case examines the work of faith-based NGOs in
the Republic of Armenia and finds that evangelical and apostolic groups are
often collaborating to reinvigorate Armenians’ Christian faith with the hope of
creating a moral foundation that will spur economic development. Each case
illustrates the complex ways that religion interacts with ethnicity and
nationalism, reinforcing, reshaping, and dissolving the contours of Armenian-
ness.
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
The Armenian community is truly exceptional. Over the past 150
years, they have been subject to repeated assaults, dispersed around the globe,
and hosted by a number o f different nations, yet they have somehow
maintained a sense of communal memory. As a result, this fractured
community provides an excellent testing ground for examining how ethnic and
religious memories survive. The work presented in the pages of this book is
thus more than just another case study of an ethnic community. It is able to
illuminate the ways in which ethnic, religious, and ethno-religious memories
survive under duress and are embraced and reproduced by subsequent
generations.
Central to survival is a sense of lineage. Ethnic and religious memories
persist only to the extent that they are transmitted from one generation to the
next. Memories, however, are never transmitted in their entirety, and they are
never replicated with exact precision. Rather, each generation recreates ethnic
and religious memories in light of the circumstances they face. Armenians in
North America, for instance, are becoming embedded within their Canadian
and American contexts; they are buying homes in the suburbs of Toronto and
Los Angeles and are attending the University of Toronto and UCLA. Yet their
connections with the Republic of Armenia as well as other diasporic regions
pull them away from a complete sense of inclusion in North America, uniting
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them with a global Armenian communion. O f special concern to this study are
the various tensions that pull the Armenian community in multiple, often
competing, directions, and how these tensions help to shape ethnic and
religious memories in the process.
While the recreation of memory is central to the survival of all ethnic
and religious communities, it is particularly important for Armenians because
their sense of ethnic cohesion is largely defined in reference to historical
events and actors. In particular, the genocide of 1915 reminds Armenians that
their ancestors faced annihilation and that Armenians today, as survivors, have
a responsibility to keep and perpetuate the traditions that were nearly lost. The
problem is that historical events and actors are not immediately apparent.
They must be commemorated to remind Armenians about their significance,
bolstering ethnic cohesion. Invoking memory, therefore, is important to the
survival of Armenian institutions, including those that are religious.
Although historical narratives of loss continue to undergird Armenian
identity and community, life in the 21st century provides Armenians with new
methods of constructing ethnic and religious memories. This study focuses on
how historical and contemporary conflicts and tensions are used to shape the
ethnic, religious, and ethno-religious memories of Armenians living in the
North American diaspora and the Republic of Armenia. It also, however,
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looks at how the boundaries of the ethno-religious community are blurred,
crossed, and even dissolved.
This work confronts two of the major theoretical debates that have
fueled sociological inquiry in the past twenty years. The first debate centers on
the resilience of religion in modem societies. Most scholars in the sociology
of religion now consider the secularization theory to be anachronistic. The
continuing vitality of belief and practice in the United States, the persistence of
religious belief in Western Europe and Canada, and the explosion of
Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa are commonly cited as reasons to
dismiss the notion that religion is necessarily headed down a path toward
insignificance (Warner, 1993; Davie, 2000; Bibby, 2002; Jenkins, 2002). The
second debate involves the persistence of ethnic identities for those who
migrate to Western nations, particularly the United States and Canada. Long-
held assumptions about the inevitable assimilation of immigrants to North
America have given heed to the variety of ways in which ethnic identity is
created and sustained. There is a certain affinity between these two debates.
Both are concerned with the recreation, maintenance, and transmission of a
community’s memory. Scholars differ, however, in portraying the various
solvents that erode ethnic and religious memories.
For Armenians living in the North American diaspora and the Republic
of Armenia, concerns over the survival of ethnic and religious memories
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coalesce and interact in a variety of ways. Religion is often appropriated to
advance projects concerned with ethnic solidarity in the diaspora and economic
prosperity in the Republic of Armenia. Religion, in these cases, is clearly not
static, but is dynamic and creative, helping to strengthen Armenian
communities. In some instances, however, religion subverts ethnic
connections. The adoption of new, North American religious memories leads
some to abandon the ethnic church in favor of non-Armenian religious
communities. Here, religious memory acts as a mechanism through which
Armenians become integrated into a new “culture free” religious identity.
This study reveals the many ways in which Armenians construct and
appropriate religious memory for different, and sometimes competing,
projects. As will be evident in the four case studies presented in this work,
religious memory among Armenians is constructed in response to a series of
tensions: between a rootedness in North America and the multi-locality of
diaspora consciousness, between fragmentation and ethnic solidarity, between
the preservation of tradition and the embrace of innovation, and between the
constraints of social structure and the dynamism of agency. In outlining these
tensions, I do not mean to suggest that these are mutually exclusive,
necessarily binary, or that this is an exhaustive list of the forces involved in the
construction of religious memory among Armenians. Rather, these various
tensions interact with each other in complex ways. Nevertheless, these
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tensions are among the primary forces shaping the construction of religious
memory in the case studies presented in this work.
Armenians and the problem of memory
The Armenian case provides an ideal opportunity to explore issues
surrounding the persistence of religious and ethnic memory. First, its
relatively small size makes it a good site for conducting a more comprehensive
analysis of a single ethnic group. Second, it features two major religious
traditions: apostolic and evangelical. The strong institutional presence of these
two traditions in the Republic of Armenia and the diaspora provides the
opportunity for a comparative analysis that explores the ways in which
different religious memories are constructed and appropriated within a single
ethnic community. Third, and most important, the long history of repeated
traumas experienced by Armenians make it an inherently interesting case for
exploring the resilience, recreation, and loss of ethnic and religious memories.
Armenians have existed as an ethnic community for over two thousand
years. As the first nation to adopt Christianity in 30ICE, their chain of
religious belief has many links, reaching deep into history. Many events
throughout their long history, however, have challenged the persistence of their
national and religious memories. The past century and a half, in particular, has
produced events that have been especially challenging. The genocide that
occurred in the first few decades of the twentieth century displaced all but fifty
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6
thousand Armenians from their historic lands and resulted in the dispersion of
Armenians throughout the world; the United States, France, Lebanon, Iran,
Greece, Canada, Australia, and Argentina were among the eventual
destinations. Some of these regions, in turn, experienced their own conflicts,
leading Armenians to migrate again. The civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s,
for instance, led Armenians to move to the United States. The rise of the
conservative Mullah to power in Iran in 1979 precipitated the migration of
Armenians from Iran to Los Angeles. As a result of repeated migrations,
Armenians have been aptly described as “serial” diasporans (Safran, 2004).
The Soviet annexation of historic Armenian lands in 1920 provided a
further set of challenges for the Armenians who remained in the Caucasus
region. The various religious restrictions that accompanied Soviet control -
including the closing of churches and promotion of scientific atheism - denied
Armenians the ability to celebrate and transmit many aspects of religious
memory, most notably public elements.
Considering their history of foreign control, persecution, genocide,
displacement, and dispersion, the persistence of a distinct Armenian culture
and identity in the Republic of Armenia and the various diasporic regions is
remarkable, perplexing, and an inherently fascinating topic for scholarly
inquiry. Why does a sense of “being Armenian” continue to exist? What
keeps the diaspora together? In the twenty-first century, there are at least three
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different issues around which the Armenian community seems to be sustained:
the ongoing denial of the genocide by its perpetrators, the fledgling Republic
of Armenia, and the recreation of religious memory. This study focuses
primarily on the third issue, but the other two are always in the foreground and
are, therefore, worthy of a brief discussion.
Throughout this project, I asked Armenians to describe what it means
to be Armenian and several themes emerged repeatedly. Respondents often
mentioned that Armenians are an ancient people, with a unique history and
culture. It was noted that they were the first nation to adopt Christianity and
were victims of repeated assaults, including genocide. Many added that
Armenians are characterized by courage, tenacity, and are, generally,
survivors. An evangelical pastor from Los Angeles noted: “There’s a crazy
tenacity to the race... I don’t know if anybody has ever noticed it, but it has
popped-up in our history unlike any other histories. You know, minuets in
history books, examples of these guys who are incredibly outnumbered,
incredibly lacking in equipment. The situation is hopeless and they refuse to
give up, even if they know they’re going to die. So it’s bred into them, one
genocide after another.”
References to historical threats help to reinforce ethnic identity in the
diaspora today by reminding Armenians that their traditions are precarious. A
twenty-two year old apostolic Armenian noted: “Following the genocide, there
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was a real risk that our culture was going to die, you know? And so with a real
fervor it was a matter of holding onto the culture and keeping it alive.” Many
Armenians living in North America, as descendents of those who survived the
genocide, believe that they are charged with the responsibility of keeping the
nation’s traditions alive. And they liken the loss of ethnic identity among
some Armenians in North America to a new form of white genocide, whereby
Armenian traditions are being destroyed, and their fellow ethnics are becoming
assimilated into white North American culture.
The church both historically and today is tied up with the genocide in
complex ways, cementing notions of faith, trauma, and ethnicity. Some
respondents recalled stories of their ancestors who were given the chance to
convert to Islam and avoid deportation from their historic lands, but who chose
to remain committed to their ancestors’ Christian traditions. One evangelical
from Glendale, California recalled: “My father’s grandfather had the choice to
convert and he refused and he knew that his whole family was being wiped
out. Did he end up being killed? Oh, yeah. Everybody in his family got
wiped out except for my grandmother.” Others noted that clergy were among
the first victims of the genocide; they were rounded up, deported, and killed as
part of the Turks’ efforts to eliminate any leaders capable of mobilizing the
Armenian community in opposition to the pogroms. Some believe that the
church, today, is still recovering from the loss of leaders that occurred through
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the genocide. Such stories remind Armenians of the commitment their
ancestors expressed toward their nation’s historic religious traditions, and
impress upon today’s generations the need to retain the traditions as a way of
honoring ancestors.
The church plays a central role in the official commemoration of the
genocide. On April 24th, 2004 Robert Kocharian, the President of Armenia,
and the Catholicos stood together at the genocide memorial overlooking
Yerevan while a priest said a prayer. On the same day, thousands of
Armenians from around Los Angeles gathered in a section of East Hollywood
known as “Little Armenia” to march through the streets in a ritual of
commemoration and protest. Priests led the procession and addressed the
crowd afterwards. Ceremonies commemorating the genocide provide an
opportunity for priests to reinforce their role as carriers of the community’s
religious and ethnic memories.
While the church plays a key role in commemorating the genocide, the
genocide, in turn, reminds Armenians about the precarious nature of their
community, and helps to reinforce ties to the ethnic church. But, some
Armenians question whether or not their community should continue to be
defined in reference to the genocide. One young, Canadian-born Armenian
explains:
We’ve survived [the genocide] and it would be a shame for us to lose
our traditions and cultures because if we maintained it after something
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as horrible as that, then we should be able to maintain it now. But at
the same tim e... how much can you go on and keep reflecting back on
one event and say okay... I’m going to talk Armenian to my friends
because we were almost killed as a people. Okay, give me a break.
I’m a practical person and, um, I think it does play a role in the
preservation of our culture, and that will always be there. But, with
time everything changes and maybe the reason why we want to
preserve our culture will be some other reason in the future, like the
fact that we’re losing our culture now, the way we are, who knows?
This young Canadian-Armenian notes that memories of the genocide bolster
the ethnic community in the North American diaspora, but he also recognizes
that the Armenian community may be preserved and shaped by other forces in
the future.
Like the ongoing denial of the genocide, the newly independent and
struggling nation of Armenia has mobilized members of the diaspora for a
common cause. Not only has it united a diverse array of Armenians from
various regions of North America, but it has also brought together members
from various Armenian communities around the world. Several events, in
particular, have brought the plight of the nation to the attention of the diaspora;
the devastating earthquake in 1988 mobilized Armenians to help with relief
efforts and reconstruction; the “dark years” immediately following the nation’s
independence - where food, electricity, and employment were scarce -
similarly served as a catalyst that mobilized the Armenian diaspora to help
their fellow-ethnics; and, today, the continuing presence of widespread poverty
provides ongoing projects requiring the diaspora’s assistance. For the
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foreseeable future, the Republic of Armenia will likely continue to command
the attention of Armenians that live outside its borders, helping to unite and
mobilize the global diaspora.
Religious memory also serves to strengthen the diaspora.
Institutionalized and ritualized, religious memories create opportunities for
Armenians to gather, reinforce ethnicity, and transmit ethno-religious elements
to future generations. For most Armenians, religion is not principally a
normative voice that guides their behavior; in this respect, the apostolic
tradition is a relatively weak religion when compared to more demanding
forms of Christianity, like Evangelicalism or Mormonism. But, surrounded by
a socio-cultural environment teeming with “identity,” the Apostolic Church
provides a mechanism through which Armenians can identify who they are
with respect to the myriad of other identities in the wider culture. It enables
Armenians to develop and maintain a sense of distinctiveness. They are
“Armenian Apostolic,” not Presbyterian, Methodist, or Southern Baptist.
Religion, then, provides both a pretext to congregate - bolstering the ethnic
community - and a way for individuals to create their own sense of “identity,”
a requirement for life in the diversity of North America.
The three different issues that bolster the Armenian community
coalesce in a number of interesting cases. As already mentioned, the genocide
is a subtext of concern over the persistence of churches in the diaspora;
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declining church involvement is often cast as a second, white genocide, and
religious leaders play a prominent role in official ceremonies commemorating
the genocide. For the Republic of Armenia, churches and other faith-based
organizations help to mobilize the diaspora to support relief and development
projects in Armenia, and they also provide the organizational infrastructure
through which money, goods, and other resources flow. In the final case study
presented in this work, faith-based organizations are shown to be among the
most active players in the reconstruction of Armenia. Through the church and
other faith-based mechanisms, Armenians in the diaspora are renewing their
cultural connection in both a physical and symbolic sense by giving money,
goods, and time to help the Republic of Armenia. By donating money and
goods, Armenians in the diaspora are making a personal sacrifice to help the
Republic and are, in the process, renewing their sense of connection to their
ancestral homeland.
Despite the resilience of many elements of Armenian ethnicity, a sense
of diaspora among North American Armenians is, arguably, precarious. In its
classic definition, diaspora involves the experience of exile and a hope for
eventual return. James Clifford (1994) notes that diasporas “subvert” the
nation-state by maintaining attachments that lie beyond its borders. More than
just a link with a homeland, diasporic connections span multiple locations,
bridging the local and the global. These connections are expressed not only
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through institutional networks, but also through a diaspora consciousness,
where the individual lives with an “awareness” of multi-locality (Vertovec,
1999). Unlike immigrants, diasporans - maintaining multi-locality - do not
have a sense of “rootedness in the land” and are not prone to assimilate into the
host culture. Neither, however, are they “exclusively nationalistic”; their
communities undergo both resistance and accommodation to the surrounding
socio-cultural environment (Clifford, 1994).
An awareness of multi-locality (or a diaspora consciousness) was
evident in the conversations I had with Armenians during the course o f this
project; they expressed a strong sense of connection to Armenians in the
various diasporic regions and the Republic of Armenia. But, many, if not most,
American-Armenians have developed a sense of rootedness to American soil
(Canadian-Armenians were more ambivalent) and are not looking for an
eventual return. This is particularly striking since the interviews in this study
were conducted among leaders in Armenian organizations, individuals that
would seem most likely interested in an eventual return. Some American-born
youth were even ambivalent about visiting the historic homeland of their
ancestors. When asked if she would like to visit the Republic of Armenia, a
young fifth generation Armenian woman from Los Angeles remarked: “If
someone offered me a free trip, I would go. I say that because I have my own
set of goals financially. I want to buy a house in Carmel and that comes before
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going to Armenia.” The tension between “multi-locality” and a rootedness in
North America is among the principle dynamics shaping religious memory
among Armenians in the diaspora.
Like a glass bowl dropped on a concrete floor, the Armenian
community has been shattered and the pieces have scattered in all directions.
Some have landed in obvious spots, but others have traveled to inconspicuous
locations where one would not expect to find them. As a fractured people,
Armenians are a fascinating case in which to explore issues of ethnic and
religious memory. They are constructing religious memory in response to the
events of a historical narrative. Displaced and dispersed, they are now
coalescing in North America, particularly in Los Angeles. Here, they are being
influenced by the tension between rootedness and multi-locality. Their
financial and political success in North America, a result of their successful
integration, has provided them with opportunities to respond to the needs of the
fledgling Republic of Armenia, and these projects oriented toward their
ancestral homeland mobilize the community. Dispersed from their homeland,
coalesced in California, Armenians are now finding their way - at least
symbolically - back to the Republic of Armenia, and through this whole
process religion plays a pivotal role. The study presented here includes four
case studies. The first three explore the variety of ways in which religious
memory is being reshaped and transgressed in the North American diaspora.
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The fourth case study examines the ways in which religious memory is being
reconstructed in the Republic of Armenia.
A brief overview of previous research
Writing in the mid 1950s amidst a social context where immigration
was primarily from Europe, Will Herberg (1960) explored the ways in which
immigrants’ ethnic and religious identities were reshaped on American soil.
Whereas in their country of origin identities were formed primarily on the
basis of village or provincial life, in the United States the boundaries of
inclusion were expanded to include all others from the same nation of origin
and/or those who spoke the same language. Herberg referred to this new,
redefined community as the “ethnic group.” And following the development of
the ethnic group came the ethnic church: “the church that transcended “old
country” particularisms and grouped believers according to the newly ethnic
(linguistic, cultural, “national”) lines” (Herberg, 1960, p. 27). Churches and
synagogues were central to community life in the country of origin, leading
immigrants to construct anew houses of worship on American soil. The
establishment of churches, however, was not without its problems. The church
that the immigrants wanted to establish was the village church “with all its
ways; above all, with the old village customs and dialect” and the new ethnic
church was much more broadly based along national or language lines
(Herberg, 1960, p. 23). What is more, Catholic immigrants were often
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assigned to already-established parishes comprised of people with various
national or linguistic origins.
Ethnically based religious communities, according to Herberg, were
temporary institutions. Attended mainly by the first generation, ethnic
churches were of declining interest to the second and third generations. The
American-bom children of immigrants maintained interest and often
participated in religious communities, but not in the ethnic church. For the
American-born children of immigrants, “ethnic existence was full of
perplexities and conflicts” because they saw their ethnic identity as a hindrance
to occupational advancement and upward mobility (Herberg, 1960, p. 28). By
the third generation, ethnic ties were abandoned: “The old-line ethnic group,
with its foreign language and culture, was not for them; they were Americans”
(Herberg, 1960, p. 44). Though they discarded the ethnicity of their parents
and grandparents, the third generation did not abandon their religion. For, with
some modifications, the religion of the ethnic group “was accorded a place in
the American scheme of things that made it at once both genuinely American
and a familiar principle of group identification” (Herberg, 1960, p. 44).
Religious association became the primary basis of self-identification and group
formation for the third generation. Since religious identities were given a
sense of legitimacy over and above that accorded to ethnicity, Herberg
proposed that immigrants and their offspring assimilated into American society
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according to a triple “transmuting” pot. Within one of three religious traditions
- Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, the immigrant and following generations
became transformed into an idealized, Anglo-Saxon model. Here, Herberg
distanced himself from the concept of the “melting pot.” Immigrant culture, in
his view, did not become mixed with the already-present aspects of American
culture. Rather, “transmuting” was a process where the immigrant and
subsequent generations lost former national allegiances, adopted the English
language, and no longer engaged in cultural elements inconsistent with the
dominant, Anglo-Saxon American culture.
In the time in which he was writing, Herberg displayed no awareness of
the ways in which race was influencing the formation of America’s religious
communities, overestimating the extent to which the three religious
communities - Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish - were “transmuting.”
Throughout American history and continuing to the present-day, Protestantism
in the United States has been racially divided, most notably between African-
American and Euro-American churches (Emerson & Smith, 2000). While
European immigrants were intermarrying and mixing in religious institutions,
African Americans were segregated and excluded from participation in white
institutions. What is more, some Christian groups - such as the Dutch
Calvinists and Eastern Orthodox - maintained their own distinct institutions,
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theology, and ritual, never becoming reshaped in the transmuting pot (Eck,
2001).
Today, the “transmuting pot” framework used to explain the integration
of European immigrants into mainstream American society seems more than
inadequate; it’s the inverse o f social reality. Several scholars suggest that the
United States is characterized by a new era of religious pluralism (Eck, 2001;
Machacek, 2003). In Cities on a Hill, France FitzGerald (1986) describes the
centrifugal forces that characterize the present-day religious climate. These
forces spin people out into the American landscape to create new, voluntary
religious communities on the basis of a variety of different identities
(FitzGerald, 1986). The conception of centrifugal forces seems to stand in
direct opposition to the image of the transmuting pot. Whereas the latter
describes a process wherein people are reshaped into a singular mould on the
basis of their religious identity, the former argues that individuals are spun out
into American society to create and join religious communities on the basis of
self-selected points of interest. Transmuting creates homogeneity, while
centrifugal forces result in potentially limitless forms of religious community.
In Remaking the American Mainstream, Richard Alba and Victor Nee
(2003) consider how immigrants and their children undergo processes of
assimilation, whereby ethnic distinctions attenuate. Distancing their work
from earlier conceptions of the term, Alba and Nee argue that assimilation is
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neither universal nor inevitable; it takes place at varying rates within and
across different ethnic and racial groups. Moreover, there is no single causal
mechanism. Rather, ethnicity attenuates and reshapes through multiple
mechanisms, which fall into two broad categories. First, there are “proximate”
mechanisms; these involve the action of individuals and social networks.
Migrants who arrive with substantial human capital, for instance, may choose
to adapt to the wider society as a means of achieving a higher socio-economic
status. Second, there are also “distal” mechanisms, which are deeper and
“embedded in large structures such as the institutional arrangements of the
state, firm, and labor market” (Alba & Nee, 2003, p. 38). Widespread adoption
of laws promoting equal rights represents a distal mechanism that, in principle,
minimizes the potential for any group to be restricted from full participation in
societal institutions. Key to Alba and Nee’s concept of assimilation is the
notion that individuals’ choices are context-bound, shaped by cultural beliefs
as well as the constraints imposed by institutional contexts. Individuals with
extensive human capital who face minimal constraints by institutional
structures are much more capable of undergoing processes of assimilation.
Conversely, those with minimal human capital and who face discrimination,
blocking social mobility, tend to become segregated and rely upon collectivist
strategies to advance economically. Individual action (proximate mechanism)
and institutional constraints (distal mechanism) are, therefore, linked and
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interact with one another, determining, in part, the extent to which members of
an ethnic community undergo processes of assimilation.
Racial structures are some of the principle constraints that newcomers
face in the United States. To the extent that some mixing or “transmuting”
takes place among immigrants today, it happens within crudely conceived
racial categories and often to the protest of immigrants themselves; Koreans
and Chinese are among the groups placed within a pan-Asian ethnic
community (Jeung, 2002), overlooking the many cultural differences between
them. Immigrants from the West Indies are situated within the African-
American community and given a “black identity,” despite the fact that they
possess their own unique sense of culture and history (Waters, 1999). And
Armenians are largely considered white, and are able to integrate into
predominantly white churches without experiencing much prejudice or
discrimination, as will be discussed further in chapter four.
For three decades following the publication of Herberg’s seminal work,
very little attention has been paid to the role of religion in the life of the
immigrant. The absence of scholarly attention to this area can be explained, in
part, by the widespread acceptance of the secularization thesis among social
scientists; for, in the past thirty years, the secularization thesis has been viewed
by scholars as both a compelling theory and a historical fact. Immigration
scholars, writing in a scholarly context that viewed religion as declining, seem
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21
to have ignored the variety of ways that religion remains salient for those who
move across borders (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000).
The edited volume Gatherings in Diaspora (Warner & Wittner, 1998)
was the first major work in forty years focused on the intersection of religion
and immigration in the United States. Since the book’s publication, The Pew
Charitable Trusts has established research projects at major centers of
migration around the U.S.; while each project has its own focus -
geographically as well as thematically, all are primarily concerned with the
religious experiences of migrants and their children. Thus far, the only study
published from the Pew research is based on immigrant religious communities
in Houston, Texas; Religion and the New Immigrants chronicles the
experiences of several different immigrant groups who have made the “Lone
Star” state their new home. The Texas-based study provides an excellent
overview of the variety of ways in which religion and religious communities
are important for the lives of new immigrants. In the process, however, the
study leans heavily toward a functionalist interpretation of religious
phenomena; focusing, for instance, on the ways in which immigrant churches
help provide social services and a place for the celebration and transmission of
ethnicity (Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000).
With the exception of Anny Bakalian’s (1992) work centered on the
east coast, the experiences of Armenians living in the United States have
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22
received little scholarly attention. In the mid 1980s, Bakalian conducted a
survey of Armenians in New York and New Jersey to examine the extent to
which Armenians in the United States were undergoing processes of assimilation.
Bakalian found that while foreign-born Armenians exhibited a “traditional”
Armenianness, American-born Armenians adopted a symbolic ethnicity. Those
who embrace a traditional Armenianness view their ethnicity as an ascribed
characteristic; being Armenian is expressed behaviorally by speaking the
language and immersion in the ethnic subculture. While traditional
Armenianness is taken for granted, those who exhibit symbolic Armenianness
treat their ethnic identity as a choice. The latter Armenians have pride in their
ethnicity, but limit their involvement in and expression of their ethnic identity to
their leisure time; ethnic attachments are a matter of convenience. Symbolic
Armenians are most often the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the
immigrant generation. Armenians are likely to adopt a symbolic ethnicity as a
result of several factors: generational distance from foreign-born ancestors, non
involvement with an Armenian church, a lack of interest in Armenian politics,
having a parent who is non-Armenian, and having higher education (Bakalian,
1992).
Bakalian developed an “ideal typology” of the components of symbolic
Armenianness. First of all, symbolic Armenianness is expressed on the
“sidestream;” it is something that takes place in one’s leisure time. Second,
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symbolic Armenianness tends to manifest itself in affect rather than action,
providing “comfort, warmth, belongingness, roots” (Bakalian, 1992, pp. 437-
438). Third, when it does manifest itself in institutional forms, symbolic
Armenianness develops “knowledge banks” and volunteer associations.
Knowledge banks are ways in which Armenianness is preserved for future
generations; examples of this include the endowment of a position in ethnic
studies at a university or the creation of an exhibit at a museum. Voluntary
associations combine professional or recreational interests with the celebration of
ethnicity. Fourth, those who embrace symbolic ethnicity view themselves on a
quest for Armenianness, a search for community and meaningfulness. For some,
this quest leads them to pursue a greater sense of attachment to the Armenian
Apostolic Church. For others, it brings them to a deeper understanding of
Armenian history and language. Fifth, the most common method o f participation
in the ethnic community is through making financial contributions to Armenian
institutions. Sixth, and finally, symbolic Armenianness is celebrated through the
family unit. Rites of passage, including baptisms and weddings, as well as
holidays, like Christmas and Easter, provide opportunities to recount myth and
serve ethnic food (Bakalian, 1992).
Bakalian suggests that her findings are generalizable to the U.S.
population, even though her research was conducted exclusively among east
coast Armenians. According to the 1980 census, there were 25,300 individuals of
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Armenian ancestry living in New York and New Jersey: 15,000 (60%) were
American-born and 10,300 (40%) were foreign-born. In contrast, the state of
California boasted 80,800 Armenians, including 44,800 foreign-bom (55%). By
1990, the percent foreign bom between the two regions had diverged even more.
New York and New Jersey, combined, had 30,965 individuals of Armenian
ancestry, maintaining a foreign-bom population of 40%. California, in contrast,
had experienced a large influx of individuals of Armenian ancestry throughout
the previous decade. In 1990, California was home to 145,275 Armenians,
including 92,534 (64%) foreign-bom. In both the 1980 and 1990 census,
California had a much larger number of Armenians when compared to New York
and New Jersey. Moreover, California had a much larger proportion of foreign-
bom Armenians. By 2000, California’s Armenian population displayed, again,
much larger growth than the northeastern states. The 2000 census indicated that
there were 204,919 Armenians in California and 70,926 in Massachusetts, New
York, and New Jersey combined. Sixty-four percent of California’s Armenian
population was foreign-bom in 2000, while 30% were foreign-bom in the
northeastern states. It is widely held that, when compared to their American-born
ethnics, immigrants exhibit a greater number of ethnic traits. Whereas American-
born ethnics tend to speak English, exhibit ethnicity “symbolically,” and only
participate in ethnic activities when it is convenient, immigrants often prefer
speaking in their native language and live out their ethnicity in most aspects of
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25
their daily life. If Bakalian’s research included west coast Armenians, the results
might have been much different. The effects of a larger community of foreign-
bom Armenians in California would likely yield a higher proportion of ethnic
attachments.
The study presented here addresses the dearth of scholarship on religion
and immigration and focuses on an ethnic community that has received virtually
no scholarly attention. Rather than being concerned with what religion does for
the immigrant, the focus here is on the ways in which religious traditions are
changing in response to new socio-cultural environments. Unique to this study is
a comparison of two different religious traditions - apostolic and evangelical -
within the same ethnic community. These traditions are not only going through
different metamorphoses, they are also interacting in both the North American
diaspora and the Republic of Armenia. The following section will outline the
theoretical framework employed to understand the variety of ways in which
Armenian religious traditions are undergoing change.
Changing forms of religious memory
A focus on “religious economies” has preoccupied the sociology of
religion in the United States over the past decade. Developed to address the
inadequacies of long-held notions of secularization, the religious economies
perspective uses a market analogy to understand the vitality of religion within
a given societal context. Originally, this perspective was developed by Roger
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Finke and Rodney Stark to account for the abnormally high rate o f religious
adherence within the United States as compared with other Western nations,
but it has also been used to decipher religious patterns in non-Westem regions
(Pankhurst, 1998; Stark & Finke, 2000; Froese, 2004).
In essence, the religious economies perspective is concerned with the
extent of religious regulation in a given society. In an environment of
regulation where one particular religious community enjoys a monopoly,
religious participation among members of society is predicted to be low. The
monopolistic group, enjoying special privileges granted by the state, does not
have to work aggressively to gain adherents; its membership is simply taken
for granted. In contrast, a truly unregulated religious market provides no
favors for any particular religious community. In such an environment,
religious groups must compete with each other for members and they must
continue to exert effort in maintaining their members’ allegiance to the group.
In sum, an unregulated religious market allows for greater competition; greater
competition produces more available choices and more aggressive religious
suppliers; and higher religious participation is the result (Stark & Finke, 2000).
Principally concerned with the extent of deregulation in a given societal
context, the religious economies perspective centers its analysis within
established political boundaries; most frequently, this means that religion
thrives or declines within the borders of the nation-state. However, the
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proliferation of transnational religious practices belies an analysis of religion
that is principally concerned with the fate of religion within particular political
boundaries. To be fair, significant religious differences continue to exist
between nations and such national comparisons provide interesting and
important analyses (Davie, 2000), but the extent to which such differences will
prevail indefinitely - in the face of growing transnational fields - is
questionable. What is more, focusing narrowly on national religious climates
can potentially result in the neglect of significant transnational religious
influences.
The Armenian case reveals yet another limitation of the religious
economies model. In the United States and Canada, the Armenian Apostolic
Church maintains a monopoly over its members in the midst of an otherwise
pluralistic environment. As will be noted in chapter four, non-apostolic
religious organizations (whether they be Armenian, multi-ethnic, or of another
ethnicity altogether) have made little progress in attracting apostolic
Armenians. This suggests that official deregulation is impotent when historical
and cultural forces cement the bonds between ethnos and religion. Granted,
Stark and Finke argue that the process from deregulation to religious
competition takes a substantial amount of time. And it may be the case that,
following a few generations of American-born, Armenian apostolics will begin
to experiment in new religious communities and will cease to be almost
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exclusively apostolic. However, given the substantial discussion about the
new era of religious pluralism that the United States reportedly enjoys (Eck,
2001; Machacek, 2003), the notion that Armenian apostolics are headed down
an inevitable path toward assimilation into different and varied forms of belief
and practice is questionable, at the very least, and potentially untenable.
The religious economies perspective also seems inadequate at capturing
religious vitality in the nation of Armenia. Indeed, applying the perspective to
a non-Western region unveils its inherently Western orientation. Scholars who
employ the religious economies perspective tend to measure the vitality of
religion through quantifiable dimensions of religious experience, such as
church membership, affiliation, or attendance. Religion is, consequently,
measured narrowly by focusing on religious expressions characteristic of
Westernized forms of voluntary denominationalism, forms o f religiosity that
are less prevalent in the Republic of Armenia. These measures privilege
official, institutionalized religiosity, neglecting the variety of ways in which
religion is expressed in the everyday lives of Armenian individuals and
households. Indeed, following seventy years of religious restrictions under
Soviet control, it might be expected that most religious expressions continue to
exist outside official, institutionalized forms.
The influence of inter-religious competition on the strength and general
development of religious communities remains a notable contribution of the
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religious economies perspective, a contribution that will prove useful in the
analysis presented in subsequent chapters. Competition, however, is not
restricted to conflict between religious communities. Rather, competition
between historical actors and other threats serve to buttress religious
communities, even in situations where a religious community appears to hold a
monopoly. In Armenia, for instance, the seventy years of atheistic rule and the
perceived threat of new religious movements have rallied the Apostolic Church
to pursue their constituents more aggressively (Froese, 2004). In the North
American diaspora, the threat of assimilation - what some refer to as the
“white genocide” - mobilizes the Apostolic Church to develop programs for
children and youth, with the hope of maintaining their allegiance in the future.
Atheistic communism and assimilationist forces are not the kind of religious
competitors envisioned by the authors of the religious economies perspective;
however, both the history of atheism and the cultural paradigm of assimilation
provide the same benefits of inter-religious competition, leading the Apostolic
Church to avoid taking its members for granted.
The work of French Sociologist Daniele Hervieu-Leger (2000) avoids
some of the limitations of the religious economies perspective by employing a
definition of religion that is flexible enough to capture the nature of religious
expression in both the North American diaspora and the Republic of Armenia.
Hervieu-Leger argues that religion is characterized by tradition as well as a
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chain of belief that unites past, present, and future members. Modem
differentiated societies have multiple realms of social activity, each with their
own set of rules and ways of believing; however, the religious realm is unique
because it is legitimated exclusively by a tradition. Religion, characterized by
tradition, is faced with the challenge of perpetuating a collective memory. A
religion only survives to the extent that its members talk about the past and
transmit the group’s historical memories to future generations.
In traditional societies, religious symbolism depicts both the origins of
the world and of the particular religious community. Religion is a taken-for-
granted aspect of society. The process of societal differentiation, brought upon
by modernity, produced “a plurality of specialized circles of memory”
undermining the production of any singular or comprehensive memory: “The
fact of being able to differentiate between a family memory, a religious
memory, a class memory, is already a token o f having left behind the pure
world of tradition” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000, p. 127).
Modern societies, characterized by frequent and dramatic change,
undermine religion’s ability to transmit the past, threatening the future
prospects of religion. Two trends prove particularly corrosive:
homogenization and fragmentation. First, collective memory, as a result of
homogenization, is losing depth and becoming more extensive. Mass
communication is partly to blame. Individuals are bombarded with images and
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31
information in such a way that it becomes difficult for the individual to place
this information into a meaningful collective memory. Young people, in
particular, have a difficult time taking this overabundance of information and
“relating it to a lineage to which they spontaneously see themselves as
belonging” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000, p. 130). Second, individual and collective
memory suffers from fragmentation. Individuals in modem societies belong to
several different groups simultaneously: “The functional dissociation of the
experience he or she undergoes forbids access to a unified memory, which in
any case is beyond the power of any single group to construct, restricted as
each is by its specialization” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000, p. 129).
Secularization, with respect to the problem of collective memory, takes
place when individuals can no longer place themselves in a lineage or chain of
belief, effectively breaking the links with the past and the possibility of linking
to future generations. Modernity, and its accompanying emphasis on scientific
rationalism, do not necessarily undermine religion, but create space for new
forms of religion to develop. Religion is redistributed. In modernity, there is
“a loss of meaning” and the “imaginative (re)constitution” of a lineage or chain
of belief can provide a way to impose meaning on experience (Hervieu-Leger,
2000, p. 166). Modernity simultaneously erodes tradition and gives rise to
post-traditional religion. Instead of relying upon the allegiance of individuals
who see themselves as part of a lineage, post-traditional religion relies on
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individual commitment: “being religious is not so much knowing oneself
begotten as willing oneself so to be” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000, p. 167). This
enables religion to be reinvented in new ways, allowing for systems of
meaning to be patched together. “Truth” is no longer embodied in the
institution, but the believer (Hervieu-Leger, 2000, p. 168). On the level of
practice, religion becomes a matter of choice where a person often selects
occasional and partial elements with which to adhere. Not only is participation
selective, hut it is also often mixed with forms of belief and practice that
traditionally were considered to be distinct from one another.
Ethnic religions, following Hervieu-Leger, produce a social bond based
on both a “naturalized genealogy” and a “symbolized genealogy” (Hervieu-
Leger, 2000, p. 157). That is, individuals are unified by not only a common
ancestral and geographical origin, but also a common mythological source.
These two genealogies, each comprised of symbols and values, “overlap
closely and reinforce one another in a great many cases” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000,
p. 157) and can easily become much less distinct from one another. Hervieu-
Leger sites the Armenians as an ideal-typical case. The convergence of
ethnicity and religion involves the “dual movement” of the homogenization of
religion and “the neo-religious recharging of ethnic identities” (Hervieu-Leger,
2000, p. 161). Religious identities and values become assimilated by the
ethnos. Conversely, the ethnos becomes situated in a common memory
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33
characterized by religious symbols, not just those of history and culture.
Where religious symbols now serve as emblems for the group, it is now
possible to “belong without believing.” In such a situation, the individual
believes in the lineage of the group without adopting fully the religious
notions.
Placing tradition at the center of the definition of religion, Hervieu-
Leger makes an important contribution to the sociology of religion and avoids
the pitfalls of substantive definitions that typically draw the limits of religious
phenomena too narrowly. Also, by placing an emphasis on tradition, Hervieu-
Leger points to the difficulties faced by religious groups in modern society;
namely, she reveals the problems of transmitting memory in an environment
where memory is losing depth and becoming increasingly fragmented.
However, a definition of religion based on tradition, and a lineage through
which tradition is perpetuated, is too broad. Ethnic and national identities, for
instance, are also based on tradition and are formed by a lineage that connects
past, present, and future members. And just as religion must broach the
problem of transmitting memory, ethnic communities must also take action to
perpetuate their traditions.
Grace Davie, in her analysis of religion in Europe, furthers Hervieu-
Leger’s work on memory, charting the various ways in which religious
memory operates and changes into new forms. O f particular interest to chapter
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34
two, Davie develops the notion of “vicarious memory” in which she argues
that religious memory is a task that is delegated to institutions and religious
professionals. The institution of the church acts as a “carrier” o f the religious
memory on behalf of a population that is only sporadically involved. Clergy
and priests undergo professional education and training that qualify them to
maintain the religious memory. Also, a committed minority o f lay members
assist in the maintenance of the religious memory. According to Davie, the
keepers of the religious memory are more likely to include women, older
generations, as well as advantaged sectors of the population. This also seems to
be the case with Armenians. Though men are “official carriers” and serve as
priests and deacons, women are disproportionately represented among
members of the congregation and serve vital roles in the preparation of food
and the education of children.
Religion is maintained vicariously on behalf of both individuals and the
wider community. The population maintains a sense of religiosity, even when
their participation is infrequent or even non-existent. They appreciate the
churches, recognizing that they perform a number of valuable services, such as
baptisms and funerals. At times, the church is asked to articulate the religious
memory on behalf of the population as a whole, or at least a subset of the
population. Davie cites the church’s involvement in Europe’s millennium
celebrations as an example of how the church is involved in maintaining the
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35
religious memory for the broader community. Religion maintained
vicariously, however, is precarious, since there is minimal contact between the
institution and the population that it claims to represent. Davie argues that this
precariousness results in a “dramatic generation-by-generation drop in
religious knowledge” (Davie, 2000, p. 60).
The problem of maintaining and transmitting memory takes on new
dimensions for those who undergo the process of immigration and who create
diaspora communities. In a new and foreign culture, ethno-religious
communities often confront new threats to the long-term viability of their
traditions. In their analysis of immigrant religious communities in Houston,
Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Chafetz (2000) outline the different issues faced
by minority and majority faiths. Many religious communities enjoy a majority
status abroad, but come to occupy a minority position in the United States.
Muslim immigrants, for instance, tend to migrate from predominantly Muslim
countries and must, upon immigration, adapt to an environment that is
historically and culturally rooted around Judeo-Christian ideals and practices.
The experience of adapting to a minority status leads many new immigrants to
become much more knowledgeable about their faith. After all, the context of
pluralism often leads to competition between religious groups, and, in defense,
members of a minority faith must be prepared to explain the nature of their
belief and practice to those who have little understanding of their traditions. A
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36
religious perspective that was taken-for-granted in the country o f origin is now
consciously taught and maintained among members. Groups often develop an
educational infrastructure - mirroring established practices in Christian
churches - to inform their members about the group’s history, doctrine, and
practice. For example, Sunday school programs for children and youth are
common among many immigrant congregations, even when such programs did
not exist in the country of origin.
The transition from majority to minority faith is illustrated in the case
of Armenian apostolics. While North American culture is dominated by
Judeo-Christian principles, the apostolic faith is a unique and different
expression of Christianity and, arguably, occupies a minority status. As will be
evident in chapter two, the Apostolic Church is concerned over the lack of
involvement that most Armenians have in the life of the church. The Church,
after all, cannot be passive or assume that people will maintain a vicarious
posture indefinitely. There is always a chance that people will be lured away
to new, greener pastures. Here, ethnic and religious assimilation threatens to
undermine the Apostolic Church’s role as keeper of Armenian identity. In
response, the Apostolic Church is trying to educate its members about the
Divine Liturgy which is perceived to be the core of the apostolic tradition.
Creating a more educated and engaged laity is believed to be a prerequisite for
the church’s long term viability.
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Other immigrant groups experience a different transition, from minority
to majority status. This transition, following Ebaugh and Chafetz, is
characterized by a reduction in the group’s sense of threat from the
surrounding socio-cultural environment. Armenian evangelicals, for instance,
experience this reduction in threat. In Armenia as well as many regions of the
diaspora, Armenian evangelicals are a minority group within an ethnic
community that is predominantly apostolic. In some regions, Armenian
evangelicals have a double minority status; in Lebanon, for instance,
Armenians are a minority, but they are further divided along religious lines,
with Armenian evangelicals forming a minority within the Armenian
community. In the United States, however, Armenian evangelicals find a great
affinity with the dominant, Protestant religious community.
As will be evident in chapter four, switching from a minority to a
majority faith can prove problematic for an ethno-religious community.
Armenian Evangelical churches in North America are faced with aggressive
competition by larger Evangelical churches that have more resources and
programmatic offerings. What is more, Armenian Evangelical churches are
faced with the task of articulating their faith in a way that legitimates the
existence of their own, distinct religious communities, while remaining
competitive and emulating the offerings of larger, attractive American
congregations. Resonating with the majority faith may reduce the level of
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38
threat, but it simultaneously brings about new challenges from rival majority
organizations.
Scholars addressing the transmission of religious memory seem to
assume that religiosity is largely subject to the surrounding socio-cultural
environs. Hervieu-Leger focuses on forces of “fragmentation” and
“homogenization” that inhibit the formation and perpetuation of religious
memory. Similarly, discussion of North American immigrant religious
communities is predicated on the notion that these groups are subject to their
environment. Assimilationist models - like the one presented by Herberg -
believe that the wider culture chips-away at ethno-religious identity, eventually
leaving the immigrant and her offspring with a diminished sense of ethnic
identity. Others who are attuned to the ways in which immigrant communities
are re-created and re-shaped on North American soil similarly talk about the
ways in which these communities are re-made into new entities, adopting, for
instance, the congregational format that was hitherto unknown (Ebaugh &
Chaftetz, 2000).
Religious memory, however, is not simply transformed by the
surrounding socio-cultural environment; it can also act-back to influence the
wider culture in profound ways. In a global analysis, Jose Casanova (1994)
presents several recent cases where religion has re-emerged from the private
sphere of society to enter the public realm, a process he refers to as the “de
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39
privatization” of religion. This, Casanova argues, disconfirms the work of
secularization theorists who predicted that religion would occupy an
increasingly privatized role in modern society. What remains defensible about
the secularization thesis, following Casanova, is the notion that modern
societies undergo a process of differentiation, whereby the political,
educational, and legal spheres are emancipated from religious control.
The analysis of faith-based NGOs, presented in chapter five, provides
another illustration o f how religious memory can reassert itself into the public
realm. But, it also suggests that processes of societal differentiation - believed
to be an inevitable byproduct of modernization - can be reversed or at least
challenged. Faith-based NGOs working in the Republic of Armenia believe
that a restored Christian memory will create ethical workers, businessmen, and
politicians that will, in turn, transform Armenia into a prosperous nation.
Springing from the notion of religious memory developed by Hervieu-
Leger (2000) and expanded upon by Grace Davie (2000), the work presented
here looks at the construction of religious memory as it takes place in a
different socio-cultural phenomenon: the experience of diaspora. In so doing,
this work highlights something that is not known about immigrant religious
communities by examining the variety of ways in which religious memory is
appropriated in the process of migration. Since migrants are inevitably
influenced by the sociocultural environment of their host society, attention is
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40
paid to the ways in which inter-religious competition in the North American
context influences the shaping of religious memory. Finally, in keeping with
Casanova’s work highlighting the public nature of contemporary religious
phenomena, this study also reflects upon the ways in which religious memory
is re-emerging in the public realm.
Methodology
I was initially introduced to the Armenian community during the
summer of 2000, following my first year of doctoral studies. I was working at
the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern
California (USC) as a research assistant for a project exploring the relationship
between religion and immigration in Los Angeles, funded by The Pew
Charitable Trusts, and one of my assigned tasks involved researching
Armenian congregations. The willingness and generosity o f the Armenian
spirit provided me with a seemingly endless supply of interviewees, to whom I
am deeply indebted. A few initial contacts quickly snowballed into dozens of
interviews and I began to realize that the accumulating body of data would
provide a solid base for my dissertation work, which I began officially in
January 2003.
In the spring of 2003,1 was asked to participate in a research project
comparing the work of faith-based NGOs in Armenia and Romania, funded by
a Zumberge Grant at USC. My involvement with this project led me to pursue
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41
the transnational ties between the North American diaspora and the rebuilding
of religious memory in post-Soviet Armenia. Exploring this transnationalism
was not a part of my initial project’s design, but in retrospect I cannot imagine
this dissertation without discussing these very significant links. The two trips
to Armenia that I took in June 2003 and April 2004, under the guise of the
Zumberge project, provided me with a depth of insight into Armenian culture
that has added significantly to the pages of this work.
Data were gathered through participant observation and semi-structured
interviews between August 2000 and April 2004. Specifically, I attended
Sunday services, church conferences, youth conventions, cultural
performances, a summer camp, and a fundraiser. I conducted 120 interviews
with Armenians, their non-Armenian spouses, and leaders of Armenian
organizations. I interviewed subjects in three nations: Canada, the United
States, and the Republic of Armenia. In Canada, 20 interviews were conducted
among Armenians from Toronto, Cambridge, Kitchener, and Halifax. Twenty-
four interviews were conducted during two visits to the Republic of Armenia.
And the remaining 76 interviews were conducted with Armenians in
California; most were from the Los Angeles area, but several were from
Fresno, San Francisco, and San Diego.
Corresponding to each of the chapters, interviewees include 39
apostolics, 28 evangelicals, 27 Armenians who left the ethnic church, and 24
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leaders and experts on the work of non-government organizations in Armenia.
Two interviews were also conducted with the Armenian Catholic community.
The sample includes Armenian-born, Canadian-born, and American-bom
Armenians, as well as respondents from a variety of diasporas: Australia,
France, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Romania, Syria, and
Turkey. Most of the respondents were chosen because they represent
Armenian churches and other organizations, but some were located through
“word of mouth.”
Only 41 respondents were women. Based on interviews with clergy
and lay leaders, men are overrepresented in the sample. There is currently only
one female Armenian evangelical minister in the United States and there are no
women who serve as priests. Focusing on leadership, therefore, necessarily
meant interviewing a disproportionate number o f men. I did intentionally
seek-out women who fill important roles as Sunday School teachers,
committee members, and NGO leaders.
In all, 80 interviews were transcribed and coded using Atlas TI
software. The 20 interviews conducted among faith-based NGOs were
transcribed and coded by hand. And the remaining twenty interviews were
captured on digital video. Most of these interviews have been analyzed and
catalogued, but remain digitized. The transcription and coding proved to be
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43
the most laborious process and taught me a great deal about the benefits of
discipline and perseverance.
A typical interview lasted between an hour and an hour and a half. A
common set of questions guided the interviews I conducted with members of
each of the four case studies. However, I did not restrict my inquiries to a
rigid, pre-determined set of questions. While keeping within my study’s
principle interest in religious and ethnic memory, I often developed additional
questions in the field as I gained new and interesting data from respondents.
These new questions were, at times, necessary to investigate more thoroughly
some respondents’ initially glib answers. Below, I will outline the principle
questions that guided the interviews I conducted with each of the four case
studies.
Among Armenian apostolics and evangelicals, I inquired about their
personal background, their experience of migration, and their personal ties to
various diasporic regions. I also asked them to describe their sense of being
Armenian and to discuss whether or not it had any connection to religiosity.
Their involvement in the church was also of central concern, and I asked them
to describe how they participated in the life of the church and what it meant to
them. Finally, I asked them to describe the biggest issues that were facing
Armenian churches in the North American context.
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For those who left an Armenian church, I asked them to describe the
process of leaving, what they valued about the new congregation they joined,
and if they missed anything about the church they left behind. I also asked
whether or not they would ever return to an Armenian church and under what
circumstances they would consider doing so. As with other interviews, I asked
them about their sense of being Armenian and whether or not it had anything
to do with religiosity. Finally, I asked them if they were involved with any
extra-ecclesial Armenian organizations to understand the extent to which they
maintained ties to the ethnic community.
In the case of faith-based NGOs, many questions probed basic elements
of the group’s organization. What kind of programs do you operate? Where
does your funding originate? Do you work with churches or other faith-based
organizations? How many staff do you employ? Questions were also asked
about the religious nature of the organization to explore how faith empowers
and constrains the organization’s work. Finally, the interviews explored how
faith-based NGOs develop and maintain links with the various diasporic
regions.
My dissertation research received generous funding from several
sources. A $10,000 dissertation grant from the Center for Religion and Civic
Culture at the University of Southern California and a $2,000 research grant
from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion provided funds for travel
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45
and equipment. One thousand dollars from the Department of Sociology at
USC helped to cover some of the cost of transcription. Fellowships from the
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the
Graduate School at USC provided support that enabled me to focus more time
on research and writing.
It is difficult to know exactly how my identity as a white, non-
Armenian male influenced how data were accessed, administered, and
interpreted. Only on occasion was I provided with a glimpse into the ways in
which members of the community viewed my identity and purpose. At one
time, I was standing beside an Armenian man during a hymn in a service held
at a large Armenian Evangelical Church in Los Angeles. I was familiar with
the hymn - All Hail the Power o f Jesus ’ Name - from my own personal
experience growing-up in a Protestant Church. And I was singing the hymn
from memory, without once glancing at the hymnal. When the organ stopped,
a short sixty year-old Armenian man turned to me and whispered: “Are you
Jewish?” Perhaps he was trying to discern my ethnic identity based upon my
physiognomy, or perhaps he did not notice that I was singing the hymn and
understood the absence of the hymnal to mean that I was from another faith.
For the most part, respondents saw me as someone “doing a
dissertation” and were excited that a non-Armenian would take interest in their
community. My status as a non-Armenian proved both useful and limiting.
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Since the Armenian community is fractured along many lines - politically,
religiously, and linguistically, being a non-Armenian provided me with a
neutral status; no one ever inquired suspiciously about my research agenda.
However, being non-Armenian, respondents frequently assumed that I knew
little about their community and it often proved difficult in the context of an
interview to move beyond basic knowledge that I had already acquired. Also,
my inability to speak Armenian limited the depth o f my fieldwork and the
range of interviews conducted. The latter problem, however, was minimized
by the scope of this study; focused on leadership, respondents were fluent in
English and there were few instances where knowledge of Armenian would
have been beneficial for the interviewing process.
A summary of chapters
The analysis that follows reveals how religious memory is constructed
and appropriated among Armenians living in both the North American
Diaspora and the Republic of Armenia. Of special concern are the various
forces that influence the construction process. The second chapter discusses
how the Apostolic Church in North America is trying to transform Armenians
into engaged worshippers. The third chapter looks at the Armenian
Evangelical community in North America and finds that a new generation of
younger Armenians is situating the Evangelical Church in a new, conservative
religious lineage. Those who leave the Armenian Church are an obvious threat
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to the transmission of ethno-religious memory, and they are the focus of
chapter four. Finally, chapter five examines the ways in which faith-based
NGOs - most o f which are evangelical and using funds from the North
American diaspora - are involved in the process o f rebuilding the historic
apostolic religious memory in post-Soviet Armenia. A brief summary of each
chapter’s contributions follows.
The continuing vitality of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the North
American diaspora is the focus of chapter two. Echoing Grace Davie’s
conception of “vicarious memory” (2000), the Apostolic Church is charged
with the task of maintaining the religious memory on behalf of Armenians
living in the diaspora. But, it also performs an additional task. The church -
both historically and today - is identified strongly with Armenian ethnic
identity. It serves, then, a double duty, perpetuating both religious and ethnic
memories. Arguably, the “double duty” is more of a singular enterprise; faith
and ethnicity are inextricably connected. The church provides a space where
Armenians can strengthen social bonds, recreate historic rites, and transmit
belief and practice to subsequent generations. It also provides a link with both
the nation of Armenia as well as other areas of the diaspora. More than any
other organization, the Apostolic Church recreates diasporic identity. With an
organizational and spiritual head in Armenia, the Apostolic Church is centered
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administratively on the homeland - a fact that reminds Armenians that they
originated from and maintain a connection to their ancestral soil.
The notion of “vicarious memory” implies that there are both carriers
of the memory - those responsible for perpetuating traditions - as well as a
population of delegators, people for whom the memory is kept. In the case of
the North American diaspora, the keepers tend to be official religious leaders
(priests, deacons, and lay leaders), women (who are disproportionately
members of the congregations), and individuals who are migrants from other
regions of the diaspora (notably, Armenians from Syria and Lebanon).
Delegators express a deep sense of attachment to the apostolic tradition, attend
the church on important holidays, and expect to involve the church for
important rites of passage, such as their wedding or child’s baptism.
Delegators, however, do not participate in the life of the church on a regular
basis. Armenian immigrants from the Republic of Armenia (because o f the
lingering effects of Soviet religious control), youth (because of their busy
lives), and American-born Armenians (feeling neglected by the church) are
believed to form the bulk of delegators who have a deep sense of attachment,
but are infrequently involved.
While happy to maintain its status as keeper of Armenian ethnic and
religious memory, the Apostolic Church is concerned with the lack of
involvement exhibited by most Armenians. The comparatively hospitable host
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culture in North America erodes a sense of diaspora; no longer casting their
identity as displaced, many - if not most - Armenians now consider North
America to be their home and are not hoping for an eventual return. Church
leaders are generally concerned that many Armenians will stop looking to the
Apostolic Church to carry on ethnic and religious memories vicariously. After
all, the pluralistic environment of North America provides many options that
supply meaning, spiritual experience, and rites of passage. While an official
strategy is not enforced, clergy and lay leaders seem unanimous in their belief
that the Divine Liturgy - which is arguably the core of the apostolic tradition -
must be made more accessible to those who are infrequently engaged in a
Sunday service. Many believe that an accessible, comprehensible liturgy will
create a more meaningful worship experience and, in turn, more engaged
worshippers. Church leaders in the North American diaspora want to
transform their members’ posture toward the church, from vicarious to an
engaged memory.
The third chapter examines how many Armenian evangelicals are re-
imagining their lineage of belief in the North American context. The
Armenian Evangelical Church began as a result o f the influence of American
missionaries in Istanbul in the beginning of the 19th century. Their initial
mission was to reform the Apostolic Church, cleansing what they viewed to be
heretical and superfluous belief and practice. The American missionaries and
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their evangelical converts, not welcomed by the Apostolic Church, established
their own evangelical community. For most of the movement’s history, the
Armenian Evangelical Church has maintained its identity as a reformist
movement. In recent years, however, a new generation of lay members and
American-trained pastors has been aligning the church with the larger,
American evangelical movement. These young Armenians, under the guise of
conservatism, have been arguing that the Armenian Evangelical Church needs
its own reformation, a purging of liberal, modernist theologies and concepts.
Rather than casting their identity as reformers of the historic apostolic
tradition, the new generation views itself as part of a chain of conservative
believers, consistent with American evangelical currents. This shift - a re-
imagining of lineage - may have profound consequences for the church’s
future, as the boundaries that separate Armenian evangelicalism from its
American counterpart are increasingly eroded.
Pastors at Armenian Evangelical churches often express concern over
members who have left their congregation to join an American Evangelical
Church. And this concern leads Armenian Evangelical churches to adopt styles
of belief and practice popular among members of the larger, American
evangelical movement. The fourth chapter examines the experiences of
Armenians who have chosen to leave an Armenian Church and, physically,
join a new lineage of believers. Those who leave an ethnic congregation do so
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in search of a greater experience of Christianity. They often speak about a
desire to belong to a congregation that is focused principally upon religious
pursuits and that is not distracted by the work of perpetuating ethnic elements.
These Armenians are, for the most part, searching for a culture-less
Christianity that is believed to be more pure than the one they experienced in
the ethnic church.
While many remain deeply committed to Armenian causes, the act of
leaving the ethnic church removes them as a link in the chain of ethno
religious memory. For them as well as their children, ethnicity becomes
something experienced outside of religious settings; ethnicity becomes
differentiated from the religious sphere. But more than just differentiated,
ethnicity also becomes subjugated to religious pursuits. Respondents valued
their religious identities over and above their ethnic attachments; in fact, it was
the salience of religiosity that led many of these Armenians to diminish
thickly-established ties with the ethnic church. Secularized and subjugated,
ethnicity is relegated to a more peripheral role. And the result is Armenians’
acquisition of an increasingly white identity. Culture-less Christianity echoes
the way in which whiteness is cast in the dominant culture, as something that is
rational, non-ethnic, and superior to ethnic forms. Armenians’ adoption of
culture-less Christianity, therefore, signals their inclusion into white raciality,
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allowing them to possess a non-ethnic identity where Armenian-ness occupies
a lesser role.
In chapter five, attention is paid to the rebuilding of religious memory
in post-Soviet Armenia. In a nation characterized by widespread poverty, an
underdeveloped system of institutionalized religion, and official control of
non-apostolic ecclesial structures, faith-based NGOs - many of which are
evangelical - become key players in the reconstruction of the historic apostolic
religious memory. More than just saving souls, this reconstruction is believed
to be a necessary condition for the future economic prosperity of Armenia.
Widespread corruption at all levels of society - government, business, and
among individuals - has hampered development efforts and discouraged
diaspora investment. Faith-based NGOs believe that a rebuilt religious
memory will create an honest, ethical workforce, improving prospects for
economic development. In the process, faith-based NGOs are working toward
the de-differentiation of religion in Armenia, where Christian elements are re
introduced to the economic sphere, government, and state educational
institutions.
In sum, the following chapters explore how religious memory is
constructed and appropriated among the Armenian faithful. In chapters two
and three, religious memory is used to shore-up the ethnic community in the
North American diaspora. In the fourth chapter, Armenians are taking
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themselves out of an ethnically-specific religious memory and are placing
themselves in one that is perceived to be “cultureless.” Finally, in the fifth
chapter, religious memory is appropriated for a larger, nation-building project.
A renewed Christian ethic is believed to be the antidote for corruption and will,
over time, help to attract foreign investment and create economic prosperity for
the nation of Armenia. Here, the fragments of the Armenian community are
coming together for a common cause; the rebuilding of the nation of Armenia.
In each of these four case studies, a series of tensions is shaping the
construction of religious memory. The concluding chapter will focus on these
tensions specifically, pointing-out the ways in which the tensions manifest
themselves across religious traditions and geographical boundaries.
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CHAPTER TWO
ENGAGING MEMORY AMONG APOSTOLICS:
REVEALING THE DIVINE LITURGY,
STRENGTHENING COMMITMENTS
The liturgy is beautiful if you are participating in it, y o u ’ re in Heaven
on Sunday. You really feel like you... I t ’ s so out o f the tradition o f
American culture. I t’ s so contrast to the secular world. I t ’ s like you ’ re
in a different place in a different time. Maybe it is a little bit more like
Heaven than any place y o u ’ ve been in, and so... yeah, that’ s what it’ s
like when I go to church.
-An American-born woman from San Diego.
Ani, a tall and slender fifty-two year old woman dressed in a neatly-
pressed black and grey pant suit, enters the church foyer around 11:30am. The
Divine Liturgy has already been taking place for over an hour, but she walks in
with confidence and without apology. She moves directly toward an elderly
woman sitting behind a small folding table; they smile to each other and
exchange a warm greeting. The elderly woman gives Ani two thin, ivory-
colored candles in exchange for a couple of dollars. Ani gently holds the
candles in her right hand and slips through the doors at the back of the
sanctuary. Her destination is a trough of sand situated four feet off the ground,
fixed to the back wall. Above the trough is an oil painting that depicts a skinny
Christ nailed to a wooden cross, with three mournful figures in the foreground.
She glances briefly at Christ’s figure, lights each candle and places it in the
sand, then bows her head slightly and closes her eyes. After a brief moment,
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her eyes open again to focus on the painting of Christ. She makes the sign of
the cross, left-to-right, and finds a place in a pew at the back of the sanctuary.
Around her, the Divine Liturgy is in full swing. The stage-like altar
raised off-the-ground at the front of the sanctuary is the main locus of activity.
There, the priest, adorning an elaborately-stitched purple and gold gown, and
male deacons, wearing simple white and purple robes, move about the altar in
choreographed motions. A thin fog o f incense ascends upward, joined by tenor
chants from the altar and solemn melodies from the choir.
I was initially taken aback by what appeared to be the lackadaisical
attitude of worshippers in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The first time I
attended the Divine Liturgy was at a church in Pasadena, California. I called
the priest ahead of time to find out when the Sunday service began and was
told that the liturgy started at 9:30am and ended usually around 12:30pm. I
arrived shortly after the start of the service and discovered that - besides the
choir, priest, and deacons - there were only three elderly women sitting in the
pews. By 10:30am, forty more parishioners had arrived, mostly women over
the age of fifty. At 11:30am, all of the pews were filled and there were people
standing at the back of the sanctuary. A few more men had arrived, but they
formed only a small part of the congregation. Not only did most of the
worshippers arrive well after the liturgy began, but they also seemed to come-
and-go throughout the service. Some entered only to light a candle and then
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made a quick exit. Others seemed to enter just before the sermon or
communion, leaving once their favored part of the service was complete. To
varying degrees, I witnessed this pattern of selective church participation in
each of the Armenian Apostolic churches I visited.
While liturgical worship may connote formalism and rigidity, the
Armenian Apostolic Church has an open, flexible tradition that allows
worshippers to participate in varying amounts of the Sunday liturgy, according
to their own choice and schedule. Archbishop Malachia Ormanian, the
Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople until 1908, noted that worshippers are
not required to attend the whole mass: “As there is only one mass in each
church, and this is always chanted, it cannot be possible to require, as the
bounden duty of the faithful, attendance at the entire mass, or at any fixed
portion of it” (Ormanian, 2004, p. 176). What is more, Ormanian writes: “In
the matter of devotion, the faithful Armenian is not bound by any prescribed
rules, the breach of which would lay him under the ban of sin, whether mortal
or venial” (Ormanian, 2004, p. 175). A few respondents did state that, as a
good Christian, one should attend the Divine Liturgy on a regular basis, but the
majority of people did not feel a need to attend church frequently. Levon, a 70
year-old Armenian born in Greece, spoke about the unimportance of church
participation for Armenian apostolics, noting “you don’t measure how good or
bad you are by how much time you go to church.” Participation also varies
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according to the church calendar, with more worshippers attending during
important holidays. According to Gohar, an American-born Armenian woman,
“you might have thirty people in there one Sunday and you might have two
thousand there another Sunday. And when you get into lent, especially holy
week, there’s so many people that they won’t fit in the church. They spill over
outside, so they take the gym and they put a temporary altar in there and they
can house the people.”
Alongside an open attitude toward church participation, most
Armenians do not define their attachment to the Apostolic Church by referring
to a particular set of doctrines. When asked to describe what it means to
belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, many respondents said that they
had never thought about it before or that it was a difficult question to answer.
A few made some general remarks, noting that one should believe in God and
pattern his or her life after the Bible’s teachings, but no consistent or specific
doctrinal statement emerged from the respondents’ answers. In describing
what it means to be a part of the Armenian Apostolic Church, a twenty-two
year old Canadian-born Armenian living in Los Angeles remarked:
Well, first of all, it’s a very difficult thing to describe. Um, everybody
has a different interpretation of what, what a person’s involvement
should be in a church, or what, you know, what a person’s connection
should be in relation to God and to their relationship to him, you know?
And everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. That’s kind of what we
got.
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There were also a few respondents who noted that they had no particular
religious inclinations, but maintained a strong desire to support the church.
When asked to describe what it means to be affiliated with an Armenian
Apostolic Church, this Armenian man from Los Angeles replied:
You know, it doesn’t mean much in terms of faith. In terms of type
of faith, it’s almost as if my parents have been, and I am. The church
has been a place for m e... a national institution. I have felt an inherent
role to protect the church whenever the church needed protection, but
being an Apostolic Armenian, as far as my church membership, does
not have for me any depth in terms of religious knowledge. It’s zilch as
far as.. .1 am very ignorant in that sense.
While respondents mentioned only vague statements about supernatural beliefs
or confessed that their attachment to church had nothing to do with religious
sentiments, they consistently spoke about the importance o f the church as a
national institution, a place for community gatherings, and a way for them to
carry on the traditions of their ancestors. In fact, it would appear as though
worship at the Armenian Apostolic Church is not so much about looking
toward another, sacred realm, as it is about the sacralization of the ethnos.
For most, the Armenian Apostolic Church is inextricably connected
with what it means to be an Armenian. Armenia officially adopted Christianity
as its national religion in 301 CE and the Armenian Apostolic Church has been
the nation’s dominant expression of Christianity since that time. When asked
to describe Armenian identity, respondents frequently mentioned that
Armenians are a Christian people, proudly stating that they were the first
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nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. While exact figures are not
known, it is generally believed that 95 percent of Armenians around the world
affiliate themselves with the Armenian Apostolic Church; the remaining five
percent are Protestant and Catholic. Throughout its history, the Armenian
Apostolic Church has tended to remain independent from Western
ecclesiastical authorities. They rejected, for instance, the two-nature
Christology adopted by the Council of Chalcedon in 45ICE, maintaining
instead a Monophysite or one-nature Christology (Hall, 1992). The Armenian
Apostolic Church has developed its own unique Saints, liturgy, hymns, and
sacred architecture. Hagop, a twenty-one year old Canadian-born Armenian
from Toronto, expressed the deep connection between the Apostolic Church
and Armenian identity in the following:
It’s hard to describe in words what it feels like being an Armenian with
respect to the Church because a lot of it seems like an obligation that
you have to do because you’re Armenian and like our history is based
on the Church. If it wasn’t for the Church, I don’t think we’d be here.
We’ve fought wars over being Christian and there’s this unique tie to
the Church. You may not go to Church for a decade, but you know that
you are Armenian and you will always think of the Church, so it’s this
inbred... it’s just there. That’s like the best way I can describe it.
When Armenians talk about their history and identity, they often refer to
stories about persecution, suffering, and genocide. And through this history,
Armenians have faced war and suffering on account of their faith. In the fifth
century, Armenia was annexed by the Persians and the Persian king decided
that all of Armenia should be converted to Zoroastrianism, the worship of fire
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and sun. Between August 450 and August 451, Armenians were told to
renounce Christianity, but, instead, mobilized an army under the leadership of
Vartan Mamigonian. While they lost the battle with the Persians, the martyrs
are still commemorated each year on Shrove Tuesday (Ormanian, 2004). For
many, the memory of these martyrs translates into a sense of indebtedness and
devotion toward the church. Today, the church continues to serve as the
protector of Armenian identity in the diaspora, by providing a space for
Armenians to gather, by linking the diaspora together with an ecclesiastical
institution, and by socializing children into the ethnic community.
Several people noted that the longstanding traditions of the church
provide them with a sense of rootedness and comfort. Mark, a twenty-two year
old American-born Armenian, states:
It’s a feeling of comfort, um, and it being such a long, established
church, there’s a feeling of establishment and security to a certain
degree, um, because it’s got such deep roots, you know, and... yeah...
for me, it’s a wonderful feeling, you know, being a part of the church.
You know, on two levels... on the historic, prideful level... because
when you read back through history, if you’re reading the history of
Islam, if you’re reading like the history of the Romans, you know, you
realize that the Armenian Church has played a very central role into
multiple civilizations, you know? And, that’s a significant thing and it’s
still around and it’s still kicking.
The connection between individuals’ sense of Armenian identity and their
attachment to the Apostolic Church is so deep that many question the ethnic
identity of those who join other, non-apostolic religious groups: “It’s all-
encompassing in a sense because we’re Armenian and we go to Armenian
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Church and this is like a debate a lot o f people have, can you be Armenian and
be something else?”
When those who attend mass on a regular basis describe how they
experience the Divine Liturgy, they often talk about how the mass enables
them to connect with Armenians locally, globally, and throughout history.
Since the Divine Liturgy is performed in the same manner - using the same
language - each Sunday in the Republic of Armenia and throughout the
diaspora, Armenians on six different continents engage in the same religious
rite on a weekly basis. Several respondents noted that the continuity of
religious rites in Armenian communities throughout the world provides them
with a sense of connection to Armenians abroad. When asked to describe what
she liked about the liturgy, Gohar remarked: “You’re hearing the same thing
here in Encino as we heard in Athens a month ago, as you could hear in
London in the Armenian Church. Same thing and w e’re all a part of it.”
Others talk about how the mass enables them to connect with Armenians
throughout history: deceased relatives, famous Armenian religious figures, and
those that died in defense of the faith. A wife of one of the priests noted:
In the church, I am with my ancestors. I am with my parents. I am with
the Apostles. When they recite the names of the Apostles, for me, I
know their history, their life, and all that, so I am with them. I pray for
them. When I am there, I pray for all the bishops of the world because I
know all of them ... When I am in the church, I am the priest, myself. I
am there with everybody that connects me, two thousand years before
m e... Yeah, because it’s 2000 years old, and Armenian Church gave us
so many martyrs and all that, so those martyrs are in me, and those
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fathers of the church are in me, because I know their life. .. .when I go
inside the church, sometimes I close my eyes. Armenian Church we
don’t close our eyes, but I close my eyes and I see the ancestors and
they’re marching. I just make up all their figures, and so this is how I
feel in the Armenian Church.
Many also noted that, in particular, the act of lighting a candle connected them
with deceased kin. A sixty-eight year old American-born woman noted: “I’ll
go to church and I’ll light a candle in memory of, but also for my father
because... he would have appreciated that.” Connecting through liturgy and
ritual with deceased ancestors and historic figures, the apostolic tradition
provides a clear example of Daniele Hervieu-Leger’s work describing religion
as a chain or lineage of belief.
Like most faith communities in North America, Armenian Apostolic
churches in the United States and Canada provide a wide array of activities and
groups that help to build the church community. Many Apostolic churches
have youth programs, Sunday school classes, a Ladies’ guild, fundraisers, and
banquets on special holidays. But, the Apostolic Church is more than just a
place for creating a faith-based community, it is the main locus for Armenian
cultural life and, as a result, it exists as much, if not more, for social reasons as
it does for instilling faith. A sixty-eight year old American-born man from Los
Angeles commented: “It’s extended family. It’s as much of a cultural and
family tradition as a religious experience.” Some Armenians’ experience of
the Apostolic Church is principally social, rather than an institution for
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spiritual encounters. For them, topics of conversation at church are rarely
spiritual, but reflect the day-to-day concerns of the Armenian people locally
and globally. Levon, a self-described atheist, believes that most Armenians
attend church for social and ethnic fellowship and not for religious reasons:
The Apostolic Church... is really far beyond the church. It’s a national
gathering place, I would say, where many things are related and
discussed simultaneously that go beyond the church doctrines, if you
will. So if you go to churches in Glendale, in Hollywood on Sundays,
it’s more of a meeting place for Armenians to discuss politics in
Armenia, to discuss welfare here, to discuss schools and their children.
The church becomes a gathering place where they express their identity
as Armenians, rather than their belief in God. Now that doesn’t mean
that they don’t believe in God, but the church is not really only that.
For some it’s not any of that, but it’s a place where they can be
Armenians every Sunday. Now, contrast that with Americans for
instance, they don’t need the church to be a place where they can
explore and express their racial identities, the church is a place where
they would pray, and that’s what it serves.
The social aspect of the Apostolic Church is especially appreciated by those
whose day-to-day lives provide little interaction with fellow-Armenians. A
Canadian-born Armenian recounted his experience growing up in Toronto:
“Um, my four best friends now all went to Sunday school and... some of them
went to public school, some of them went to Armenian school, so we were
never in school together, but we were in Sunday school together, so my best
friends I met in Sunday school, memories were really good.” Several youth
remarked how the Apostolic Church provided them with a space within which
to meet fellow Armenians of their own age.
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The Apostolic Church has an open, flexible tradition that allows
worshippers to participate in aspects of the Sunday mass according to their
own choice and schedule. Armenians do not define their sense of attachment
to the church by frequency of participation or by adherence to particular
doctrines. Rather, most believe that the church is primarily a place for
gathering the ethnic community. The Divine Liturgy is a powerful, sacred
ritual that allows the worshipper to transcend space and time. Locally, it
brings together Armenians scattered around the urban and suburban areas of
North America. Armenians in Toronto, for instance, drive from Mississauga,
Markham, and North York - among other places - to Holy Trinity Church at
the corner of Highway 401 and Markham Rd. In Los Angeles, Armenians
throughout the San Fernando Valley gather at St. Peter’s on Sherman Way
each week for the Sunday mass. Globally, the liturgy unites Armenians
through a common set of sacred rituals. It also connects worshippers with their
ancestors, reaffirming their connection to a millennium-old lineage of belief.
Patterns of church participation among Armenian apostolics seem to
resonate with Grace Davie’s concept of “vicarious memory.” Based on an
analysis of religion in many European nations, Davie notes that the majority of
Europeans do not participate in religious communities, yet they are glad
religious institutions form part of the social landscape, and many expect to
participate in religious rites at important stages of life, relying upon the church
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to perform marriage or funeral ceremonies. In this environment, the religious
memory is perpetuated by the churches’ official personnel and by a minority of
dedicated lay members on behalf of a mostly disconnected population. That is,
the church has been delegated the responsibility of looking after the religious
memory. Davie refers to this relationship between the church and a
disconnected population as “vicarious memory.” A religious tradition,
maintained vicariously, is precarious. With minimal contact between the
religious institution and the population it represents, Davie believes that there
will be a “dramatic generation-by-generation drop in religious knowledge”
(Davie, 2000, p. 60).
However, whereas in Europe vicarious memory is a consequence of
modernization and processes of secularization, the Armenian Apostolic
tradition has a built-in system of vicarious memory. The liturgical tradition is
open and flexible, allowing worshippers to attend a portion of the weekly
mass; popular sentiment condones infrequent attendance; and specific
doctrines are not emphasized by members. Moreover, the Apostolic Church is
charged, not only with perpetuating a religious tradition, but ethnic traditions
too. The deep historic connections between the Apostolic Church and the
nation of Armenia have given the church a central role in the life of the
community. The task of keeping both religious and ethnic memories provides
the Apostolic Church with a wider population to serve. In the concept of
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vicarious memory, there are both carriers and delegators. That is, there are
some charged with the task of carrying-on the religious memory, and others
who prefer to delegate the responsibility. The following section will sketch
briefly the characteristics of those who are likely to fill the role of “carrier.”
The carriers of the ethno-religious memory
Just as Davie notices that certain segments of European populations
tend to be charged with the responsibility of perpetuating the religious
memory, some Armenians are more likely to participate in apostolic rituals
than others. In the role of priests and deacons, men tend to fill a select number
of official church positions. But women over the age of forty comprise most of
the regular congregants and also tend to populate the choir. Not allowed to
serve as priests or deacons, women do not participate in the liturgical rites
performed on the altar. Many men accompany their wives and children to
church, but do not remain in the sanctuary to participate in the Divine Liturgy.
While they may light a candle, many men spend most of their time at church
socializing. In the following, a husband and wife discuss the way many men
experience the Apostolic Church:
Husband: In a typical Armenian Church... there will be more people
outside than inside.
Interviewer: They won’t fit in?
Husband: No, half of it is empty, but they’ll be outside.
Wife: They prefer to stand outside talking.. .The women... not all the
women will be inside, but more of them. The ratio is more
women than men inside.
Husband: But, you see, it shows that, yeah, it’s the church and it’s
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supposed to be religiously motivated and it’s also the social
aspect for the... it’s a more social thing.
Interviewer: A man who goes to the Armenian Church and stands
outside. What does he talk about?
Husband: Oh, politics, they can talk business, they can talk...
Interviewer: If I was a fly on the wall, what would I hear?
Wife: You might hear Lakers, you might hear business, you might
hear... where they are going on their next weekend outing,
whose house they’re going to visit at.
Husband: .. .how much money they gambled in Vegas. But, I don’t
think... on a typical Sunday they’re talking about religious
things.
While attending church regularly, many men do not participate in the religious
rituals and expect official leaders and lay participants (mostly women) to carry
on the religious tradition on their behalf. Paradoxically, vicarious memory is
maintained on behalf of some who visit the church regularly, but only engage
in the social aspects.
One respondent believes that Armenians from the Middle Eastern
diasporas - such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iran - are more engaged in the life of
the church because, surrounded by a Muslim culture, the church remained a
focal point of community life and the principle way in which ethnic traditions
were transmitted to subsequent generations. It may be the case, then, that
Armenians from certain regions of the diaspora are also more likely to be
carriers of the apostolic memory. There are many, however, who rarely - if
ever - attend the Apostolic Church for either religious or social reasons. These
delegators are disengaged from any regular involvement with the church and
they will be discussed in the following section.
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The disengaged
Despite the importance o f the church for Armenians living in North
America, a very small number participate on a regular basis and this lack of
involvement concerns both clergy and lay leaders. There are 13 Apostolic
churches in Los Angeles County and, based on a conservative estimate, there
are two hundred thousand Armenians. If 95% of Armenians affiliate
themselves with the Apostolic Church, then there is roughly one church for
every 14,615 apostolics. St. Peter’s Church, one of the largest Armenian
Apostolic churches in the Los Angeles area, boasts a weekly attendance of
around 800, but most of the area’s churches have a much smaller weekly
turnout. Similarly, in Toronto there are two Apostolic churches and it is
estimated that there are 20,000 Armenians; again, if 95% are Apostolic, then
there is one church for every 9500 apostolics.
In an attempt to calculate the percentage of Armenians who participate
in religious services on a regular basis, David Bogosian and Paul Kassabian
collected data on how many Armenians attend church on a typical Sunday.
They concluded that, on average, only 3% of Armenians living in North
America attend a service in a given week (Bogosian & Kassabian, 2001).
Several respondents noted that the lackluster attendance rates for the Armenian
Apostolic Church are not unique to their community. Some argue that today’s
youth, in general, have less interest in the church. Others believe that the
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world is simply becoming more secularized and that low attendance rates
among apostolics reflect a worldwide trend toward religious decline. But
considering that 21% of Canadians and 40% of Americans attend church on a
weekly basis, the Armenian statistic seems out-of-place in the two national
contexts (Bibby, 2002; Gallup & Lindsay, 1999).
As already noted, many Armenians simply do not place a high
premium on church attendance. A person can have a strong sense of
attachment to the Armenian Apostolic Church, yet only darken its doors on
Christmas and Easter. Many clergy and lay leaders, however, express concern
over the majority of Armenians who attend church infrequently, those which I
refer to as the disengaged. And while the disengaged reflect the full spectrum
of the Armenian community - they are young and old, male and female, and
originate from all Armenian communities around the world - there are three
groups that consistently emerge as those who are feared to be particularly
uninvolved: Armenians from Armenia and former Soviet Socialist Republics,
the youth, and American-born Armenians. The following section will
examine, in turn, each of the three disengaged groups.
Armenians from former Soviet Socialist Republics:
The lingering effects of religious suppression
Immigrants from the Republic of Armenia form the largest wave of
Armenians to settle in the United States in recent years. According to the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 30,202 immigrants came to the
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United States from the Republic of Armenia between 1992 and 2002.1 The
2001 U.S. census reports that 66,935 individuals of Armenian ancestry
migrated to the U.S. between 1990 and 2000 from Armenia and all of the
diasporic regions.2 It is widely suspected that such figures represent a severe
undercount and that the actual number of Armenian migrants is considerably
higher. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia has suffered from
widespread poverty and many have left the region to seek better economic
conditions abroad. It is estimated that more than one third of Armenia’s
population of 3.5 million have emigrated since the nation gained independence
in 1991 (Miller & Touryan Miller, 2003). Among those who left, many joined
family members who had previously migrated to the United States, settling
predominantly around Los Angeles in East Hollywood and Glendale.
♦ 7
Armenians from the Republic of Armenia, or Hayastantsis, have been
received by the broader Armenian community in Los Angeles with some
trepidation. According to several American-born and longer-established
Armenians, Hayastantsis are often engaged in the black market economy. In
Soviet times, illicit business practices were a common means of earning a
supplemental income and it is believed that new immigrants sometimes
1 Figures obtained from “Table 3: Immigrants Admitted by Region and Country o f Birth.”
Website: http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/IMM02vrbk/IMMExceI/table3.xls.
Armenians who migrated before 1992 were recorded as migrants from the Soviet Union.
2 PUMS Microdata.
J In the Armenian language, Armenians from the Republic o f Armenia are called Hayastantsis.
“Hayastan” is the Armenian word for the nation o f Armenia.
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continue such illegal practices on American soil. Several respondents
mentioned that California’s prisons are disproportionately filled with
Armenians from the Republic of Armenia and it is feared that this large
number of criminals is tarnishing the favorable reputation that the existing
Armenian community worked hard to develop and maintain.
Along with their work ethic, the new immigrants’ religious
commitments are also a matter of concern. Many note that the communist
system in the Soviet Union stunted - and in many cases destroyed - the faith of
the Armenian people and that the lingering effects of communist ideology
continue to underlie the current low rates of church participation among
Hayastantsis. Prior to the October Revolution, there were reportedly 489
churches in Armenia, but by 1940 there were only 9 operating in all of the
Soviet Union. Propaganda promoting scientific atheism effectively diminished
religious sentiments among the youth and, in general, the Armenian population
lost much of their connection to the church (Corley, 1996a). Cindy, a twenty-
five year-old Los Angeles resident who was bom in Soviet Armenia, recounted
the following story of her elementary school experience in the Soviet era:
Life there w as... there was so much propaganda and so much
falsehood... we were taught so many false things. I mean, for
example, ever since I was in preschool I thought Lenin w as... we
would call him Grandpa Lenin and we thought that he was basically,
for us, God. All the qualities of God we would attribute to him. He
was omnipotent, omniscient... yeah he was everywhere and knew
everything we would do. That’s, at least, how we thought of him as
little kids, you know. I mean, one time I remember... we were asked in
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the first grade if we believed in God and nobody said anything... I had
never thought about it... [and the teacher said] “Well, there’s no such
thing as God. It doesn’t exist. If you want me to prove it, just close
your eyes and go like this [places hands together in a posture of prayer]
and ask God to give you candy.” And, you know, we did it. There’s
nothing. Now, she [the teacher] said “close your eyes and do the same
thing, but instead of asking God, ask Grandpa Lenin.” And, all of a
sudden there is candy all over the place...
The Armenian Apostolic Church was not completely eradicated under the
Soviet system, and was occasionally allowed to redevelop its presence. For
instance, the Catholicos’ support of the war against the Nazis allowed the
church to occupy a more favorable position in the Soviet Union and, in 1943,
Stalin permitted the Russian Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches to re
establish some of their institutions, but they remained strictly limited by
government forces (Corley, 1996a). By 1984 there were 33 registered
Armenian churches in the Soviet Union (Corley, 1996b). And from 1985 to
1990, the new climate of openness brought-upon by Gorbachev’s introduction
of the concepts of glasnost and perestroika resulted in the opening of several
more churches and monasteries (Corley, 1998). However, the Armenian
Church was still severely underdeveloped, a fragment o f its pre-Soviet
institutional strength.
In California, it is believed that the majority of Hayastantsi Armenians
have little interest in becoming an active part of the church’s life. A sixty-
eight year old American-born Armenian commented:
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There’s [a] large group of people that we don’t even see. Who don’t
even come to church and those are the people from the old Soviet
Republic because they had seventy years of communism and were
actively discouraged from going to church. In the old regime, people
who went to church, some were ostracized. They sure couldn’t get
anywhere in their careers if they were believing Christians in the
communist society, so there’s this whole, kind of, lost generation.
Others remarked that this “lost generation” is not inclined to become an
official member of the Apostolic Church. The concept of church membership
is unfamiliar to many foreign bom Armenians. Churches in the United States
and Canada must have a membership roll in order to qualify for status as a
religious community, but in Armenia and many other areas of the diaspora all
Armenians are considered to be members of the church. For Hayastantsi
Armenians, membership conjures-up thoughts about political life in the Soviet
era. A 45 year-old priest from Los Angeles noted:
If you tell them of membership they are very cautious, because they
were forced to be a member in the Communist Party, so when you talk
to them about membership you formalize it. They are not very
comfortable with that. They give their donations, they help the church,
but they are cautious. Don’t talk to them about dues-paying.
It was also noted that, when Hayastantsi Armenians do attend church, they
often enter the sanctuary only to light a candle. But, in some churches there’s
a growing optimism about the Hayastantsi population. An Apostolic Church
located in Hollywood has a growing population of Hayastantsi Armenians,
many of whom are currently serving on the parish council.
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In 1991, San Diego began to receive an influx of Armenians from
Baku, a city in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. Armenians
lived peacefully with Azeris for many generations, but in 1988 things began to
change. Springing from Gorbachev’s announcement of the concepts of
glasnost and perestroika, Armenians began to support the unification of the
Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia with the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a
territory that lies between Armenia and Azerbaijan and that was predominantly
populated by Armenians. The move toward unification was not supported by
the Azeri government and sparked pogroms against the Armenians living in
Azerbaijan. While the exact number is not known, some state that several
hundred Armenians were killed in the Azeri cities of Sumgait and Baku and,
from 1998 to 1990, it is estimated that 350,000 to 400,000 Armenians left
Azerbaijan (Miller & Touryan Miller, 2003).
Father Datev Tatoulian, the parish priest of the only Armenian Church
in San Diego, began receiving phone calls in 1991 from organizations that
were re-settling Armenians from Baku in the San Diego area: “I used to get [a]
telephone call from IRC, International Rescue Committee, and also Caritas,
Catholic Organization... that Armenian family is coming next week and two
people, three people, they used to tell me their age and their profession, some
background information and when I heard the first family came and then few
days later they call me again that another family will come and then another
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family, then I ask the head of this organization, how many? Is there a limit?”
Father Datev was told that thirty-six families would soon be settling in the San
Diego area and so he immediately assembled a committee - of church leaders,
lawyers, teachers, and other professionals - to assist the Baku Armenians in
the settlement process. This committee helped the new immigrants find
furniture, employment, and they also educated them on aspects of the country’s
legal system: “I invited the police department [to educate the new
immigrants]... because they’re coming from former Soviet country. The
mentality’s different and I’m proud to say that all these families, now at
present, we have about a hundred and fifty families from Baku... and none of
them broke any law.”
Part of Father Datev’s efforts also involved educating the Baku
Armenians about the life of the church: “They know that they are Armenian.
They have a strong feeling. Religiously, they are Christian. They don’t know
much and they did not practice much. The only thing they did was they went to
church, lit a candle, and left.” Language differences have made the integration
of the Baku Armenians into the church even more difficult. While some of the
older generation speaks a Karabakh Armenian dialect, the younger Baku
Armenians speak Russian. As a result, Father Datev had a member from a
local Russian Orthodox Church come and explain, in Russian, aspects of the
Armenian Apostolic Church’s doctrine, ritual, and history. Today, two Baku
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Armenians have been ordained as sub-deacons. Others help with the Sunday
school program, serve as acolytes, and sing in the choir. But, the integration of
Baku Armenians into the San Diego Church has been limited. Brenda, an
active lay leader in the San Diego Church, said: “they [Armenians from Baku]
went away and never came back. And now we can’t get them, I mean a few of
the altar servers will come once in a while, like at Easter and stuff, but they...
it’s just, something’s missing for them. They just, they identify with it... but
when it comes to us telling them about faith and those things, it’s like they
don’t even want to hear it.” Brenda can recruit some of the Baku Armenians to
help prepare and serve meals at social functions, but she is unable to convince
them to participate in the Sunday liturgy: “I can get them to come and serve a
dinner, they’ll do that. And they’ll enjoy doing that, and they’ll do some social
activities, but I can’t get them to come for liturgy. They’re completely
disconnected to the church in that sense, completely disconnected.”
Youth: Between ascription and choice
There is a consensus among clergy and lay leaders that there needs to
be more youth actively engaged in the Apostolic Church in North America.
The absence of youth seems glaringly apparent to those who attend church
events. One young apostolic man noted: “If you visit the churches and you
calculate the average age, it’s going to be pretty high up there.” Similarly, a
twenty-two year old from Los Angeles commented: “If you look at like the
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demographics of the entire church, you see a bunch of kids, some parents, and
a lot of old people.”
Ani is a twenty year-old Armenian woman who is not engaged in
church activities and, in many ways, typifies the experience of the young
Armenians I interviewed. A bright, attractive university student, Ani is the
first in her family that is Canadian-born; her mother came to Canada from
Jerusalem, her father from Turkey. Until the eighth grade, Ani attended a
private Armenian school that sits adjacent to a large Apostolic Church in
Toronto. Once she reached High School, she attended a private, non-
Armenian school, but on Saturdays she took Armenian classes where she
learned to read, write, and speak Armenian. There, she also learned about the
history, culture, and faith of her ancestors. Ani says that she’s not religious,
but she goes to church with her family at Christmas and Easter. “It’s kind of
bad to say,” says Ani, “but we usually just go to see our family, be a part of the
ceremony for a bit, light a candle, then leave. And then, all of us would get
together from the church at someone’s house.” Ani thinks that she’s typical:
“Everyone I know that’s my age, they are just like me. I don’t know what they
feel inside, but from what I see they don’t go to church. They don’t seem like
they believe in anything, right? Maybe because w e’ve been forced ever since
we were little kids, but a lot of us, I would say 90 percent or something like
that, not religious at all.”
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As it turns out, Ani does pray. She says: “I’m not a religious person
and I don’t really pray, but if something bad happens, I start praying in
Armenian.” I asked Ani if she feels anything toward the Apostolic Church.
She replied: “Honestly, when I see it, I want it to be there, just because, first of
all, I’ve grown-up with it. Second of all, it feels like... if I drive by or
something I’m like ‘oh, it’s my church...’ And, it’s more like, my home. When
I’m in there, I feel like I can... be comfortable.”
Given that Armenians have a long history as a Christian people, I asked
Ani if there was a connection between being Armenian and being Christian.
Ani replied:
I don’t know because, the only thing that comes to my mind when I
think Armenian is ever since... even in school you would hear this, we
were the first Christian nation, 301 and all that. So, it’s kind of like...
usually, if I hear an Armenian I associate, I don’t even ask “what’s your
religion?” I just think they’re Christian. Like, never have I ever heard
anyone ask what are you? So I guess it comes with the territory. I
don’t know any Armenians who are not Christian.
Like Ani, all of the youth I interviewed attended church infrequently.
But, more than a lack of faith, youth consistently mentioned that they did not
attend church because they were simply too busy. A twenty-two year old Los
Angeles woman succinctly summarized the comments of many youth: “It’s an
issue of time commitments... I’m not getting up on Sunday morning and
driving to church and sitting there and then driving back and I’m not going to
this meeting... and then there’s just this excuse. I don’t have time. I don’t
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have time. I don’t have time.” For many youth, the demands of school, work,
and commitments to other Armenian associations take precedence over church
activities. Other youth note that the liturgy - which typically lasts around three
hours - is too long and that they would consider attending church if the Sunday
mass was shortened to one hour: “Maybe if they actually shortened the liturgy
that would probably motivate me to go. I mean if it was only an hour long,
that’s not a big deal. But four hours... especially when you’re out Saturday
nights. You’re out late and it starts at like, I think it starts at ten and it goes till
one. So, it’s kind of like, yeah, I’d like to sleep in one day.” But, the youth do
attend church events on important days. A twenty year-old University of
Toronto student commented: “More or less, it’s Christmas and Easter for all of
u s... very few friends of mine go more often than that. The other time you
might go is if someone passed away. We do, like seven days after they passed
away you go to church.”
In most instances, there were other reasons underlying the youth’s
aversion to church. While they initially mentioned not having enough time,
many youth also noted that they did not benefit from the services. Steve, a
twenty-three year old law student from Los Angeles, attended an Armenian
Apostolic Church through his childhood and adolescent years, but now
frequents a Catholic service. He noted that many of his friends also attend
other, non-apostolic churches: “I have friends who are American-born
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Armenians that go to Catholic churches, go to Protestant churches, go to Bel
Air Pres[byterian]... their parents are both Armenian and they were baptized in
the Armenian [Apostolic] Church... but they don’t get anything out of the
service.” When I asked Steve why he attends a Catholic service instead of the
Apostolic Church in which he was raised, Steve replied: “I don’t dislike the
service. It’s just I don’t get any meaning out of it... I think I would get a lot
more if there was a lot more in English and if it was shorter and there were a
lot of changes to it.” Probing deeper, I asked Steve to describe what it means
to “get meaning” out of a service, he replied: “Something for the week, that I
get some kind of message or something to think about for the rest of the
week.” Like Steve, several respondents mentioned that they were disappointed
by the content and presentation of the priests’ sermons. A young Armenian
woman from Los Angeles noted: “You cannot expect people to drive to your
church and sit there and commit time when they don’t understand what you’re
[the priest] saying because you’re not making any sense and it’s not that they
don’t have intelligence. It’s that they don’t have the communication skills.
And it’s not a language thing because they speak English. It’s the idea of
succinctly communicating your sermon, succinctly delivering a message.”
Many youth have little desire to attend the Apostolic Church because
they do not understand the Divine Liturgy. One young Armenian in his early
twenties commented: “You kind of know what’s going on, you might catch a
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couple of the words, you’re like, oh, so they’re talking about so-and-so and
such-and-such happened, and blah, blah, blah, but most of it is like, what are
they talking about? What’s going on?” The Divine Liturgy in the Armenian
Apostolic Church is performed in an ancient Armenian dialect known as
“karapah.” Those who speak modern Armenian recognize a few of the words
spoken in karapah, but the majority of the Divine Liturgy is unrecognizable to
the youth. But, more than just the language, the symbolism and ritual is often
not understood:
One of the things that I’ve never understood is, I don’t know if you’ve
been to an Armenian liturgy, but at some points they just stand up and
then they just sit down, they stand up and they sit down, and the
younger generation has no clue when to stand up, when to sit down,
and you’re constantly looking through the side of your eyes to see like,
when’s that old lady going to stand up or sit down? It was kind of a
joke that went around, like they should have some kind of a sign saying
“Stand up” or “Sit down.”
Even though the youth may be critical of the Apostolic Church, attend
infrequently, and - in some cases - prefer to participate in non-apostolic
churches, they maintain a deep sense of attachment to the Armenian Apostolic
Church. Steve, who attends a Catholic service because he finds it more
meaningful, noted: “it bothers me that my brother and I don’t get more out of
the church service, just because our grandfathers really helped build the church
and our families are so involved. But, the way it is right now, we just don’t get
anything out of it and... it makes it difficult. That’s why we haven’t switched
to another church because we can’t really get away from [the Apostolic
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Church], Just because it is... it is home to us. We were just bom and raised
there.” Like Steve, many of the youth believe that their religious traditions are
both ascribed and a matter of choice. Bom and raised in the Armenian
apostolic tradition, they feel as though the Apostolic Church is their spiritual
home, but they are also making choices about the ways in which they
participate in religious services. They are not abandoning entirely the
apostolic tradition, but they are also not inclined to attend the Apostolic
Church purely out of adherence to tradition. Rather, they only want to
participate if it can provide some sort of benefit in exchange for their time.
They are looking for meaning, contemporary relevance, and an accessible
liturgical tradition. Hagop, the principal of an Armenian school in Los
Angeles, believes that the tendency for youth to view religiosity as a choice is
a reflection of their experience growing up in a pluralistic environment:
To be Christian is no longer an assumption that’s made for a lot of
Armenians. It used to be that we were automatically bom into
Christianity and that was not an aspect of your existence that you
questioned. Today I think the effect of American society is that the
youth feel that they have alternatives and choices, and they have a lot
of access to technology and information in that sense, which educates
them in many ways. So the traditional family socialization, or the
Armenian school, does not have the same unilateral impact anymore. A
lot of young people feel that they need to make the choice to actively
participate in Christianity. They might tell you, “I’m Christian,”
however they don’t practice their Christianity. The practice, which
probably is the prerequisite for the survival of the church, the practice
has to be a choice that they make. And in order for them to make that
choice, that informed choice, they have to see the relevance of the
Armenian Church in their lives. That’s one of the reasons that I think
Armenian-ness and Christianity maybe are becoming more and more
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separate from one another, and a lot of Armenians are perceiving their
Armenian-ness separate from their Christianity.
With the change from ascription to choice, ethno-religiosity undergoes
dramatic changes; being Armenian is no longer synonymous with being
apostolic or even a Christian. Faced with many religious options, the
allegiance o f Armenian youth in North America can no longer be taken-for-
granted by the church.
The decision to attend another non-apostolic church while maintaining
attachment to the apostolic tradition exemplifies the resilience of ties to the
Apostolic Church. It also reveals a new dimension of vicarious memory.
Those who look to the church to carry-out the religious memory vicariously
are not necessarily disconnected from religious institutions. Several youth
look to the apostolic tradition to perpetuate ancestral rites while they
experiment with new non-Armenian religious communities.
American-born Armenians: Feeling neglected, needs unmet
Concerns over the absence of youth and Armenians from former Soviet
Socialist Republics were mentioned frequently. There emerged, however, a
third group of people that some believe are conspicuously absent from the
church. Recent waves of Armenian immigrants have helped to fill the pews of
the Armenian Apostolic churches, particularly in Los Angeles, and these new
waves of immigrants mask a disconcerting trend, the departure of the
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American-born. And while this group was not discussed as thoroughly by
respondents, it is still worth a brief mention.
Unlike today’s youth, these American-born Armenians grew up being
much more actively engaged in church activities. They are the children and
grandchildren of the earliest Armenian immigrants who came following the
events of the Armenian genocide in the first few decades of the twentieth
century. Many of these American-born Armenians reminisced fondly about
the years they spent in the Armenian Church Youth Organization (ACYO).
Several had brought their own children to church and were involved in lay
leadership roles teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, or serving on the
parish council.
But, in recent years they feel as though the church community around
them has changed. A sixty-eight year old Armenian from Los Angeles
remarked:
It’s hard to tell, but, uh, whenever I go to church, I don’t recognize
most of the people that are there. Yeah, especially on Sunday or Easter
Sunday. It’s just... I hardly know anybody. Out of four or five
hundred people, I might know twenty or thirty. I would say that the
percentage of people who are foreign-born [is] probably close to the
majority now, if not more. And all of the other churches, it’s probably
even higher. That’s probably been one of the big changes in the time I
was a boy. When I was a kid, all of the foreign-born were old people,
or people who I consider to be old.
Repeated influxes of new immigrants have arrived in the Los Angeles area
over the past twenty-five years; Armenians fled the civil war in Lebanon
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during the 1970s; many left Iran in the early 1980s as a result o f the fall of the
Shah; and, most recently, Armenians from the Republic of Armenia have
relocated as a result of poor economic conditions. With each wave, the church
has faced the challenge of helping another group o f newcomers become
established. What is more, conditions in the nation of Armenia have also
commanded attention. Disaster relief following the devastating earthquake in
1988 and the nation’s chronic poverty have provided compelling diversions.
Several people noted that the church has been preoccupied with the needs of
new immigrants and the nation of Armenia and, in so doing, has neglected the
needs of the American-born generation. Whereas newcomers often require
practical forms of assistance such as help finding employment or housing, the
American-born are looking for spiritual experiences, “good” sermons relevant
to daily life, and fellowship with like-minded others. Too much of a focus on
social service provision has left the church’s spiritual mission stagnant.
Moreover, several respondents noted that they were just “different” than the
new waves of foreign-bom and, as a result, simply did not feel a strong sense
of attachment to them in the church community. One American-born man
noted, “there’s this large group of people who were not raised as Americans
and don’t have the same outlook as those of us who were born Americans do.
And, uh, there’s a real gap, there’s a social gap between the two groups.”
Specifically, it was mentioned that newcomers didn’t share the same work
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ethic, fondness for American culture, and desire to be engaged in voluntary
commitments in the church.
But, in all of this, the American-born have not renounced their
affiliation with the Apostolic Church. While they may feel neglected and
attend services only infrequently, they maintain a deep sense of commitment to
the apostolic tradition.
Inciting engagement: Revealing the meaning of the liturgy
While clergy and lay leaders seem quite comfortable with the church’s
role as carrier of religious and ethnic traditions, leaders in the Apostolic
Church generally express much interest in having more Armenians
participating regularly in the church’s activities. There are differing ideas
about how to get more people engaged and the range o f ideas leads some
people to action and others to inaction. For some, the future o f the church is
taken-for-granted and the non-involvement of disengaged populations is not a
matter of much concern. Given its 1700-year history, the Apostolic Church
possesses an air of permanence; having already survived numerous threats by
neighboring states, many believe that the church will persist into the
foreseeable future. The transmission of religious memory is automatic; each
generation learns the rituals and beliefs from their parents and grandparents.
For others, the church is believed to be desperately in need of direct
intervention; their aim is to transform passive, nominal affiliation into active,
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vibrant participation. And, without such intervention, it is believed that the
Apostolic Church will face a decline and potentially disappear in the North
American context. In response, some feel that modernization of the church’s
rituals is the best solution. They argue that, among other things, the mass
should be conducted in English and shortened to an hour. But, for most of the
clergy and lay leaders such changes are far too drastic; they argue, instead, that
the church’s traditions simply need to be revealed anew to those who are
disengaged.
The leadership of the Armenian Apostolic Church seems to be plotting
a course without much concern for the bustling religious marketplace that
surrounds it. While some clergy believe that they need to take action because
their “sheep” are being stolen by aggressive religious groups (Evangelicals,
Pentecostals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were mentioned most frequently), most
clergy and lay leaders believe that the number of apostolics who join other
religious communities is minimal. Perhaps it is on account of this that
Apostolic churches are not incorporating many ideas from other Christian
churches. But, it is also the case that other churches are just qualitatively
different from the Apostolic Church and their ideas and programs are simply
not adaptable. A young Deacon noted: “I’d like to say that there are models
that we could be looking to ... and, personally, I try and keep my eyes open to
see what would apply, and I have a difficult time with that... in a lot of other
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cases, it just doesn’t really apply because the situation is so different.” Rather
than serving as models for emulating, other churches seem to serve as models
to avoid. For instance, many define the apostolic experience in
contradistinction to Protestantism, particularly to the evangelical stream. They
argue that American Protestant churches offer their worshippers an immediate,
effortless form of religious experience. The apostolic experience, by contrast,
involves work. An American-born woman describes the comparison: “The
Crystal Cathedral and them, you know what? That’s American culture today.
Add water and stir. How many mothers stay home and cook, or they go and
they pick up dinner someplace, or they use Swanson TV dinners. W e’re not
like that. We’re like, everything has to take time and effort. Everything has to
be tedious and long. That’s what makes it good. That’s what makes it
Armenian and that’s what makes it viable for us.”
Without much desire to emulate existing models, the leadership of the
Apostolic Church is looking inward at the resources that the church already
possesses. And despite the fact that there are multiple populations of
disengaged, leadership in the church seems to employ a singular philosophy
when thinking about those who are not involved; the solution to invigorating
the participation of the disengaged is to reveal, through education, the rich
symbolism of the Divine Liturgy.
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For a priest of an Apostolic Church in Los Angeles, the Divine Liturgy
is the quintessential component of the church: “the Divine Liturgy... is the
axis of our faith. Take away the Divine Liturgy, our church dies.” More than
specific doctrines or personal acts of devotion, the celebration of the liturgy is
what lies at the center of the apostolic experience. Not all Apostolic churches
have youth programs, Bible studies, or a Ladies Guild, but each Apostolic
Church celebrates the Divine Liturgy once, and only once, each week. Though
it has changed over the years, its current form can be traced back over a
millennium. The Divine Liturgy has been described as an opera and this
metaphor provides an apt description: “Our service is like an opera, every
single Sunday. It’s a whole... broken into three parts and there’s not much that
they can change, other than the sermon.” There is a theatrical quality to the
Sunday mass; music narrates the liturgy from start to finish; priests and
deacons, adorned in costume, move about the stage-like altar in choreographed
steps; the “props” include icons and burning incense; the congregation or
audience watches the proceedings and, sometimes, respond with emotion. But,
the Divine Liturgy is also like an opera in that it is difficult to decipher without
knowing the language and symbolism used in the performance. A young,
American-born Armenian from Los Angeles commented: “The Armenian
Church doesn’t do as good a job informing their members what the hell they’re
doing, you know? It’s like a show that goes on, but there’s no program and
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you have no idea what they are talking about.” Not knowing karapah - the
ancient Armenian used in the liturgy - and the symbolism of the rituals,
experiencing the Divine Liturgy is like watching Madame Butterfly without
knowing the basic storyline or a word of Italian. The proceedings may have
some visual interest and some of the symbolism may be comprehensible, but
the deep meanings are largely lost to the viewer.
Since the liturgy is the central aspect of the apostolic experience,
participation in the church necessarily involves the liturgical tradition. It is
presumed that the vast majority of Armenians have little understanding of the
liturgy and this lack of understanding is what deters them from participation.
A woman from San Diego commented:
They’re here because they’re Armenians. They don’t go inside the
church. They don’t participate in the life of the liturgy. To them, it’s
two hours of nonsense. And it’s probably because they don’t
understand it and really there is no format for them to understand it,
except to come and just keep going through it until it’s brainwashed
them into doing it... I mean as they get older, it happens.
For most of the leadership, the liturgy itself does not need to change. Instead,
efforts need to focus on revealing the significance of the liturgy. A twenty-
eight year old Armenian man from San Diego noted:
The Armenian Apostolic Church is whole and complete as it is. It’s
perfect. But, the reality is, how can we reveal more of what is there...
It’s not something new or necessarily innovative... it’s not changing or
saying the Armenian Church needs to change, nothing about it needs to
change. .. .but we need to articulate and to help show the relevance.
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One priest made a distinction between customs and traditions to illustrate how
the church is trying to help people become engaged in the liturgy: “I really
believe that there is a difference between custom and tradition. Custom -
when you light a candle, that’s a custom, because your grandparents, they did,
you do the same thing. A custom becomes a tradition when the meaning of
that custom enriches your life.”
Moving people from “custom” to a place where the meaning of the
liturgy enriches their lives requires a pedagogical strategy. One young,
American-born Armenian talked about teaching people the meaning of the
liturgy: “Maybe we could provide a little bit of scaffolding, you know, to
bring... and to provide... what’s some core information of things that could
facilitate your experimentation and participation in the liturgy for this year.”
The image of scaffolding resonates with what most clergy and lay leaders
envision for the church. While they do not want to change the liturgy, they
often discussed establishing a structure to make the various elements of the
liturgical tradition more accessible. Specifically, church leadership believes
that education should focus on revealing the meaning of liturgical symbols.
Steve, a twenty-two year old active in the Armenian Church Youth
Organization, noted:
Well, it’s a symbolic church. I mean, everything about it is symbolic,
you know? So, symbols don’t do any good unless you know what they
are there for, right? I mean, otherwise, you know, a thing that has
smoke coming out of it is just a thing that has smoke coming out of it
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and you’re like, I can’t breathe. If you know there’s a point behind it
and it means something to you, then it becomes a relevant thing and an
important thing, you know?
Worshipping in the Apostolic Church is most often described in mystical
terms. And, for many, acquiring knowledge o f the liturgical tradition helps to
induce a mystical worship experience. An American-born woman from San
Diego, actively involved in lay leadership, describes the relationship between
effort, knowledge, and the mystical experience as follows:
You know, our liturgy, it’s alm ost.. .if you don’t have your heart and
mind engaged together to bring your spirit alive through it, it becomes
this unreachable, intangible thing. It’s there, it’s bigger, you don’t
understand it. And everybody’s different. You know, sometimes
people get tired of reaching; they give up. They realize this is way
beyond them. They’re not going to understand it. There’s got to be a
way for us to make this beautiful faith come alive for them.
Another American-bom Armenian described the relationship between
knowledge and mysticism as a dialectic. He noted: “There’s something about
the element of experiencing and participating, which is essential. But, before
you can participate, there’s some effort... there has to be some kind of frame
of reference or understanding so you can participate. And when you
participate, it’s through the participation that you learn and understand.”
While knowledge helps to induce a mystical worship experience, the worship
experience, in turn, teaches a person about the meaning of the liturgy. Some
have criticized the advent of Sunday school programs for focusing too heavily
on the educational aspect, while denying children and youth the experience of
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worship. One woman argued that children should not be ghettoized in Sunday
school, but should be periodically brought into the Divine Liturgy so that they
can “smell the incense.” For this woman, the lack of first-hand experience in
worship is one of the main factors underlying the disinterest of those who
graduate from the Sunday school program.
One church, in particular, has taken practical steps to make the Divine
Liturgy more accessible. St. Peter’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Van Nuys,
California - a suburb of Los Angeles - employs PowerPoint software to
project transliterations of the liturgy on a large screen during the Sunday mass.
The projection displays four versions of the liturgy simultaneously: the ancient
Armenian or karapah, modern-day Armenian, a phonetic script of modern-day
Armenian using English characters, and an English version. The PowerPoint
presentation also tells the worshippers at what point they are supposed to stand
during the service. When it is appropriate to do so, Der Shnork, the priest at
St. Peter’s, makes an effort to explain the meaning of the church’s symbolism.
For instance, he takes time to explain the meaning of the baptismal ritual
before each child is baptized. According to Der Shnork, his efforts have been
successful: “Many people came to me and said, ‘Father, now I realize what is
the meaning of baptism.’”
Concerns about language feature prominently in discussions about
engaging Armenians in the life of the church. One respondent mentioned that
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there is a group of second and third generation, American-born Armenians -
mostly in their forties and fifties - who would like to establish an English-
language Divine Liturgy. While English translations have been occasionally
performed as “alternative” services, the Divine Liturgy on Sunday mornings is
always conducted in karapah. The principle debate over language in the
church is exemplified by the following comment, made by a Yeretsgin (wife of
a priest) from southern California:
Armenian people here in the diaspora will die, for me, if we change the
language... if we do everything in English, then why should I come to
Armenian Church? Next door there are beautiful other churches that
speak better English, they have better chairs, financially they’re
better... I will go there if they change the language. This is just me.
That’s why I’m really, I’m scared that because the Western world is so
attractive - TV and the pamphlets and the, you name it, the advertise of
the church - then people will come to me and say, “What’s the
difference?” We don’t understand the language, so we go to other
church, where we understand.
The use of language presents a thorny dilemma. A lack of understanding is
believed to underlie people’s infrequent participation in the liturgy, but the use
of karapah in the service keeps the church distinct from the myriad of other
churches that surround Armenians in the North American context.
When asked whether or not they supported translating the liturgy into
English, many liken the discussion to what occurred in the Catholic Church
following the second Vatican Council where sweeping changes were
introduced, including the abolition of the requirement that the mass be
conducted in Latin. Although one young American-born Armenian remarked
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that such changes were good and that the Apostolic Church needs its own
Vatican II, most stated that the changes implemented in the Catholic Church
were not unequivocally beneficial. Archbishop Hovnan Derderian remarked:
“We feel that, you know, even the Catholic Church did not gain more with the
translation of the liturgy from Latin to English.” A seventy year old man who
was born in Greece argued that the removal of the Latin mass destroyed the
global communion of Catholics. No longer could a person visit a Catholic
Church anywhere in the world and hear the liturgy performed in the same
manner: “whereas before I would go to any part of the world and I would have
the same mass in Latin, now when they do it in Swahili, I’m not part of it.” A
woman from San Diego was more ambivalent: “At the same time that it
removed the mystery, it enlightened the faithful to absolutely know what they
were doing.”
The need for an English translation is often brought to the fore by
American- and Canadian-born Armenians who have little understanding of the
Armenian language, ancient or modem, and by the increasing prevalence of
intermarried couples. While welcomed into the church community, non-
Armenian spouses have a difficult time understanding the liturgy and it is often
out of a desire to accommodate these newcomers that congregants press for
more English in the service. Many Apostolic churches have, as a result,
introduced an English sermon or prayer into the service, but the incorporation
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of English is restricted to certain elements. Archbishop Hovnan Derderian
remarked: “There is only one area where English is not introduced fully... is
the Badarak, the Divine Liturgy. We feel that this is one area which should be
untouched.”
More than any other specific group in the Apostolic Church, the youth
are of special concern to the leadership. Perhaps it is because youth represent
the future of the church and, as a matter of organizational survival, effort must
be made to socialize the youth into the church’s traditions. This emphasis on
youth, however, might also be a reflection of the North American context,
where the culture, more generally, exerts a lot of energy on the adolescent
demographic. The Armenian Church Youth Organization began in the United
States in 1946 and only recently has the organization taken steps to establish
chapters in Armenian communities outside North America. Until a few years
ago, Apostolic churches in Armenia placed little or no emphasis on youth
programming and much of the work in recent years has been started through
Western influences.
Regardless of the motivations underlying this emphasis on youth, the
church leadership has many ideas for getting young people involved, beyond
merely teaching them about the symbolism of the liturgical tradition. Some
believe that the church needs to establish more youth programs and hold
workshops centered on issues relevant to youth, connecting the Apostolic faith
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to contemporary moral issues like pre-marital sex, abortion, and
homosexuality. A principal of a private, Armenian school in Los Angeles
noted: “They need to come up with their own version of issues that are
relevant to the youth. None of what they do is really relevant at this point, so
they need to have youth programs. They need to have after school programs.
They need to redefine faith so that it resonates with the confusion and
ambiguity of the youth and it provides some alternatives and answers.” One
priest believes that youth are looking for answers to larger, existential
questions and the church should respond by fulfilling a more traditional role as
a provider of an overarching system of meaning: “Why are we here? You
know, it’s to get them to understand that they are going to find the best
definitions through the church for who they are, how to express themselves,
what their purpose in life is, this is it. And, I’m giving you ways that you can
do that.”
Archbishop Hovnan Derderian has intentionally tried to make the
church leadership more accessible to youth, encouraging them to feel more
comfortable approaching those in authority. The Archbishop commented: “it’s
not only revealing tradition for them. I think it’s more than that. What I’m
trying to do, um, I’ve left the doors wide open for the youth to come forward in
groups and they do, at times, they come in groups, different groups... to
discuss church issues with me.” The Archbishop’s posture toward the youth
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has been well received and many note that they feel at ease around him. A
twenty-two year old woman from Los Angeles compared the current
Archbishop with the one he replaced: “the proper way to address a priest or an
Archbishop is to kiss their hand and then there’s something you say to them.
He [the new Archbishop] doesn’t give you his hand. He hugs you and he
kisses you. The one before him, like, when I was growing-up, it was this
innate fear and automatic straight back and it was, it got put in your face.”
Two programs, in particular, illustrate the church’s latest attempts to
engage young Armenians. First, a Youth Ministry Center was established in
an old community church in Glendale, California. Across the road from the
new center, there are three public schools that house a large proportion of
Armenian students. A full-time priest runs the center, providing weekly Bible
studies for youth and acting as a liaison between the Aposotlic Church and the
public schools. Second, Archbishop Hovnan Derderian established the
Christian Youth Mission to Armenia (CYMA) which provides youth from the
Western Diocese an opportunity to undertake an internship in Armenia during
the summertime. CYMA aims “to take Armenian youth back to their roots in
order to familiarize and educate them with their own religion, culture,
government and people.”4 It should be noted, however, that the emphasis on
youth seems to vary along the political axis of the Apostolic Church. The
4 http://www.acvo-wd.org/califomian/califomian articles.php?ArticleID=33. February 7th ,
2004.
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Youth Ministry Center, CYMA, and the ACYO are all ministries of the
Etchmiadzine wing of the Apostolic Church; the Cilcian Church has no formal
youth organization. While many youth who attend a Cilician Church also join
the Armenian Youth Federation, this organization is primarily oriented toward
political issues.
The surprising resilience of vicarious memory
Despite external threats and multiple fragmentations throughout
Armenian history, the Apostolic Church has survived over a thousand years.
And it continues to persist despite incredibly low levels of church attendance
and despite its unwillingness to become relevant to the North American
context and adopt a more accessible English translation of the Divine Liturgy.
The persistence of the apostolic religious memory in the diaspora is, indeed, a
puzzle. Surrounded by a religious context often compared to a bustling
marketplace where religious vendors are aggressively pursuing new customers
for their religious goods, Armenians maintain a deep sense of commitment to
the apostolic tradition and are not lured away to new religious communities.
What accounts for this strong sense of attachment? Why is the bustling
marketplace ineffective at enticing Armenians?
At first glance, rational choice theory appears to account for the
religious dynamics of apostolics with some accuracy. Rational choice theory
states that religious groups that are exclusive, have a high degree of tension
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with the surrounding socio-cultural environment, and that are “expensive”
(requiring high social, material, and psychic costs for membership) produce a
more committed following (Stark & Finke, 2000). With an open, flexible
tradition that places few demands on members, the Apostolic Church fosters
weak levels of participation. Most Armenian apostolics are classic “free
riders” (a term that places a negative connotation on the concept of vicarious
memory), using the church’s services when needed, but unwilling to invest
time and energy into the church on a regular basis (Stark & Finke, 2000).
They are content to participate at Christmas, Easter, and for rites of passage.
Flowever, rational choice fails to account for the absence of attrition; most
Armenians - despite abysmal attendance rates - remain deeply committed to
the apostolic tradition. Even among the American-born and those who visit
other congregations (who represent only a minute proportion), the Apostolic
Church remains affectionately dubbed the “Mother Church.”
The church maintains its monopoly in the North American diaspora not
because it has adapted to an environment of competition, but because it is
buffered from the potentially eroding effects of competitive forces. The buffer
is multifaceted; the cementing of the apostolic tradition with ethnic identity
provides the church with an integral place in the life of the community that
religious competition cannot undermine; the historical occurrence of the
genocide, the history of Soviet-imposed atheism, and concerns over a
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contemporary “white” genocide (or assimilation) teach members about the
vulnerability of their traditions and that it is their duty to remain committed to
their ethnic community and church; and a sense of diasporic identity keeps
many from feeling completely rooted in North America.
Key to maintaining commitment among apostolics may, paradoxically,
be the tradition’s irrelevance to American culture. The apostolic tradition is
qualitatively different from groups in North America that aggressively recruit
new members. And, being so different, apostolics must relinquish substantial
amounts of religious and social capital in order to switch to another tradition.
Even other Christian traditions seem sufficiently different - described by some
apostolics as “quick fix” or emotional spirituality - that they prove unattractive
or simply too different for Armenian tastes.
Church leaders’ strategies focused on revealing the Divine Liturgy
affirm the uniqueness of the Armenian Church and the difference between the
apostolic tradition and the homegrown varieties of Christianity in North
America. Moreover, emphasizing the liturgy - as opposed to particular
doctrines or creeds - enables the church to maintain an openness and flexibility
that can appeal to the Armenian community as a whole. The liturgy, after all,
is open to multiple interpretations. Traditionalists can view its elements as
literal interpretations of scripture and the reenactment of actual historical
events, while those who question the historical accuracy o f biblical accounts
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may participate in search of mystical experiences and a connection to
ancestors. The church’s monopoly, then, is maintained by refraining from
potentially divisive doctrinal stances, by emphasizing an aspect of the tradition
that is open to multiple interpretations, by requiring only the most minimal
participation, and by maintaining a sufficient difference from American
culture.
Church leadership, however, desires to transform the majority’s
nominal, passive attendance to a much more engaged stature and, in so doing,
may end up changing the open, flexible tradition of apostolic worship into
something that involves a more rigid set of expectations. Time will reveal
whether or not this approach will be adopted and whether or not it will prove
successful. In the meantime, Armenian apostolics will likely continue to look
to church leaders to maintain their religious memory vicariously.
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CHAPTER THREE
FROM REFORMERS TO CONSERVATIVES:
SITUATING ARMENIANS IN A NEW LINEAGE OF BELIEVERS
In the shadow of the massive Universal Studios complex in Hollywood
sits the United Armenian Congregational Church (UACC). The large white
building, unlike a typical congregational house of worship, is reminiscent o f a
fourteenth century Apostolic Church, with an octagonal structure capped by a
dome and Armenian cross. In contrast to these apostolic architectural features,
the church’s Sunday morning worship service is largely consistent with the
American evangelical tradition.5 Singing at UACC is a case in point.
Worshippers gather to sing classic evangelical hymns such as All Hail the
Power o f Jesus ’ Name and How Great Thou Art. Some sing in Armenian,
others in English. Though following a single melodic structure, the bilingual
singing at UACC possesses a muffled quality. Once a month, guitars, drums, a
bass, and a synthesizer adorn the front of the sanctuary. In an effort to attract
and retain younger Armenians, feared to be lost to American evangelical
churches, UACC has adopted a monthly time of contemporary worship, where
mostly young adults lead the singing of “rock” songs bearing a Christian
5 The American evangelical tradition has its roots in a break-off from fundamentalism in 1941.
In opposition to the antimodemist movement o f fundamentalism, the National Association o f
Evangelicals was formed, refusing “to separate themselves from other Christians or to adopt
right-wing politics as part o f their creed” (Ammerman, 1987, p. 24). While both evangelicals
and fundamentalists promoted a literal interpretation o f biblical texts, evangelicals displayed
tolerance toward many modem elements which fundamentalists resisted (Ammerman, 1987).
While, generally speaking, today’s evangelicals share the conservative theological opinions of
their spiritual ancestors, they are an extremely diverse group and defy rigid categorization.
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message. Most of these songs originate in the present-day American
evangelical movement.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Armenian Apostolic Church
has been, and remains for many, the central institution of Armenian cultural
life. Absent from UACC’s worship are the majority of the rituals of the
apostolic tradition: candle lighting, incense, procession, liturgy, and
ornamentation. Void of these uniquely Armenian elements, many apostolic
Armenians question the ethnic identity of their evangelical counterparts.
The bilingual, muffled singing at UACC is a byproduct of the church’s
heterogeneity. UACC was formed in 1963 through a merger of two Armenian
Evangelical churches. A year later, a third congregation joined. And some of
the individuals who were instrumental in the initial mergers are still actively
involved in the life of the church today. They are American-born Armenians
whose parents were among the first Armenians to settle in the United States
during the early decades of the twentieth century. Many of their children and
grandchildren - third and fourth generation American-Armenians - also
participate in the church. Beginning in the 1970s, new immigrants to Los
Angeles began to frequent UACC, having moved to the United States to flee
the civil war in Lebanon. The decades that followed brought even more
newcomers, particularly from Syria and the Republic of Armenia. Today, the
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church is a mixture of American-born and foreign-born, young and old,
English speaking and Armenian-speaking.
The diversity at UACC is echoed throughout the churches of the
Armenian Evangelical Union of North American (AEUNA), the largest
grouping of Armenian Protestants in the United States and Canada
representing 25 congregations. And this diversity presents particular
challenges. Unlike the apostolics who seem to agree that ethno-religiosity
should be transmitted to future generations, the place of ethnicity is frequently
debated in the Evangelical Church. Some have no difficulty incorporating
elements of Armenian culture and heritage, especially religious elements, into
the Protestant service. Others believe that ethnic elements should be only used
insofar as they do not conflict with the core tenets of the evangelical faith, or
that ethnic elements should be used strategically as a way of attracting new
apostolic converts. Still, others believe that ethnicity has little or no place in
the church; for them, ethnicity and religion form distinct realms and churches
should focus on a purely spiritual mission, unhindered by the distraction of
maintaining ethnicity. Most churches have a mixture of people who hold each
of these perspectives on the place of ethnicity.
Throughout the history of Armenian evangelicalism, the movement’s
boundaries have been forged primarily in contradistinction to the apostolic
faith. Armenian evangelicalism was founded by a group of reformers wanting
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to bring a new theological purity to the Apostolic Church. However, factions
within Armenian evangelicalism are beginning to create new boundaries by
incorporating the liberal/conservative divide, an ideological construct that cuts
through the American religious landscape separating people according to a
variety of theological and social issues. From a lineage of reformers whose
mission was to transform Apostolic Christianity, an American-born generation
of Armenian evangelicals is placing their work within a new chain o f believers,
casting their identity as conservatives. This chapter traces the changing
contours of religious memory among Armenian evangelicals in the North
American diaspora, as they respond to religious competition from surrounding
churches and their increasing embedded-ness in the larger, North American
evangelical movement.
Evangelicals as reformers:
American missionaries and the genesis of Armenian evangelicalism
The Armenian Evangelical Church traces its origins to the work of
American missionaries who, in 1829, set-up a mission among the Armenians
of Istanbul “in order to evangelize the Armenians so as to bring about a reform
in the Armenian Apostolic Church and through it to reach the non-Christians,
especially the Moslem populace” (Chopourian, 1972, p. 26). The American
missionaries aimed to purify the Apostolic Church from what they viewed to
be superfluous belief and practice, including idolatry (specifically the
veneration of saints and the Virgin Mary), the doctrine of transubstantiation,
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and many of the “errors” of papacy (Chopourian, 1972, p. 28). The
missionaries established schools to teach the Armenian people to read and
write, hoping that a literate population would be inspired to read the Bible and
evangelical literature. Consistent with this goal, the missionaries also
published biblical texts, sermons, and other evangelical writings in the
Armenian language.
In 1836, the missionaries started holding public worship services on
Sundays and Fridays. This same year the Union of the Pious was formed, a
twelve member group that worked “to find ways and means for the spreading
of views on the reformation of their church” (Chopourian, 1972, p. 44). Three
years later, on February 19, 1839, two Armenian evangelicals, key leaders in
the movement, were arrested and placed in the patriarchal jail (Arpee, 1946, p.
11). The Armenian patriarch required suspected evangelicals to sign a paper of
recantation or face excommunication. In Istanbul, the Patriarch’s discipline
had implications beyond the walls of the church:
Under the then organization of the trades in Turkey ecclesiastical
discipline was a very effective means of civil oppression. All the
various trades at Constantinople [Istanbul], as also in other large towns
in Turkey, were in those days incorporated guilds, and the affairs of
each guild were administered by a committee of the wealthiest and
most influential members of it. This committee, whose powers were
often vested in a single individual known as the clerk of the guild,
issued all licenses to trade upon the surety of one or more of the most
important licensed tradesmen of the guild. The patriarchal anathema,
by forbidding all intercourse between “the pious” and the “new
sectaries,” deprived all evangelicals of their surety and thereby
withdrew their licenses to trade. About thirty-five men thus forfeited
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their licenses, and in consequence some of them were cast into jail, and
some were compelled to make immediate settlement of their accounts
with partners and creditors, incurring great financial loss (Chopourian,
1972, p. 29).
The Armenian evangelicals, in response to the persecution, sent a letter to
Reshid Pasha, the minister of foreign affairs, asking for the protection of
government. Following several petitions, the evangelicals were eventually
successful at gaining the protection of the Empire. They were instructed to
resume employment and were thereafter recognized by the Ottoman
Government as “Protestants,” forming their own independent religious
community called a “millet.” Meanwhile, the evangelicals continued to be
banned from the Apostolic Church:
Finally, on June 21, 1846, on the occasion of the festival of
Etchmiadzin, he [the Patriarch] issued a bull of perpetual
excommunication and anathema against all Protestants, to be publicly
read at every annual return of that festival throughout the churches.
And what occurred in western Europe at the time of the Great
Reformation was now repeated on a smaller scale in the Armenian
church: the reformers, originally a party within the church, excluded
from the church’s fellowship and ordinances, found themselves under
the necessity of forming a rival organization outside the church
(Chopourian, 1972, p. 36).
On June 25, 1846 a conference was held with the missionaries of the American
Board to discuss the development of an independent Evangelical Church and at
this conference the organization of the church was proposed, a form of polity
blending elements of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. The First
Evangelical Church of Armenia and First Evangelical Church of Istanbul were
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founded on July 1, 1846. By the end of the year, the church in Istanbul boasted
a membership of eighty and three other churches were established in different
regions of the former Ottoman Empire.
Contesting church history:
Armenian evangelicals as indigenous reformers
Whereas many apostolics view the evangelical movement as an
imposition of Western missionaries, evangelical Armenians contest the notion
that their movement was exclusively foreign in origin and prefer instead to
view themselves as part of an indigenous group of spiritual reformers. To
prove this, they point to a recurring history of groups desiring reform within
the Apostolic Church. Rev. Dr. Krikor G. Haleblian notes that “Many
Armenians (including Evangelicals) seem to wrongly assume that Armenian
Protestantism began some 150 years ago in Constantinople through the help of
foreign missionaries” (Haleblian, 2002, p. 7). Indeed, Rev. Haleblian argues
that the roots of Armenian evangelicalism pre-date the arrival of missionaries.
Two early reform movements were the Paulicians and the Tondrakians; both of
which held similar criticisms of the Apostolic Church that were later to be held
by the evangelical movement. The Paulicians, existing from 650 to 850 CE,
were against - among other elements - the veneration of images. The
Tondrakians, who formed in the 10th century and may have been a continuation
of the Paulicians, also rejected several aspects of apostolic belief and practice,
including the doctrine of transubstantiation and the practice of genuflection.
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The existence of these movements led Rev Dr Krikor G. Haleblian to conclude
that “Protestant ideas are very old among Armenians” and that “the European
Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was perhaps precipitated by the
Armenians” (Haleblian, 2002, p. 9).
Some evangelical Armenians view their apostolic ancestors as being
consistent, in theology and practice, with present day evangelicalism. Leon
Arpee writes that: “Nor has any Armenian evangelical of today any fault to
find, outside of a few already outmoded superfluities, with old Armenian
teaching and practice. He discovers but little in the writings of the old teachers
of the Church that he can condemn, in St. Gregory, in Elisaeus, in Eznik,
Gregory of Nareg, Nerses the Graceful, or Gregory of Datev. These and other
writers, if they were writing today, could pass for very acceptable
evangelicals” (Arpee, 1946, p. 2). Rev. Berdj Djambazian, a pastor from
Glendale, California, remarked:
I teach the Christ-centered theology of our forefathers from 5th to 12th
century through the television and it’s mind-boggling how Christ-
centered they were. I have their prayers, their sermons, their
commentaries about certain segments of the Bible. I'm telling you...
it's unbelievable and these people have written these comments or
commentaries when there was no encyclopedia, no dictionary, nothing.
They went up into the monastery or an isolated church on the top of the
hill and on their knees with the Bible and they wrote the commentaries,
the sermons. You can see the power of the Spirit of God working in
them and through them when you read those prayers or those sermons.
It's mind-boggling. I'm exposed now to that through the mother church
and I'm so thrilled.
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In describing the history of the Apostolic Church, Djambazian selects terms
that suggest familiarity between apostolic and evangelical ideals. The term
“Christ-centered” - which possesses specific meaning in the contemporary
evangelical vernacular - is used in reference to theology and practice that is
“pure,” void of superfluities and most clearly exemplifying the teachings of
Jesus. By claiming that apostolic theology in the 5th to 12th centuries is
“Christ-centered,” Djambazian is pointing-out an affinity between his
evangelical beliefs and those of historic church leaders in the apostolic
tradition, whom Djambazian refers to as “forefathers.” Moreover, Djambazian
describes these forefathers in a manner that suggests they were early
Protestants. They went to “an isolated church on the top of the hill” and had
“the Spirit of God working in them,” connecting with God directly and not
through the mediation of a religious institution. Like the reference to
“forefathers,” the term “mother church” is used to draw familial ties between
evangelical and apostolic faith. The concept of the mother church conveys the
image of the Apostolic Church giving birth to evangelicalism and suggests an
enduring relationship between the two movements.
It is implicit within Djambazian’s remarks that while there is much
consistency between contemporary evangelicalism and historic apostolic
teachings, the contemporary Apostolic Church has strayed. Djambazian
explains:
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[In] Soviet Armenia, the last century or two, because they were not
exposed to the Christian teaching, they became [a] more ceremonial
and ritualistic church. Now, they are beginning to be more of a
teaching church. In other Arab countries, partial freedom. Those who
had contact in the freedom with the Western world, a lot of
missionaries and American preachers they helped to establish
educational centers, schools, institutions, and churches and so they're
exposed. And other countries, there was no freedom o f religion for
many times only within your church premises you were allowed to
worship, so there's limited knowledge of certain Christian education.
Restrictions on religious practice in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere
resulted in a church that was “ceremonial and ritualistic” and strayed from a
pure, “Christ-centered” form of Christianity. Djambazian maintains a sense of
familiarity and attachment to the “mother church,” while simultaneously
criticizing the Apostolic Church’s lack of heartfelt commitment to the faith.
In formulating a historical perspective that depicts themselves as
indigenous reformers, evangelical Armenians argue that they were forced out
of the Apostolic Church and, as a result, had no choice but to form their own
congregations. Rev. Ara Chakerian notes:
They [Armenian Evangelicals] started the movement to actually reform
the Apostolic Church. It wasn't a movement to separate ourselves and
become a separate denomination, but because the priests... stopped
baptizing... marrying... burying the dead of the Armenian
evangelicals, so they had no choice but to go and register with the
government. .. .they were kinda forced to get to that point.
Being forced out of apostolic congregations, evangelical Armenians posit that
their churches were not formed as rival organizations. Rather, evangelical
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churches were created out of necessity, to give evangelicals a place to worship
and perform the rites that they were denied in the Apostolic Church.
At present, there are trends within Armenian evangelicalism to regain
elements of the Apostolic Church that were unnecessarily stripped by the
American missionaries who helped Armenians establish their own Evangelical
churches. A pastor of an evangelical congregation in Glendale described the
ways in which he is becoming reacquainted with ethnic elements, in both his
personal life and in his congregation:
.. .there was too much of a foreign influence in the [evangelical]
movement in the sense that they eradicated a lot of the cultural aspects
of our worship. Now, you know for one thing, Sharagans were out the
window. Signing the cross was out the window... The Protestants... the
European/American Protestants are thinking... these are all Catholic,
get rid of them. They were underestimating the deep, intertwining of
the culture and the religion. Deep, to where the church was our savior
in so many different situations of the culture, of the race. To where you
just don't back off from the church like that. You don't spit at the
church. You don't call everything it does evil. What happened was...
things like making the sign of the cross were out. Right now, we need
that back. We need that back because it's a great teaching device. If you
do it as some kind of mantra, some kind of good luck charm, then
forget that. But, we need it because it teaches the trinity: the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Even things like dancing. Armenian dancing is
not sexual, lustful, or something of the flesh. At this last wedding I
went to I danced and danced and danced. I'm a horrible Armenian
dancer, but I was trying to make a point. That we should take joy in
our lives that God has given us, in our culture, and that we should not
unnecessarily... say dancing is a sin... It's part of the culture. I see
dancing as a sign of celebration in the scriptures - old and new. Believe
me, there were weddings going on where there was dancing in the New
Testament. Even the drinking thing... alcohol has been completely
eradicated. Now, some people are going: “is it biblical?” You know
what? This is the 19th century's missionaries' stuff. That's what this is
from...
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This pastor recognizes that, through the influence of the missionaries, several
aspects of Armenian life were unnecessarily removed, like dancing and the
signing of the cross. In response, he desires to reintroduce these ethnic
elements in his own life and in his congregation.
Depicted as a “foreign” movement by apostolics, evangelical
Armenians have crafted their own version of historical events. They depict
themselves as indigenous reformers, consistent with the theology and practice
of earlier, “Christ-centered” apostolic Armenians. They reject the notion that
their churches were created to rival those of the Apostolic Church and, instead,
point-out that they were forced out of apostolic congregations. What is more,
evangelicals are currently working to restore ethnic elements that were
abandoned under the influence of Western missionaries.
Krikor Haleblian: A contemporary reformer
One of the most striking examples of a contemporary evangelical
reformer is found in the work of Krikor Haleblian, a pastor from a church near
Los Angeles affiliated with the AEUNA. Krikor is a pioneer, someone
attempting to redraw religious and political boundaries in ways that have been
hitherto unimagined. While he was attending Fuller Seminary in Pasadena,
California, Krikor came to the realization that Protestants have had little
success in gaining recruits from among apostolics: “And the Protestants, they
haven’t been able to make inroads into the Orthodox and the reason... is
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because they’re too foreign, you know ... too Western to be considered as an
option.” Krikor reasoned that there should be an Armenian theology. “Why
don’t we have Armenian theology? Why don’t we have something like that? I
was reading about African theology, Black theology, South African liberation
theology, and so, I said why not an Armenian theology?” This question
spurred Krikor to consider what it means to be both Christian and Armenian,
and how the worship, theology and architecture of an Armenian Church should
reflect its ethnic qualities. Krikor’s vision does not simply entail the addition
of apostolic elements to an evangelical style of belief and practice, but involves
re-envisioning an entirely new faith community, forged of Evangelical,
Apostolic, and Catholic Christianity. Neither can Krikor’s work be reduced to
an evangelical attempt at gaining new converts. Rather, Krikor notes that “we
do these things because they’re right, because they’re in our blood... this is our
history.”
Krikor’s desire to blend evangelical principles with the rich Christian
traditions of the Apostolic Church seems to be a reflection of his own
biography. Bom into an apostolic family, Krikor joined an evangelical church
at the age of 18. His perspective is also, however, based on a particular view
of culture. Many Armenian evangelicals embrace the notion that
evangelicalism is a-cultural, a basic form of Christianity untainted by the
trappings of humanly-produced traditions; culture refers to ethnic elements that
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are part of one’s ancestral heritage, to those elements that are considered
“foreign.” Krikor, in contrast, views culture as the property o f all societies.
Since everyone lives in a cultural context, theology should communicate the
Gospel message within the particular cultural dynamics of an ethnos. Krikor’s
views spring from a theological movement known as “contextualization”
which gained some popularity in the late 1970s. Rather than being a purely
objective science, contextualization argues that the process o f doing theology
is subjective, mediated by a person’s own particular worldview. Since
everyone approaches theology with their own cultural perspective, there are
multiple methods of organizing a church, constructing its building, conducting
worship, and creating theology. Krikor, however, is not relativistic in his
theology, but believes that there are basic tenets that form the Christian
worldview regardless of the person’s cultural leanings. And one should keep
theology based on these core tenets: “A contextual theology... speaks out
against those elements of culture that are anti-Christian.”
To implement his vision, Krikor began to visit Armenian Apostolic
churches to explore the ways in which elements from each o f the three major
traditions - Apostolic, Catholic, and Evangelical - could be used to create a
new tradition that reflected uniquely Armenian Christian traditions but was
also relevant to the everyday experiences of the Armenian people in Los
Angeles:
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I started attending particularly the Orthodox Church to study it, you
know, what can I incorporate? What I can’t, you know? I would look
at the altar, what they have, what they don’t . .. I would also look at the
priest... what he did, what he said, how he spoke, how he did it, how
he stood, there’s so many that you can incorporate, you know, that’s so
different. For example, the lectern. The Protestant Church lectem is
not moveable, it stands. In the Armenian Church it’s moveable and it
kind of folds too... I had this idea a long time, thinking about having in
Armenia something made, something that’s beautiful, carved out of
wood, and then shipped here so we can use that. The idea is that the
Word of the Lord is moveable, it’s not fixed and it can go in front of
the people, it can go different places and God’s word is alive and
dynamic. But it’s the Armenian tradition to have that. You know,
things like that that could be incorporated...
At an Easter service I attended at Krikor’s church, several apostolic elements
were incorporated into the service. There was a trough of sand for candle
lighting in the church’s narthex. Krikor made a procession into the service
followed by two young men; the young men remained at the front of the
sanctuary, mimicking those who serve on the altar at the Apostolic Church.
Portions of the Divine Liturgy, some Sharagans (Armenian Apostolic hymns),
and the Hay Mer (Lord’s Prayer) were all included in the service. Krikor’s
ultimate vision would be to move out of the Presbyterian Church his
congregation currently uses to build a new church reflective of the architectural
elements consistent with the Armenian apostolic tradition.
Krikor’s efforts have received mixed reviews, not only by the wider
Armenian Evangelical Union, but also by his own congregation. Krikor’s
vision for a merger between Evangelical, Apostolic, and Catholic faiths is
largely constrained by the community in which he operates:
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See, the difficulty I have is with... the established congregation, some
of them, half of them are of Protestant tradition and the cultural
influences. They just stop me from implementing everything, you
know? I don’t have a church where everybody’s dying to incorporate
things. There’s so much politics, so much, I like this, I don’t like that.
You’re singing too many Armenian songs and not singing enough
songs for young people. It’s not like we have a great number of leaders
and a congregation behind me saying well, you know we’ve got the
greatest idea in the world, let’s change the world. Unfortunately, it’s
not like that. So, I haven’t been able to incorporate so many of the
things that I want to incorporate. Most importantly, owning a church
facility, building one that would incorporate the architectural
elements... the Orthodox and the Protestant traditions... we don’t have
our own sanctuary. We worship at the Presbyterian Church.
Krikor notes that there is often conflict in the church’s board meetings. Some
of the leadership request to sing more of the old Armenian hymns from the
Divine Liturgy; others want to minimize such elements in the service. Lack of
support for Krikor’s ideas reflects generational differences in religious
preferences and also a decline in the number of new immigrants: “What’s
happening is that we’re not having more immigrants to the country, new blood,
who are more traditionalists. ... we have our own people who immigrated and
they are with us, most of them, and then their children who are Westernized.”
The younger, American-born generation seems to have a preference for more
Americanized offerings, rather than a desire to carry on the religious traditions
of their ancestors: “But, now, the approach is [among the American-born],
what we have to offer to me, do I find meaning, do I find satisfaction to my
needs by attending your church? .. .But they’re more into what meets my
need... Young people are coming to our church, they’re not satisfied, so to
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119
speak.” Despite having a preference for more Western styles of Christianity,
Krikor believes that many young Armenians will eventually return to the
Armenian Church in search of a more liturgical, historic Christian tradition.
Krikor’s work seems lonely. His passion for an Armenian Theology
that would unite the three main branches o f Christian churches has not
garnered the support he anticipated. His fellow pastors seem to think that he
has betrayed his evangelical roots by incorporating apostolic elements. And
many of the members of his own congregation resist the full implementation of
his vision, preferring instead to retain evangelical forms of belief and practice.
Absent from Krikor’s perspective is uncertainty about the role of
ethnicity. Whereas others are uncomfortable with ethnic elements occupying a
central role in the church, Krikor actively incorporates Armenian apostolic
Christianity. However, Krikor does believe that the loss of ethnic identity
among the American-born is inevitable: “in America... the trajectory is
towards integration and towards more Western, our children are Westernized.
The second generation Armenians are heavily Western, and they want this
contemporary worship and all that. So when we talk about Armenian
symbolism, theology, and Orthodox, they don’t necessarily buy into this.”
Indeed, as will be evident in the following section, young seminarians’ tastes
for Western ideas are transforming the mission and internal boundaries of the
Armenian Evangelical Church.
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Conservatives and liberals: A new splinter
A movement is afoot in the Armenian Evangelical Union of North
America (AEUNA) that could alter significantly the nature of the Union that
ties the churches together. This movement, which seems to have arisen in the
mid 1990s, involves a shift toward a conservative Christian framework, where
conservative refers to a more literalist interpretation of scripture and a more
traditional view of social issues. In many ways, the changes have already
begun. Several up-and-coming leaders in the Union are the chief proponents
of this new conservatism and their influence is widespread. Rather than
defining Armenian evangelicals as reformers of Armenia’s historic apostolic
traditions, the new conservatives have focused their efforts on transforming the
Union’s supposedly liberal theological tendencies into a more pure form of
Christianity. And this transformation has potential to change the ethnic
makeup of Armenian evangelical churches. Emphasizing the importance of
religious commitments, the new conservatives question and diminish the role
of ethnicity in the church.
Origins of the new conservatism
The terms “liberal” and “conservative” were used frequently by
respondents in the interviews I conducted. They also pepper the everyday
discourse of many ministers and lay leaders, as I observed during informal
conversations. The terms are constructed and invoked to describe a wide range
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of theological, social, and organizational dynamics; nevertheless, they are used
with a certain amount of consistency. The terms are most often employed by
those who describe themselves as conservative; and, for them, the term
“liberal” carries a pejorative connotation. “Conservative” is employed most
often to describe those who are Bible-focused, favor traditional social
arrangements in the church and family, and who believe that a religious
identity is of paramount importance. “Liberal,” by contrast, is used to describe
an older generation of Armenian evangelical pastors who have a more
modernist view of biblical texts and who favor women’s ordination.
Organizationally, the terms are used by self-described conservatives to define
the boundaries of an internal group of like-minded evangelicals, creating a
network of those who support a common vision for the future direction of the
union of churches. While it is difficult to trace the origins o f the terms, many
elements appear to have been co-opted from the American evangelical
movement. The origins and construction of the “conservative” Armenian
evangelical movement are the focus of the following discussion.
Spiritually, supporters of this new conservatism believe that it is God-
ordained. Practically, the genesis of this movement seems to have originated
in church members’ many connections with conservative American
evangelical institutions. Youth in the AEUNA have spent time at American
evangelical summer camps like Forest Home, located in the mountains not far
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from Los Angeles; they have attended youth programs at large American
Evangelical Churches, like Grace Community in the San Fernando Valley;
they have also attended prominent American Christian colleges, such as Azusa
Pacific University or Biola University. In each of these places, they have
learned new theologies, styles of worship, and forms of church organization.
Adults frequently report that they have visited other non-Armenian religious
services, particularly those of large, well-known evangelical churches, like
Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena. When they have returned
to the Armenian Evangelical Church, they have often introduced new-found
elements of belief and practice to their friends, family, and the church as a
whole.
The majority of young seminarians and pastors in the AEUNA also
attend conservative American seminaries. Unlike the Apostolic Church, the
AEUNA does not have its own training facility for pastors in North America
and, instead, ordains students who attend American seminaries. Elistorically,
the AEUNA has preferred that its students attend either Princeton Seminary, a
Presbyterian school in New Jersey, or Fuller Seminary, a non-denominational
graduate school in Pasadena, California. But, many of the young seminarians
in recent years believe that the official seminaries are far too liberal and have
chosen, instead, to attend schools with a more clearly-defined conservative
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ethos. One Armenian pastor describes the preference for conservative
seminaries as follows:
It seems that there is a rising interest in the congregations in learning
more and more, which that previous generation of ministers was not
giving them. Now, you’ve got guys who want more and they feel like
they find that more in the more conservative seminaries and so they’re
heading off there. They’re reading the literature that’s being written by
a lot of these faculty members and so on. They’re excited by it and they
go study there and then they go tell their friends who are thinking about
the ministry and then they go to those sam e... and, so this is what I see
happening there and I think it’s a good trend, personally.
Several people noted that the young seminarians chose to attend Talbot School
of Theology, an interdenominational, conservative seminary located near Los
Angeles, based on the recommendation of a close friend or family member
who had already attended the school. When Jeff received “a calling” to
become a pastor, he initially thought about going to Fuller seminary: “I called
my brother and said ‘you went to Fuller, I want to go to Fuller.’ And he said
‘no, you shouldn’t go there, you should go to Talbot. There’s a better one
now.’” Jeffs brother felt that Fuller was too liberal and advised his brother to
attend a seminary that more closely supported his evangelical principles,
despite the fact that the AEUNA leadership wanted Jeff to attend one of the
two officially sanctioned schools. Jeff said: “I wanted my seminary experience
to be a building-up experience and not, uh, fighting my way through.” Like
Jeff, several young Armenian men have chosen to attend Talbot School of
Theology because it offered a more conservative theological education.
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Westminster Seminary, a Reformed Presbyterian school with locations
in several regions of the United States, was also viewed favorably by young
seminarians because, like Talbot, it offered students a more conservative
theological training, and because the school supports Calvinist doctrine.
According to one account, a few attended Westminster and became staunch
Calvinists, embracing the doctrine of predestination. While the AEUNA has
no official stance supporting or denouncing the issue, leadership feared that
those trained at Westminster were too dogmatic:
There were some in the leadership of the AEUNA who insisted that,
you know, we’re not going to help them [by providing funds for
seminary training] unless they do this or that and I think part of it might
have come because some went to Westminster and became hyper-
Calvinists and so that created a lot of problems in the Union and so...
they made a rule that either you go to Fuller or Princeton.
Others confirmed the notion that restrictions on seminary training were
originally put into place to try and standardize the education of pastors and
ensure that future leaders were not being trained in schools that were too
conservative. A pastor from Fresno commented: “All of a sudden they
realized, if we allow our students to go to just any seminary, we’re going to
have different flavors of people.” But, such efforts to encourage students to
attend particular seminaries have been ineffective. One pastor commented:
Wanting to go to Talbot, there was some resistance, initially, but
[others] had a lot more resistance when they wanted to go to
Westminster... these more liberal old-guard have attempted to block
things, but unsuccessfully because there are many more who are more
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conservative... and there are enough of them now on these committees
that they can get these younger guys through.
Currently, only one student sponsored by the AEUNA is attending what is
perceived to be a liberal school and there are no students enrolled at either of
the officially sanctioned seminaries.
According to conservatives, the new trend toward more conservative
theology is bringing the AEUNA churches closer to the theological strand that
was embraced at the onset of the Armenian evangelical movement. A
conservative pastor remarked:
When a hundred and fifty-five years ago the reformation [among
Armenians] started, it was very conservative. After the genocide, for
some reason, it ended-up shifting very modernist... The AEUNA has
drifted more conservative in the last fifteen years or so, but still the
leadership of it, for someone coming from a conservative background,
it’s fairly liberal.
As a result of the genocide, Armenians were dispersed throughout the Middle
East and a large population settled in Lebanon. One pastor noted that
modernist theological ideas were introduced to Armenians in Lebanon by
German missionaries helping to settle the displaced Armenians:
After the genocide, when people got kicked, when they left Turkey,
were forced out of Turkey and settled in places in the Middle East...
interestingly enough I think the missionaries that were involved in the
early 1900s from Germany and some of the things that were happening
theologically in Germany and those that came from this country that
set-up the orphanages, the schools, those refugee centers that those
people were coming into, I think were more liberal in their orientation,
and they set-up what became, for example, the Near East School of
Theology, which at that time seemed to embrace more of a liberal
perspective on things, interpretation on things. And a lot of the pastors
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that came out of those schools in the 30s and in the 40s, and even into
the 50s were more liberal in their orientation. That’s taken us in that
way and the people that they taught have been more liberal in their
orientation. I mean, it’s a generalization but if you look at anybody in
their 50s, 60s, and 70s, that age range up, they’re generally pretty
liberal except there have been some very conservative pastors in the
midst of that.
When asked to describe the origins of liberalism within the AEUNA,
conservatives tended to point toward the influence of “modernist” thought in
the Near East School of Theology (NEST). Liberalism in the church,
following their perspective, is clearly a generational dynamic. The “liberal old
guard” is considered to be middle-aged and beyond, with many being in the
geriatric phase of life: “That generation has begun to, literally, die off... I
mean, age is catching up with them.” The liberals in the church are also
reportedly foreign-born. Conservatives clearly draw lines between American-
born (and trained), religiously-vibrant youth and those who are older, foreign-
born (and trained) and who are religiously stagnant or heretical: “God had
brought-in people, mostly younger, more American in orientation, who were
really interested in getting something out of the sermon on Sunday morning
and were interested in Bible Study and I see that in the younger generation.”
In another comment, a pastor made an explicit link between the American-born
and religious vitality: “there are people who are basically committed to Christ
and not culture and I think that’s also how many generations you are into this
country.”
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Much of the distinctions between liberals and conservatives are made
through theological arguments. Mark, a young seminarian, left a prestigious
law program to attend a conservative seminary: “when I left law school, I
really felt that there was a specific call, not just to ministry in general, but I
really felt... I guess the Lord put the need of the Armenian community and the
churches on my heart and that’s why I left. I don’t know that I would have left
as soon as I did if I had not seen the need in the Armenian churches.” When
asked to describe “the need” he saw, Mark replied: “Well, for me, the need
was, I saw a lack of biblical teaching, a focus on scripture. Just like the
American liberal movement tended to become more social Gospel oriented and
they stopped being bible-focused. I saw that kind of trend developing in our
Armenian churches and that to me was the greatest need. We need to stop that
and start the trend going in the opposite direction.” Conservatives tend to
embrace biblical inerrancy and contrast their views with the more modernist
interpretations of the liberal contingent. One thirty-three year old pastor
commented: “What is their official stance on scripture? They won’t give an
official stance, but the main guys that run the doctrine departments, the
magazine, they do not believe in inerrancy. They will come out and tell you
that. They don’t believe in the Pentateuch being authoritative. They don’t
believe it has any accuracy. Things like that...” Liberals are said to question
key elements of the Christian faith, including the virgin birth of Christ, the
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literal occurrence of the resurrection, and the need to evangelize.
Conservatives disagree with the liberals’ embrace of the social gospel,
women’s ordination, and tolerance toward homosexuality in the church. As
noted above, many conservatives also embrace Calvinism and criticize the
AEUNA’s lack of clarity concerning predestination.
Two recent issues of Forum, the AEUNA’s official magazine, were
devoted to the topic of women’s ordination and illustrate the theological split
that has emerged between the conservatives and liberals. The AEUNA has
been, both historically and today, male-dominated: “There are notable
exceptions, but by and large, the Armenian Evangelical community has not
been receptive to women clergy. In some cases, we even frown upon women
collecting offering” (Bogosian, 2003, p. 3). Only two women have served as
an ordained pastor within the AEUNA, one of them as senior pastor. There
have been several other Armenian women trained as pastors but who have
pursued ministerial opportunities outside of the union. Since the AEUNA has
no official stance on women’s ordination, individual churches have the
freedom to choose a pastor, male or female.
Those in favor of women’s ordination, believing the Bible is
authoritative, base their arguments, in part, on Jesus’ revolutionary treatment
of women in the gospel accounts. They also refer to biblical passages that
illustrate egalitarian relationships between men and women. And they place
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problematic passages - those that appear to support patriarchal structures - in
socio-historical contexts to prove that such verses should not be used to restrict
women’s equal participation today. Those in favor also note that the
ordination of women would help to fill the current shortage of pastors:
At a time when an alarming number of our Armenian Evangelical
pulpits in North America are vacant, several others are occupied by
pastors ready to retire, and the candidates available for pastoral
leadership in our churches are sparse, it is wise on the part of the
Theological Commission of the AEUNA to consider afresh the role of
women in ministry and the reasons why eminently qualified available
candidates are not invited to fill our empty pulpits (Sogomian, 2004, p.
25).
The new conservatives also believe that the Bible is authoritative, but
their view of scripture leads them to disapprove of women’s ordination. For
them, biblical verses indicate that men and women have equal, but different
roles to play, a perspective termed “complementarian”: “men and women,
while equal in worth, have different roles within the family and church that
complement each other” (Balabanian, 2004, p. 22). While a man may serve as
a teacher or pastor, a woman’s role is to stay quiet in worship:
It seems that within a worship gathering of the church, a woman is to
remain quiet. But is this an absolute “quiet”? Looking at the rest of the
passage we note that Paul clarifies by saying, “I do not permit a woman
to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” This is not absolute quiet,
but rather it is quiet in the sense described, without teaching or
exercising authority over men (Matossian, 2003, p. 14).
Though required to stay “quiet,” women are permitted to occupy leadership
roles that pertain to educating other women and children:
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Women ought to teach other women, raising them up in godliness...
Women ought to be involved in teaching and guiding children. Women
ought to be deaconesses and serve with men taking care of the needs of
the church body. Women should be active missionaries. Their input
should be sought by pastors with regard to better ways of approaching
certain subjects in their teaching (Matossian, 2003, p. 16).
For conservatives, distinct roles for men and women are part of the created
order:
...when a woman becomes a pastor she violates the created order in that
she makes authoritative decisions and refuses her role of being
submissive to the man. Women must be subject to the men in the
church and in the home if they want to be obedient to the scriptures.
When your worldview collides with the Bible, you must obey and trust
that God knows better than you (Baghdassarian, 2004, p. 18).
In the two issues of Forum devoted to women’s ordination, those who clearly
opposed the idea of women serving as pastors were younger, more recent
seminary graduates. Letters to the editor supporting the conservatives,
published in a subsequent issue, were also written by a younger generation
who base their views on the notion of biblical inerrancy, dismissing socio-
historical interpretations that explain away patriarchal prescriptions on church
structures.
It is unlikely that those who are considered liberal embrace
wholeheartedly the theological ideas ascribed to them by conservatives. In
fact, many who are labeled as liberal do not use the term to describe
themselves. One such leader, active in the AEUNA, is often considered by the
more conservative members as “very liberal,” though he views himself as a
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“moderate-conservative”: “Within our circles, I’m considered to be very
liberal, which in the broader context of Christianity I am moderate, moderate-
conservative. But, I’m not flagrantly fundamentalist as probably half our
church is, very fundamentalist.” Leaders who reject being labeled as liberal
prove to be frustrating for some of the conservatives. One pastor commented:
“some of the heads of the organization will tell you that ‘oh, no, we’re not
liberal. I don’t know why anyone calls us liberal.’ They’ll say that and then
they’ll go through their list of doctrines and it’s like, that’s considered a liberal
doctrine. It’s frustrating to get that kind of doublespeak.”
Several conservatives mentioned that the west coast churches, located
predominantly in California, are much more conservative than their east coast
counterparts in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. The east coast
congregations are among the oldest Armenian churches in the United States
and many believe that they have adopted the left-leaning political ideas that
characterize the Ivy League institutions of the northeastern states. But, there is
a general lack of consensus among conservatives on the theological leanings of
the majority of Armenian evangelicals. Some believe that the liberal
leadership imposes their leftist theology, politics, and social views on a mostly
conservative membership. One pastor noted: “the problem is that the
congregations are not liberal, but the pastors are somehow liberal and there’s
all these tensions going on.” Still, other conservatives believe that the majority
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of congregants have become more liberal over time, influenced by the “old-
guard”:
You know, when you have pastors who are not convinced yet that God
is a he/she/or an it, even though he presents himself that way, as
m ale... pastors who are not too sure about Jesus Christ. That’s hard to
associate with. When you have people in your congregations that have
been taught this for fifty years and now you [the pastor] come into a
church and you’re saying the Bible, this is what it’s like. You can
know that you’re saved. You can have a personal relationship with
God and Jesus Christ. Well, [the congregation says] “who are you?
This pastor that we’ve known for fifty years that knows what he’s
talking about, that has a doctorate, you know... this is the guy that we
listen to and he was bom in Beirut and you are not, so who are you?”
Despite the varying ways that pastors perceive the theological inclinations of
their congregants, conservatives are unanimous in identifying the source of
liberalism in the AEUNA. The chief liberal culprits are an older generation of
pastors who are foreign-born, trained overseas, modernist in their approach to
the Bible, and left-leaning in their outlook on social issues.
The role of ethnicity in the church is also a way that conservatives
differentiate themselves from the liberal contingent. Whereas conservatives
are primarily concerned with evangelism and parishioners’ spiritual growth,
liberals are perceived to operate in maintenance mode; they want their children
to be reared in the church community and they desire to perpetuate ethnic
traditions, but they are not concerned with advancing toward a deeper
experience of Christianity. That is, conservatives contrast their religiously-
focused mission with their liberal counterparts’ overemphasis on perpetuating
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ethnicity. Krikor Haleblian noted, for instance, that his inclusion of Armenian
Christian elements, such as making the sign of the cross, was equated with
liberalism and was viewed as a betrayal of his evangelical roots: “these guys
say ‘oh, when the [Armenian] Protestant denominations started, they didn’t
have crosses, they didn’t make the sign of the cross. Why have you moved so
far away from the right to the left? You know, you’re too left?” Some
conservatives even question the theological basis for the existence of the ethnic
church, as will be seen in the debate over the AEUNA’s new statement of
faith.
Controversy over the statement of faith
In 1996, a convention was held in Paris where representatives from
Armenian Evangelical churches around the world gathered together to
recognize the 150th anniversary of the Armenian Evangelical Church. Each of
the regions was asked to recite their own statement of faith in front of the
gathering. But, the representatives from North America realized that their
union of churches had no such statement. Upon return from the conference,
the AEUNA leadership decided that a statement of faith should be crafted for
the North American churches, an attempt to articulate the central religious
principles of the AEUNA. According to a lay leader, “the statement of faith...
was really the first attempt to try and pull together a text, a statement on what
are the core beliefs among Armenian evangelicals.” It was hoped that the
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statement would be more than simply a descriptive document displayed on
AEUNA publications, but would also be used in worship services. Writing in
Forum, one pastor noted: “The statement may be used for religious instruction
as well as for liturgical celebration, particularly for baptism, communion,
receiving communicants, ordination or installation of pastors, and other
commemorations” (Tootikian, 1998, p. 27).
A subcommittee of the AEUNA’s Theological Commission was
created to undertake the task, which proved to be particularly onerous. The
committee was faced with the challenge of representing the broad spectrum of
theological opinions in the AEUNA, while creating a statement that was not
entirely devoid of meaning. In the union, religious beliefs vary, not only
between churches, but also within individual congregations. One pastor
summed-up the diversity of his church succinctly: “[my church] has a spectrum
of theological views, from modernist to conservative.” Because a given region
usually has only one Armenian Evangelical Church, these congregations often
attract members that are drawn to the church for ethnic fellowship and who
possess a wide array of theological viewpoints. As a result, Armenian
evangelical churches tend not to be bound together by a narrow set of
theological issues. The committee, aware of this diversity, set-forth to create a
statement that reflected the common elements of those who belong to the
Armenian Evangelical Church, without alienating members by adopting
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particularistic theologies. Writing in Forum, one of the committee’s members
describes their vision to find consensus: “The new statement of faith should be
limited to brief and universally accepted elements of our faith; it should
highlight those features that are common to all Armenian Evangelicals and set
them apart from other churches without delving into detailed issues peripheral
to our essential faith” (Bogosian, 1998, p. 9).6
The statement of faith also represented an attempt to differentiate the
Armenian Evangelical Church from the wider American Evangelical
movement. It was a response to competition by American churches, a strategy
to carve out a specific niche for the AEUNA:
The idea that all Armenian Evangelicals are bound together in a
covenant with God and/or one another is at best peripheral and at worst
nonexistent. The high turnover rate, particularly among the baby boom
generation, attests to the ease with which our contemporaries are
willing to migrate from one church (or even tradition) to another in
search of more contemporary music, better preaching, better organized
singles groups, or whatever it is that constitutes our ideal church. And
among those who are solidly committed to their churches, identity
comes primarily from association with their particular church, not with
the larger body of Armenian Evangelicals in the United States and
around the world... the glue bonding all Armenian Evangelicals seems
dry and brittle and incapable of resisting the centrifugal tendencies
inherent in evangelical belief and practice (Bogosian, 1998, pp. 7-8).
The original church confession, drafted by American missionaries in 1846, was
a reaction against the anathemas put-forth by the Apostolic Church toward the
“reformers.” The new statement of faith was a recognition that the church now
6 Italics reproduced from original source.
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exists in a different socio-religious environment. One member of the
committee noted:
You know, we don’t live in Turkey anymore. We don’t define
ourselves simply in contrast to the Orthodox Church. If you look at the
original statement of faith, 1846, it was written as, you know, a large
percentage of that text says what they do not believe and what they do
not practice which are things that the Orthodox Church did. We do not
believe in prayer for the dead. We do not, you know, believe in
confession or penance. We do not do this, we do not do that. They
define themselves in contrast to the Mother Church that they split from.
So, that made sense in that situation to have this duality. We are us
because we are not them, okay? But, now you come to America and
there’s like 8,000 churches out there and how much sense does it make
to define yourself strictly in contradistinction to the Orthodox Church
that you split off from 150 years ago? It makes some sense with some
people, but, you know, right now the competition for us, if you want to
call it that, is not the Orthodox Church. It’s the American Church...
And we have to define who we are in contrast to them, saying what is
our distinctiveness relative to the [American Church]. And to do that
you have to, you have to have ethnicity somehow. You can’t leave
ethnicity out of it.
Key to differentiating the AEUNA churches from their American counterparts
was to identify those aspects of the Armenian churches that are unique. Some
argued, for instance, that the statement of faith should acknowledge the impact
of the genocide on the Armenian people. One member felt that Armenian
evangelicals tended to participate frequently in Bible study and so the
statement should reflect this unique tendency.
Once a draft was completed by the committee, a copy was sent to all
the churches in the AEUNA to allow lay people and clergy an opportunity to
respond to the proposed statement and participate in its creation. Several
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conservatives voiced their opposition to the new statement which they believed
was too liberal. These conservatives urged the AEUNA to abandon the new
statement and retain the original confession drafted in 1846. One such
conservative addressed his concerns in a letter to Forum. He argued that the
original confession is biblically sound because, for instance, it forbids the use
of crosses in worship:
We are told that most of our Churches [today] are in violation of the
Confession because they use crosses in worship... Instead of
jettisoning the Confession because of this, we should instead ask, “Why
would 40 men and women risk their lives and property on this issue?”
I say we should understand their convictions, adhere to the
Confessions, and not disrespect their memory by dismissing their
theology because we have strayed from it... I believe that their
conviction on this issue is Biblical (Janbazian, 1998, p. 4).
The same letter also criticized the committee’s attempt to make the new
statement reflect the Armenian character of the AEUNA:
We are told that the Confession is bad because it can apply to many
Christians and is not unique to Armenian Evangelicals. True. That
establishes its validity since Christianity is not an ethnic enterprise.
Scripture states, “There is neither Jew nor Greek.” Galatians 3:28.
This desire to have a uniquely “Armenian” Church is based on a
questionable theory from the 1970s called contextualization. The
validity of the theory should be established before its implementation is
forced upon us (Janbazian, 1998, p. 3).
Other conservatives were also opposed to the ethnic elements of the new
statement. One member of the committee summarized the reaction of many
conservatives: “There were some people who didn’t like that. Why is there
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Armenian-ness getting into our statement of faith? What does the fact that
we’re Armenian have to do with what we believe?”
Since the Theological Commission and the committee charged with the
task of creating the statement of faith was, according to one pastor, “staffed
heavy with liberals,” several conservatives believed that the act of creating a
new statement of faith was an ideological project of the ruling, liberal leaders,
an explicit strategy to replace the 1846 confession with a more liberal creed:
“there is the 1846 confession, but, oh, we can’t read that. They don’t like it
because it’s too conservative. In my mind, that’s the bottom line.” The debate
over the necessity and nature of the statement of faith seemed to fizzle at the
AEUNA biennial convention held in Los Angeles in 2000. The statement was
“received” by the union, but not officially adopted. The AEUNA decided to
let individual churches decide whether or not they wanted to use the new
creed. But still, some of the conservatives remained wary: “I noticed that our
previous moderator, they had their 85th church anniversary banquet in Detroit
recently and in that booklet... they put [the new statement] on the back page.
They said ‘this is our statement of faith for the AEUNA. ’ I just thought...
come on guys?” According to this pastor, the new, liberal statement has been
quietly and subversively adopted by AEUNA leadership.
The new emphasis on conservatism reflects the evangelical
movement’s historic search for the purest form of Christian belief and practice.
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But, the purifying gaze has found a new object to scrutinize. Rather than
calling for reform in the Apostolic Church, attention is turned inward to purge
the supposedly heretical and unbiblical elements of Armenian evangelicalism
itself. The adoption of a conservative/liberal duality mirrors the organization
of American religion. Prior to the 1960s, American religion was divided
between three major religious groups: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.
Protestantism was internally differentiated by denominations, between, for
instance, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists. However, the
social unrest of the 1960s introduced conditions that would eventually
contribute to the reorganization of American religion. The civil rights
movement brought to the fore a set of issues around which new groups of
“liberals” and “conservatives” began to orient themselves. Liberals were
concerned with “social justice” and favored the participation of religion in
support of civil rights, whereas conservatives refrained from direct
involvement and focused, instead, on the maintenance of personal piety and
evangelism among the unconverted. Robert Wuthnow notes that “evangelism”
and “social justice” were “the polar positions around which religious
conservatives and religious liberals increasingly identified themselves”
(Wuthnow, 1988, p. 149). What resulted were schisms between liberals and
conservatives within individual denominations, with conservative Methodists
and Presbyterians experiencing greater commonality than with liberal members
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of their own denominations. More than just adopting a label, the new
Armenian conservatives also rally around the same set of social issues that
concern their conservative counterparts in the wider, American evangelical
movement. The new conservatives focus on individual morality, personal
piety, and evangelism, while distancing themselves from “liberal” causes, such
as women’s ordination and the acceptance of homosexuality in the church.
Sociologist Christian Smith argues that American evangelicalism
“thrives on distinction, engagement, tension, conflict, and threat” (Smith, 1998,
p. 89). Religious groups, like all social organizations, form and maintain their
identities “by drawing symbolic boundaries that create distinction between
themselves and relevant outgroups” (Smith, 1998, p. 91). These identities are
not fixed, but are reformulated to engage the shifting cultural conditions of
surrounding environs. In particular, identities are often created in contrast to
“negative reference groups”: “categories of people who are unlike them, who
actively serve in their minds as models for what they do not believe, what they
do not want to become, and how they do not want to act” (Smith, 1998, p.
105). Tension and conflict with negative reference groups can serve to
strengthen members’ commitments: “religious groups can grow stronger
through the tensions and conflicts that arise between themselves and other
groups and subcultures in a pluralistic context, which fortify their own
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identities and their members’ commitment, unity, participation, and resource
contributions” (Smith, 1998, pp.115-6).
Moving from reformers to conservatives, Armenian evangelicals are
adapting to a new socio-cultural environment. In many areas o f the diaspora,
where the Armenian community is surrounded by a predominantly Muslim
populace, and in the Republic of Armenia, Armenian evangelicals face
competition principally from the Apostolic Church. In such conditions,
evangelicals continue to define themselves in contradistinction to apostolics.
But, in the North American context, the Armenian Evangelical Church is
situated in a religious environment that offers a myriad of tempting religious
choices. It is in the context of this vast array of choices that the adoption of a
new conservative group identity gains currency.
As will be discussed in the next chapter, many Armenian evangelicals
visit non-Armenian churches and some, lured by new religious experiences,
decide to leave the ethnic church and join a non-Armenian congregation.
Typically, those who leave are attracted to large, conservative evangelical
congregations that offer a wide range of programs. Many who remain in the
ethnic church hope that the new conservatism will stem the loss of members
who are searching elsewhere for more purely religious theologies and perhaps
even lure some back to the church. Given that American evangelicalism has
become the major competitor, members of the Evangelical Church feel it is
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only fitting to abandon its previous reformer incarnation and focus anew on
being competitive with conservative congregations. Since those who leave the
ethnic church frequently view the Armenian Evangelical Church as too liberal
or focused on suspect theologies, the adoption of conservatism, in opposition
to the church’s ruling liberals, may serve to strengthen commitments within the
church.
Conclusion
Established through the efforts of American missionaries, the Armenian
evangelical tradition began as an effort to purge the Armenian Apostolic
Church of heretical beliefs and practices; in doing this, they created a
movement defined in contradistinction to the Apostolic Church. The initial
impulse of the evangelical movement was not opposed to ethnicity - in fact,
this concept was likely unimagined in their environment - but they were intent
on discarding particular religious ideas inconsistent with a more literalist
reading of the Bible.
Many Armenians, especially those who are foreign-born, continue to
define themselves as reformers and construct the group’s identity in contrast to
the Apostolic Church. Being labeled inauthentic Armenians and desiring to
attract apostolics into the fold, many churches incorporate elements of the
Apostolic Church into their worship alongside evangelical belief and practice.
These Armenians place themselves in a particular religious memory, a lineage
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of reformers. They are carrying on the work of early evangelicals, focusing on
bringing Armenian apostolics to a point of true faith.
Among these reformers, the principle dilemma involves the promotion
of their Protestant mission, while simultaneously remaining “Armenian,” an
identity that, for many, necessarily involves the incorporation of apostolic
religious elements. Some, like Krikor Haleblian, have largely resolved the
dilemma, but for most a sense of tension remains between the two competing
currents.
Trained in American seminaries and influenced by the larger, American
evangelical movement, a new, young generation of Armenian pastors is
aligning the church with a conservative religious memory. They too place
themselves in a chain of belief that links them with the founders of the
Armenian evangelical movement. But, rather than focus on the founder’s
mission as reformers, the conservatives believe that they are carrying on the
spirit of the founders’ true intent, a spirit that seeks religious purity and that
resonates with the mission of the wider, American Evangelical Church today.
Rather than focus externally on the church’s relations with the Apostolic
Church, they have turned their attention inward to concentrate on the renewal
of the Armenian Evangelical Church itself. And, in this process, the young
seminarians are questioning the place and importance of ethnicity in the
church. Ethnic identity is minimized for fear that it distracts from the optimal
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spiritual state. Whereas present-day reformers often use ethnicity as a way of
attracting new converts, the young conservatives minimize ethnicity as a way
of bringing back those who have decided to pursue a purely-religious
experience at an American Church. In this sense, the adoption of the
conservative/liberal dichotomy is a way for the church to remain competitive
in America’s religious marketplace. If people are leaving the ethnic church in
favor of a conservative, more pure religious experience, the Armenian Church
too must become conservative in order to retain and regain its membership.
For the conservatives, the central dilemma involves the place of
ethnicity in the church. For while they strive to create a community principally
focused on religious pursuits, they are not willing to disband their ethnically
homogenous community. In other words, the church cannot principally exist
to perpetuate an ethnic gathering; neither, however, are they willing to let it
dissolve into the broader, predominantly white evangelical movement.
Changing inter- and intra-group boundaries reflect an adaptation to the
pluralistic environment of the North American context. In Armenia and most
of the diasporas, the Apostolic Church is viewed as the main competitor to the
Evangelical Church. In such an environment, the Evangelical Church has to
legitimate itself in relation to the dominant apostolics. On North American
soil, the Evangelical Church defines itself on two fronts simultaneously; it
continues to differentiate itself from the Apostolic Church, while carving-out
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its own niche in respect to the myriad o f American churches in the surrounding
environs.
The Armenian Evangelical Church seems to be charting a course that
may lead to its disintegration. Leaders are frequently sacrificing ethnicity and
language to keep the youth interested and involved in the church. After all,
they would like the ethnic community to perpetuate itself well into the future.
They suppress and rid themselves of their distinctive group markers to keep the
church alive, but in-so-doing the group becomes ironically precarious,
threatened by blurry boundaries that make them less and less distinguishable
from the larger evangelical culture that surrounds them and with which they
interact. There is a feeling of inevitability and constraint about the whole
process, as if the only course of action is to please the coming generation by
adopting American traits or lose them to mainstream American congregations.
The next chapter examines the experiences of those who left an
Armenian Church to attend a non-Armenian congregation and finds that those
who left went searching for a more purely-religious experience of Christianity,
confirming the angst of many Protestant clergy and seemingly lending
credence to the agenda of the conservatives who believe that a more biblically-
focused Armenian Evangelical Church will help stem the loss of young
Armenians.
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CHAPTER FOUR
FINDING A NEW RELIGIOUS MEMORY:
THE PROCESS OF LEAVING THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
In researching the Armenian Evangelical Church, I encountered many
pastors who expressed concern over ex-members o f their flock that had left the
congregation to attend large, American Evangelical churches. Those deciding
to leave the ethnic church seemed to pose an obvious threat to the ongoing
construction of ethno-religious memory. And so I began to look for
individuals who had left the ethnic church to explore the reasons why they left,
to see if they maintained contact with the ethnic community, and to find out
whether or not they viewed their departure as permanent.
Maryanne and Chris are a young American-born couple who left the
Armenian Evangelical Church where they had grown-up, been married, served
as leaders of the youth group, and had extensive social ties. They invited me to
attend a Sunday morning service at their new congregation and I decided that I
should witness firsthand the community that lured them away from the
extensive religious and social capital they had acquired in the ethnic church.
The new congregation is one of Los Angeles’ mega churches, with over
12,000 members. I arrived on Sunday morning shortly before 8:30am. Having
parked my car in a massive lot, I headed toward the church buildings
surrounded by a swarm of families - mostly white - dressed in tidy, but casual
clothing. I was scheduled to meet Maryanne and Chris at one of the many
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“fellowship groups” that take place each Sunday morning in the church’s
sprawling campus. Finding the meeting spot through the maze of hallways
was no easy task; I had to stop twice to ask directions. The fellowship group,
held in a large meeting room, was attended by around eighty people. The
format was akin to a casual worship service, with contemporary hymns, a
Bible reading, and sermon. Afterwards, Maryanne and Chris invited me to
attend the main service that starts at 10:15am, a more traditional format that
draws several thousand congregants. The pastor is a prominent evangelical
figure; the day I attended he shared a story about his recent guest appearance
on the Larry King Live show.
After the service, I followed Maryanne and Chris to a courtyard outside
the main sanctuary. A small group of Armenians had gathered to talk about
their week and upcoming church activities. Several of these Armenians had
also been members of the church Maryanne and Chris previously attended. In
the midst of the mega-church, Armenians create opportunities to gather
together and maintain friendships that were initially developed in the ethnic
church.
Maryanne and Chris are very committed to this new congregation. Not
only do they frequently attend both the fellowship group and main service each
Sunday morning, but they also often attend some of the vast array of activities
that are offered during the week. Moreover, while the Armenian Evangelical
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Church was only a short walk from their home, the new congregation is a thirty
minute commute via freeway.
An accumulating body of research in recent years has concluded that
ethnically-based churches provide valuable sites for the retention and
transmission of ethno-religious identity (Kurien, 1998; Ebaugh & Chafetz,
2000). The research presented here, however, shows how ethnic churches can
serve as sites for the erosion of ethnic identity, by promoting an ideology that
views a person’s religious pursuits as most salient. This chapter examines the
religious experiences of 27 foreign- and American-born Armenians who have
ventured outside of the ethnic church and joined mainstream, non-Armenian
churches. Believing that their religious identity is of paramount importance
and surrounded by a vast array of religious options, many Armenians leave
their ethnic congregation to search for an experience of Christianity in a
mainstream, predominantly Anglo church.
Key to their experience is the way in which Armenians are situated in
the nation’s racialized social structure. As a white ethnic group, Armenians can
venture into predominantly Anglo congregations without experiencing much
prejudice or discrimination. The act of joining a mainstream church allows the
individual to participate in an institution that is believed to be culture-free and
purely religious. And while they often maintain extensive connections to the
ethnic community, Armenians’ embrace of cultureless Christianity signals their
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inclusion into white raciality and their placement into a new lineage of
believers.
A review of relevant research
Recent theorizing in the sociology of religion posits that people tend to
choose religious goods through a rational decision-making process, by
considering the costs and benefits that are likely to accrue (Stark & Finke
2000). Whereas conversion involves adopting an entirely different religious
framework, “reaffiliation” entails switching from one denomination to another
while staying within the same general religious tradition. Most people, when
joining a new religious tradition, select a group that is very similar to the one
in which they grew-up (Sherkat & Wilson, 1995; Stark & Finke, 2000; Bibby,
1999), enabling them to retain the most religious capital7 (Stark & Finke, 2000,
p. 123).
Sherkat and Wilson note that while individuals frequently base their
religious preferences on rational choices, social influences also have an impact.
Often, individuals make religious choices based on their perceived benefit to
others: “We make decisions about what and how much to consume not only on
the basis of what we want, but also on the basis of how others will be affected
by our choices and o f how others may react to them” (Sherkat & Wilson, 1995,
p. 1016). People are often introduced to a new religious organization through
7 Stark and Finke refer to “religious capital” as “the degree o f mastery o f and attachment to a
particular religious culture” (Stark & Finke, 2000, p. 120).
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interpersonal connections (Lofland & Stark, 1965; Stark & Finke, 2000;
Sherkat & Wilson, 1995). When they develop stronger social ties to those of a
different religious worldview, individuals will often reaffiliate (Stark & Finke,
2000, p. 119).
While there has been considerable discussion about the reasons why
people join religious groups, little is known about the process of leaving the
ethnic church. Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney (1987) examined the
use of foreign language in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish congregations in an
attempt to track historic trends of adaptation. In 1916, a quarter of the nation’s
church and synagogue members attended a foreign language service. By the
1980s, only 5.4 percent of white Catholics and 2 percent of white Protestants
were foreign-bom. What is more, by 1990 large proportions of these groups
reported multiple ancestral backgrounds or could not identify their family’s
country of origin. Intermarriage, upward mobility, and geographic mobility
are cited among the primary factors that encouraged the integration of
European immigrants into mainstream white America, moving immigrants and
their children out of ethnically homogenous churches and into more
mainstream congregations (Roof & McKinney, 1987).
According to Stark and Finke, ethnic congregations are particularly
capable of retaining members; “ethnicity and religion frequently combine to
form religious organizations that seem impervious to reaffiliation and
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conversion” (Stark & Finke, 2000, p. 125). Members’ extensive investments
in the ethnic group’s religious and cultural capital serve as a bulwark against
conversion and reaffiliation; leaving, after all, would result in “heavy personal
losses” (Stark & Finke, 2000, p. 125). It is believed that the process of leaving
the ethnic church is a generational dynamic; interest in the ancestral language
and cultural events decline for the second and third generations resulting in an
increase in reaffiliations and conversions. Sherkat and Wilson note that those
who belong to “total communities” - groups with thick social ties, including
ethnic congregations - will be less likely to learn about other faith
communities and, accordingly, less prone to switch religious groups, “since
changing faiths would create strain between conflicting social roles” (Sherkat
& Wilson, 1995, p. 1000).
Ironically, while the existing literature looks at ethnicity as a bond -
something that gels people together to create tightly-knit communities, for the
people who are leaving the Armenian Church ethnicity is having the opposite
effect. It is the principle reason for their departure. The respondents in this
study did not leave primarily on account of intermarriage, upward mobility, or
geographic mobility, as put forth by Roof and McKinney. Neither is cultural
capital necessarily an extra-strength adhesive that bonds church members to
their community, preventing them from experimenting with - let alone joining
- other religious communities. Rather, many Armenians appear to be leaving
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the ethnic church in search of a more intense level of religious commitment. A
mixture of circumstances, both within and outside the ethnic congregation,
creates the conditions where the individual pursues religious options outside
the ethnic church. More than just joining a mainstream, non-Armenian
organization, the process of leaving entails the adoption of a religious
framework that subjugates ethnicity and resonates with the way whiteness is
cast in the dominant culture.
Predisposed to leaving: why some are more likely candidates
Although this study did not specifically target Armenian evangelicals,
only one out of the twenty-five respondents left the Armenian Apostolic
Church directly to attend a non-Armenian congregation. All of the remaining
participants were either brought up in an Armenian evangelical church or had
spent several years attending an Armenian Evangelical church prior to joining
an American congregation. The absence of Apostolic Armenians is striking
since it is estimated that at least 90% of Armenians are Apostolic, while only
5% are evangelical.8 However, the predominance of evangelicals among
respondents is, perhaps, not surprising, given the nature of the two religious
expressions and Armenian evangelicalism’s historic connection to its
American counterpart.
8 David Bogosian and Paul Kassabian conducted a survey o f church attendance and found that,
while evangelicals constitute a minority among Armenians, they are disproportionately active
in the life o f the church. On a typical Sunday, 25% o f all Armenians attending a church
service will be participating in an Armenian Evangelical Church (Bogosian & Kassabian,
2001).
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As mentioned in chapter three, the first Armenian Evangelical Church
developed through the efforts of American missionaries to Istanbul in the
1800s; these missionaries drafted the first statement of faith for the Armenian
Evangelical Church, stripping their creed of any specifically Armenian
elements. Until today, Armenians have by-and-large maintained the same core
evangelical tenets introduced by the American missionaries. This affinity
between Armenian and American evangelicalism, no doubt, contributes to the
prevalence of people leaving Armenian evangelical churches to pursue new
religious experiences in the American evangelical community. As mentioned
earlier, people who switch religious groups tend to select a tradition similar to
the one with which they are most familiar, enabling them to preserve the most
religious capital. Having a belief and practice that resonates with the
American evangelical movement and preferring to communicate in the English
language, many Armenian evangelicals seem to transition easily to an
American evangelical congregation. In this sense, the process of leaving the
ethnic church preceded the experiences of the respondents in this study by
several generations. The posture of Armenians as recipients of American
evangelical ideology began in the 1800s on Turkish soil and this set the stage
for many to become incorporated into American evangelical churches today.
In contrast, the Armenian Apostolic Church possesses a belief and
ritual that is, in many respects, qualitatively different from the evangelical
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churches. Unlike the evangelical tradition that places a high value on regular
church attendance and participation in congregational life, being apostolic has
a more open, loosely-defined set of requirements. Since membership in the
Apostolic Church is a birthright, very little effort - or none at all - is required
to maintain one’s affiliation. Most attend church only on special occasions,
such as a baptism or a Christmas mass. But, while it may not require much
effort to belong to the Apostolic Church, it is difficult to leave. The Armenian
Apostolic Church, for most Armenians, is part of their ethno-cultural tradition;
being apostolic is synonymous with being Armenian. The apostolic liturgy,
saints, and festivals all bear the unique stamp of Armenian culture and history.
Leaving the Apostolic Church, therefore, is tantamount to rejecting one’s
Armenian ethnicity altogether. On account of this, very few Armenian
apostolics seem to venture outside of their tradition. And, when they do, they
often maintain their identification with the Apostolic Church. A fifty year-old
Syrian-born Armenian, who attends a non-Armenian Presbyterian Church
(USA), explains:
Interviewer: If someone were to ask you at work, you’re an Armenian,
what kind of faith are you? How would you answer that?
Respondent: You mean to put a label to my spirituality?
Interviewer: Right.
Respondent: I would say I’m bom Apostolic and Protestant. That’s
what I would say because I am both. Even though I feel more at
home with the Protestant way of handling faith, but I can’t deny
my Apostolic origins... it’s the root and you do not deny your
roots or ancestry.
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Several respondents left the Armenian Apostolic Church to attend an
Armenian Evangelical Church before finally ending-up at an American
congregation. Some were introduced to an Armenian Evangelical Church by
friends or family members, while others became an evangelical Christian
through an American televangelist or radio program, but initially felt
comfortable attending an Armenian evangelical congregation. It may be the
case, then, that Armenian Evangelical churches provide a transition point
between the Apostolic Church and an American congregation.
The mechanics of leaving: Networks and options
Confirming the results of previous studies which found that people
choose religious traditions through interpersonal connections (Lofland & Stark,
1965; Stark & Finke, 2000; Sherkat & Wilson, 1995), social networks are the
primary vehicle through which Armenians leave the ethnic church and join a
new congregation. While some depart because they become dissatisfied with
circumstances within the church and, as a result, decide to venture outside on
their own to explore other religious options, the majority of those who leave
make their exodus via personal connections with friends and family who are
already attending another church. Through personal connections, an individual
becomes acquainted with the beliefs, rituals, and organization of a new
congregation. For a time, they usually attend both the new congregation and
the ethnic church, balancing new religious experimentation with old
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responsibilities. These dual allegiances often prove to be problematic for the
ethnic church, creating networks of defectors. Here, the very social networks
within the ethnic church are, in a sense, extracted and transplanted in a new
religious environment. In one case, a few members went in search of “better
teaching” and began attending a large, conservative church renowned for its
charismatic, well-spoken pastor, while simultaneously maintaining
involvement with the ethnic church. Straddling created a bridge: their exploits
in the new church sparked the interest of members in their old church and soon
several of their friends had joined them outside of the ethnic church. In the
following dialogue, one respondent explains how he became connected to a
non-Armenian congregation through the involvement of a fellow Armenian
who was straddling commitments to both churches:
Interviewer: Why was he [your friend?] attending both churches?
Respondent: I think he wanted to be ministering to Armenians, but he
found... that [at the new church], they are more sound in terms
of teaching the word of God and sound on doctrine and a sound
church, healthy church in terms of, specifically teaching the
word. He was going there, getting his spiritual food from [the
new church] and he would come to [the Armenian Church] and
also try to help us and minister to the Armenians, that was his
goal basically. So, through him, I got introduced to [the new
church]... But, I didn’t go because I knew I was spiritually
discerning, I went because the brothers went, you know what
I’m saying?
A sense of dissatisfaction with the church is not a new experience for
Armenians. Over the millennia-old history of Armenian Christianity, there
have been several movements toward church reform, reflecting the church-sect
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dynamic. In a few instances, these movements have sparked the creation of
new, separate religious organizations. In the beginning of the twentieth
century, for instance, the Armenian Brotherhood Church formed in the
Lebanese diaspora in reaction to the increasing prevalence of modernist
theology in the Armenian Evangelical Church. Surrounded by a Muslim,
Arabic culture that was viewed by Armenians as inferior to their own (Suny,
1993, p. 220), it is not surprising that Armenians formed their own ethnically -
homogenous Brotherhood Church. By contrast, Armenians in the North
American diaspora who are dissatisfied with the ethnic church face a wide
range of religious options, many of which are aggressively-recruiting new
members. And, while some ethnically homogenous sects have formed among
Armenians in the United States, many Armenians who are dissatisfied with the
ethnic church choose to join already existing predominantly Anglo
congregations.
The opportunity to pursue spiritual options outside of the ethnic church
says a lot about how Armenians are situated in America’s racialized social
structure. Both historically and today, Armenians’ racial status has been
tenuous. Armenians were classified by the US federal government as non
white until 1909. In the beginning of the twentieth century, 50,000 Armenians
fled the former Ottoman Empire and came to the United States as a result of
the genocide perpetrated by the Turks. Initially, they were considered to be
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Asiatics, but in the Halladjian case in 1909, “a U.S. circuit court of appeals
ruled that Armenians were Caucasian because of their ethnography, history,
and appearance” (Takaki, 1998, p. 15). Their redefined status as Caucasian
had important consequences, enabling them to become naturalized citizens and
providing them with opportunities to purchase land and become prosperous
farmers.
According to many Armenians, a person’s inclusion into white raciality
is dependent upon their physiognomy, concentration relative to the overall
population, and ability to be productive members of the community. Many
respondents noted that their appearance reflects that of a typical Armenian:
dark hair, dark eyes, a large nose, and for the men, extensive body hair. Others
do not feel that they look Armenian because they have blonde hair, blue eyes,
or a particularly pale complexion. In areas around Los Angeles where there
are relatively few Armenians present - South Bay, Santa Monica, and Orange
County, respondents noted that they do not feel separate from the overall white
population. Their Armenian roots are not known to their neighbors or fellow
church-members, unless they have chosen to talk about it and, even then, they
do not feel as though they are viewed as racially distinct. Having a good work
ethic also seems to change Armenians’ racial status. Several respondents
noted that the initial waves of Armenian immigrants who arrived in the first
few decades o f the twentieth century were hard-working, self-sufficient,
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honest, and successful, qualities which enabled them to become “American.”
Many of today’s immigrants, by comparison, are believed to lack these
qualities and are, as a result, viewed as detrimental by longer-established
Armenian-Americans as well as by the historically dominant Anglo citizenry.
Their status as a white immigrant community, though tenuous and
often contested on a case-by-case basis, permits them to explore predominantly
Anglo churches without experiencing much prejudice or discrimination.
American-born Armenians, in particular, seem to have no difficulty integrating
into Anglo churches on account of their fluency in English, American accents,
and comfort with American culture - both religious and secular.
The experiences of Armenians stand in stark contrast to those of the
Korean community. Rather than joining Anglo churches, second generation
Koreans often form English language services that mirror the style of worship
and teaching found in many American Evangelical congregations (Chai, 1998).
It is often cited that the church, for Koreans, provides a venue for coping with
the prejudice and discrimination of the wider society, providing, for instance,
opportunities for status denied elsewhere (Chong, 1998). In San Francisco,
Russell Jeung notes that pan Asian congregations are becoming increasingly
prevalent. These congregations bear little resemblance to ethnically-specific
Asian congregations; instead, they adopt a style of belief and practice common
among American evangelical mega-churches (Jeung, 2003).
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While some Armenian evangelical congregations have attempted to
institute a contemporary service geared toward the American-born youth by
borrowing elements from American evangelicalism, these services have
generally drawn small crowds and have had a short-lived existence. It appears
as though many Armenians would, instead, prefer to attend a contemporary
service at an established American Evangelical Church.
Motives for leaving
The following section outlines respondents’ motivations for leaving.
While, as mentioned above, respondents usually become acquainted with their
new church through social networks, all of them provided particular reasons
why they decided to explore these networks in the first place. Some
respondents gave a single, predominating reason for their exodus, whereas
others provided multiple motivations. All respondents mentioned that they left
the ethnic church because it was lacking some religious element that they had
learned to value in the new congregation. A thirty-five year-old, foreign-born
Armenian provided the following account of the reason why he left:
I think before we finally went there [to the new church], before we
broke-up, we were going once in a while... it would be one Sunday a
month or every couple of months we’d go and we’d get tapes [of
sermons] and we’d hear things from people and hear all these new
ideas about the word and we’re like, man, this is revolutionary and this
is good stuff. And, we’d come back to [the Armenian Church] and you
wouldn’t hear the same things and so we got concerned with the
brothers and we said okay, why don’t we talk to the pastor [of the
ethnic church]... and then here’s why we broke-off. One of the main
reasons we talked to him was because he wasn’t teaching about sin and
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judgment and hell. He wouldn’t teach about those things. And, we said
“why don’t you teach about those things?” You know, the
Bible.. .Christ taught it, the Bible teaches it, why don’t you? He said...
“I don’t want to talk about negative things, you know. I want to be
positive for the people.” He was into psychology, basically.
Among those who provided religious justifications for their departure, two
groups are evident. First, there are those who left on account of theological
differences. For these respondents, theological discrepancies with the ethnic
church motivated them to join a new congregation. Many mentioned that the
new church showed them the merits of a Calvinist or Reformed theology.
Others, like the respondent quoted above, appreciated the new church’s more
conservative theology that places a greater emphasis on eschatological themes.
Second, there are those who left in search of preferred aesthetics. These
respondents left to pursue particular styles of teaching and worship common in
American Evangelical churches. Some preferred the new church’s
contemporary worship, a more casual format of up-to-date hymns performed
by vocalists, guitars, and drums. Many remarked that the new church featured
“better teaching;” namely, it provided a more thorough, clear, and accurate
exposition of biblical texts. These new elements - whether doctrinal or
aesthetic - were valued because they helped the individual gain a deeper sense
of Christianity.
Valuing new forms of belief and practice, respondents became aware
that the ethnic church lacked these new-found elements. But, the absence of
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these elements did not provide the sole impetus for departure. Respondents
often returned to the ethnic church to meet with pastors in hope of bringing the
new doctrine or aesthetic to a place deemed deficient. A 25 year-old
American-born male noted:
.. .from what I know it was basically people who were getting teaching
from the outside and were seeing that Calvinism is truth and it’s out
there and it’s real and you know the points of it are clear and they’re
scriptural or biblical. And, so they would bring it into the church and
they would say “hey, what’s up with this? Why aren’t you guys looking
at these things.” The church basically didn’t really have a doctrinal
statement. To this day, they don’t from what I know. That was one of
our key points on why we left.
The absence of a clear doctrinal statement in the ethnic church was mentioned
by several respondents as one of the principle reasons underlying their
departure. Having pressed church leadership to clarify its doctrines with no
result, the respondents decided to leave and join the new congregation. Some,
however, reportedly stayed in an attempt to incite change from within. These
individuals continue to “straddle” the new congregation and the ethnic church
simultaneously, attempting to teach the ethnic church about the merits of the
new-found religious elements despite resistance.
According to many respondents, the Armenian Evangelical Church
purposefully refrains from taking a clear stance on particular doctrinal issues
for fear of alienating members and causing divisions. A pastor of an Armenian
evangelical congregation made a distinction between Armenian evangelicals,
on one hand, and Armenian Protestants, on the other. Armenian evangelicals
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place a high importance on doctrinal purity, “willing to lose some relationships
or test some relationships to be more faithful to truth.” In contrast, Armenian
Protestants - intended by the pastor as a separate, inferior category from
evangelicals - are more concerned with institutional survival and maintaining a
community intact despite internal theological cleavages. Ironically, the
absence of clear doctrine - an attempt to avoid divisions within the ethnic
community - provides justification for many people’s departure. For these
respondents, the social aspects of the church, namely the preservation of
community, should not take precedence over a clearly-defined religious
mission. Believing that they are autonomous and responsible for their own
individual religious lives, respondents left to join a new congregation of like-
minded others who similarly believe in the primacy of a clearly-defined
religious identity. Leaving the ethnic church, then, is a physical symbol of the
subordination of community to the pursuit of individualized spiritual ends.
In addition to the emphasis on community, the ethnic aspects of the
Armenian Church were also viewed to be a distraction from the religious
mission. One thirty-three year-old American-born male who left the ethnic
church following high school said:
Not that it’s bad to remember your ethnic language or to enjoy those
things, but I felt sometimes that it was over-emphasized to the almost
detriment of what I believe Christianity is and what the church should
be focusing on and, in my opinion, the church should not be focusing
on ethnic and cultural promotion, but on teaching and promoting what
is Christian and biblical, so that was sort of a negative aspect.
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Another American-born Armenian commented:
I think the only thing that pulls an Armenian Church back or keeps the
Armenian Church from growing spiritually is some of the cultural stuff
that kind o f... it bogs it down.
Most of the respondents believe that their spiritual identity is of paramount
importance and that no other identity, including ethnicity, should detract from
the Christian life. Ethnicity, as a potential distraction, is problematized; it is a
potentially harmful object that needs to be monitored and kept within certain
spheres of life; it becomes secularized, separated from and subjugated to the
religious experience. The ethnic church, following this view, is an impure
form of Christianity. Its ethnic elements are believed to compete with, or at
least distract from, the ideal religious condition. Specifically, respondents
noted that the religious mission of the ethnic church is compromised by an
over-emphasis on language retention and the celebration of man-made, cultural
traditions. Moreover, these respondents believed that the ethnic church’s
outreach cannot fulfill the biblical mandate “to preach the Gospel to all
nations” because its ethnically-specific traits are inaccessible and meaningless
to outsiders. A 21 year-old fifth generation, American-born Armenian
explained:
I don’t really know if it’s God’s will to have ethnicity-based churches. I
think if I was driving-by and I w as... and I see something that says
Armenian church, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable and, to me, I
don’t know if God wants churches where people don’t feel
comfortable.
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Respondents believed that ethnicity is a hindrance to outreach beyond the
ethnic community, compromising the church’s true mission and distracting the
individual from pursuing the ideal, purely religious life.
American Evangelical churches, by contrast, are supposedly void of
culture. Since being “American” is a national identity and not considered an
ethnicity, these churches are viewed as wholly spiritual enterprises, optimal for
the pursuit of a purely Christian identity.
Interviewer: What is it about the [new] church that hooked you in?
Respondent: Uh, that’s a complicated question. To m e... simply, it
clearly, without doubt or ambiguity, preached the word of God,
[they] teach you not to take their word for it, [they] don’t
associate, in my opinion, any real tradition along with the
religion. They separate, you know, nationalism, I guess, from
religion... and not that they don’t go together, but that they are
two separate things and they just, in my opinion, teach you
about what it means to be a true believer.
A “true believer,” according to this respondent, does not mix faith with
nationalism or ethnicity. Accordingly, American churches - not viewed as
cultural or nationalistic - are untainted and allow the individual to focus solely
on Christianity.
In sum, a general pattern emerged among respondents’ experiences.
Believing that the ethnic church is deficient in theology and aesthetics, many
respondents attempted to bring these new-found elements to the ethnic church.
They met with the Armenian pastors to discuss theology and would often use
lay leadership roles within the church to promote their new perspective to other
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members of the congregation. However, they encountered resistance. The
ethnic church was reluctant to embrace their particular doctrinal stance for fear
of alienating members and dividing the community. Unable to incite change,
many respondents decided to leave the ethnic congregation and join the new
church. After all, their spiritual identity was at stake and this identity is of
paramount importance.
Rationalizing departure:
Do motives originate in the ethnic church?
In the Armenian Evangelical Church, the impetus for departure is,
ironically, derived from the church’s own ideological framework. For those
who leave, the decision to join an American congregation is based on a rational
decision-making process, where the individual weighs the costs and benefits of
staying versus leaving. Richard Alba and Victor Nee (2003) argue that
rationality is context-bound: “Purposive action by individuals and within close-
knit groups cannot be understood apart from the institutional framework within
which incentives are structured” (Alba & Nee, 2003, p. 53). Religious choices
made by reaffiliates must be understood, therefore, in the context of the faith-
based institutions within which Armenians are making their choices. In the
Armenian Evangelical Church, religiosity is officially paramount; members are
taught that their Christian faith is of the greatest importance. And, as
mentioned earlier, it is out of a desire to pursue a greater experience of
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Christianity, one that is purely religious, that individuals base their decision to
leave.
One metaphor, that of being “spiritually fed,” was central to several
respondents’ justifications for leaving. When asked to describe why she left,
an American-born Armenian responded: “I think that was the biggest reason
why we left, because we weren’t being fed.” This comparison between
spiritual goods and food likely originates in several biblical texts that refer to
spirituality as a form of nourishment9 and it seems to provide a powerful,
indisputable justification for an individual’s departure from an Armenian
Evangelical Church. The church left behind is equated with the experience of
starvation, the denial of a basic human need required to sustain life. The new
church, by comparison, is believed to possess much-needed, life-giving food.
No one, acting humanely, would want a person to stay within an institution
that denies food, nor would they criticize someone for searching elsewhere for
sustenance. Leaving a church to find greater spiritual nourishment, therefore,
is viewed as a necessity. However, unlike physical malnourishment, there is
no way of empirically testing someone for a lack of spiritual food. The value
of spirituality is subjective, dependent on the individual’s perceptions of the
quality of a given experience. Wrapped in a powerful metaphor and outside
the bounds of empirical verification, the claim of spiritual malnourishment
9 See John 21:15-19, Isaiah 55:1-2, and Matthew 16:6.
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provides an iron-clad justification for leaving an Armenian Evangelical
Church.
Since the evangelical culture - both within and outside the Armenian
Church - believes that a person’s religious state is of the greatest importance, it
is perfectly rational to leave a congregation in search of spiritual sustenance. It
is an ideological back door that enables the person to join a new congregation
while continuing to uphold the principles o f the faith community that is left
behind. In this way, the Armenian Evangelical Church contains the seeds of its
own destruction; teaching members to pursue their religious identity first and
foremost, many Armenians seek to uphold the principles they are taught by the
church and look for a more “purely religious” experience elsewhere.
It may be the case that the search for particular doctrines and preferred
aesthetics (that is, the search for greater spiritual nourishment) was emphasized
simply because it provided the most plausible justification for leaving. One
respondent, a thirty-five year old American-born Armenian, questioned the
integrity of those who leave the ethnic church:
I don’t think I left because I don’t like the way they run their services,
or anything like that... I mean, I wasn’t thrilled by it, but you’ll talk to
a lot of American-Armenians who say “I left because I wasn’t being
fed.” You know... see I don’t play that game... I think that’s gutless. I
think that’s ducking the issue. I think that it’s a social issue and a lot of
these people just don’t want to associate with recent immigrants... I
think in large measure because they’re not connecting with them. And,
so because they want to sound Christian, they’ll say “I’m just not being
fed.” And, that’s just a bunch of baloney. That’s a bunch of bull. I will
not be a part of that group. I think it’s intellectually dishonest and
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unfair to pastors and unfair to the people who are doing all of the work.
It’s not their fault, you know.
It is not the intention here to second-guess the respondents’ answers, but it may
be the case that religious justifications for leaving the ethnic church are
employed because, to an evangelical audience, they are the most plausible and
least likely to be contested, while other, less acceptable motivations -
including an unwillingness to blend socially with recent immigrants - are not
mentioned at all.
Other motives for leaving
As noted earlier, all respondents mentioned that they left the ethnic
church in search of a greater experience of religiosity. But, there emerged two
other motivations for leaving the ethnic church: intermarriage and the rejection
of the church’s informal culture. The tendency to marry an “odar,” or non-
Armenian, is an increasing phenomenon among Armenians in the United
States. Smaller and longer-established Armenian communities on the east
coast and in central California have much higher rates of intermarriage than the
generally newer and more concentrated pool of Armenians in southern
California. Of the respondents in this study, 8 were married to non-Armenians,
and in each instance the non-Armenian spouse was a white, Christian of
European ancestry. In some instances, intermarriage led the respondent
outside of the ethnic church. Since the non-Armenian spouse was unfamiliar
with the language and customs of the Armenian Church, these “mixed”
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couples decided to attend a predominantly Anglo American Church where both
felt comfortable. At times, however, Armenians met an “odar” while attending
a non-Armenian church. In some cases, then, intermarriage was the cause of
leaving, while in other cases it was the effect.
Many respondents also noted that they left the ethnic church on account
of the informal culture. Here, respondents were not objecting to the traditions
of the ethnic church - food, beliefs, rituals, or festivals, but were averse to
particular interpersonal dynamics. Some mentioned that members of the ethnic
church placed too much emphasis on higher education, professional careers,
and wealth. In response, several respondents left the ethnic church to find
communities that were less concerned with status achievements. Raffi, a male
respondent in his mid-thirties, left the ethnic church because of a culture of
hyper-masculinity that prohibited the formation of deep, meaningful male
friendships. Similarly, Ani left because of members’ patriarchal tendencies.
Ani served as the chair of one of the ethnic church’s financial committees, but
she never felt that the all-male committee took her leadership seriously. Others
noted that they preferred to come to church dressed casually, wearing jeans,
and that the traditional atmosphere of an Armenian Church prohibited anything
but suits and dresses. A 25 year-old American-born male felt that there was
too much gossip at the Armenian Church, an atmosphere he jokingly referred
to as “the Armenian internet.” In all of these instances, the respondents did not
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blame these dynamics on the ethnic traditions, but simply noted that this was
part of the informal culture of the church.
The effects of leaving on racial identity
For Armenians, joining a mainstream evangelical church involves more
than just becoming a part of an institution that is no longer exclusively
“ethnic,” what Milton Gordon referred to as “institutional assimilation”
(Gordon, 1964). Rather, it involves a much more profound adoption of a white
epistemology. That is, by embracing the religious framework o f mainstream
evangelicalism, Armenians subordinate their ethnicity to orient themselves
around a cultureless identity, the hallmark of white raciality. In her study of
high school students in California, Pamela Perry (2001) notes that white
raciality is viewed as cultureless, having “no ties or allegiances to European
ancestry and culture, no “traditions”” (Perry, 2001, p. 58), while those who
have ties to the past are perceived as ethnic. One of the ways that white
identity achieves its cultureless status is by linking itself with rationality.
Western rationalism purges “tradition and culture from the realm of truth and
relevance and replaces them with reason” (Perry, 2001, p. 86). What results is
a power dynamic between those who are cultureless - most rational - and
those who have culture and are, therefore, less rational and inferior. In
conducting interviews with white women, Ruth Frankenberg (1993) found that
her respondents felt as though they were “culturally empty” (Frankenberg,
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1993; Perry, 2001). The women felt empty because they viewed whiteness as
the standard for what is normal. Culture, by contrast, pertained to those things
that deviated from this standard. For both Perry and Frankenberg, whiteness is
defined by the absence of culture and by a sense of superiority.
Armenians are joining American Evangelical churches because they are
believed to be culture-free and more purely religious, void of the distractions
created by ethnic programming in the Armenian Church. American
evangelical churches are viewed as cultureless even though they are
predominantly attended by individuals of white ancestry, whose traditions have
evolved primarily from European cultures. Armenians who join an American
Evangelical Church are adopting a new religious identity that is primarily
Christian, not ethnic. The process of adopting a culture-free Christianity is
couched in a rational framework that clearly views the cultureless religion as
superior. And it is this adherence to a cultureless, rationalized, and superior
ideology that represents Armenians’ inclusion into white raciality. But, as will
be seen, ethnicity remains important for those who leave, and for many the
exodus from the Armenian Church may only be a temporary phenomenon.
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Incorporation into the new church
I mean, if [the Armenian Church is] all you’ve known your whole life,
even though you are an American, but that’s what you’ve known in
terms of your closest community, what’s it going to be like when I
leave that? Will I find a place? Will I be drawn-in? Will I be accepted?
-A 33 year-old, American-born male comments on the prospects of
leaving.
In their new, American churches, most do not report experiencing
either prejudice or discrimination. In fact, many believe that their ethnic
background is largely unknown to members of the new congregation. Despite
their reportedly easy integration, there are Armenian-only small groups in three
of the churches that draw a significant number of Armenians. Many noted
that, in the new congregation, they never experienced the deep social ties that
they had within the ethnic church. And it is often out of a desire to re-connect
with these social ties that those who leave create ethnically-homogenous
subgroups in their new congregations. This trend, however, varies along
gendered lines. Women consistently reported that they missed the social ties in
their old church, whereas a few of the men noted that the absence of social ties
within the ethnic church was part of the reason why they pursued spiritual
options elsewhere.
Armenians consider themselves a part of an ethno-religious
community; being Armenian, for most, is synonymous with being a Christian.
However, those who leave the ethnic church create distinctions between ethnic
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and religious identities, where religious traditions are extracted from what
constitutes Armenian identity. And, while the church becomes one less aspect
of life where the individual engages in ethnic activities, those who leave the
ethnic church remain deeply invested in the ethnic community. One
respondent authored a book on the Armenian genocide. Another founded a
philanthropic organization that sends money and supplies to the poor of
Armenia. Still, another traveled to Armenia in search of a prospective bride.
Though only a few had such dramatic commitments to their ancestral heritage,
all respondents expressed much interest in the events of the ethnic community,
and most had a desire to visit Armenia, if they had not already been there.
Armenians, whether they are first generation or fifth, experiment with new
religious communities and retain deep attachments to ethnic identity.
The differentiation of religious and ethnic identities occurs, not only on
the individual level, but also organizationally. Armenians in North America
create and maintain a range of Armenian organizations apart from the ethnic
church. Some of these organizations maintain a Christian orientation, but are
not tied to any ethnic ecclesial community. As a result, Armenians living in
the American context, unlike many other areas of the diaspora, are faced with a
range of possible ways to participate in the ethnic community outside of the
ethnic church. Raffi, for instance, attends an American evangelical church, but
contributes to an Armenian publication and notes that this allows him to retain
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ties to fellow Armenians. More than just “symbolic,” the ethnic pursuits of
those who leave the ethnic church are often deeply meaningful and labor
intensive.
The salience of ethnicity for those who join American churches may
diminish for the next generation whose experience will be almost entirely
outside of the ethnic church. While, as noted above, many reaffiliates develop
extra-ecclesial attachments to the ethnic community, these non-church
organizations are not intergenerational and, therefore, do not provide
opportunities for parents to socialize their children into an institutional aspect
of the ethnic community. Churches provide one of the few arenas within the
broader ethnic community where multiple generations interact to transmit
ethno-religious elements. As a result, leaving the ethnic church potentially
severs the transmission of ethno-religiosity; for the children of reaffliates,
ethnicity becomes something practiced entirely outside of the religious
community. If the children are attending a public school or non-Armenian
private institution - which was the case for all of the respondents’ children -
ethnicity, in the next generation, will be increasingly relegated to the private
sphere of family relationships and occasional holidays. The opportunities to
leam and speak Armenian will be few as will chances to interact with fellow
ethnics. For this generation, the new American religious community may
become their primary basis of self-identification and whatever shreds of
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ethnicity that linger will be marginal and symbolic (Gans, 1979, 1994; Waters,
1990).
Prodigal thoughts: Contemplating a return
People who leave the ethnic church do not seem to make a complete
exodus. Many respondents frequently return to attend services, especially
during holidays or important events, such as a family member’s baptism or
marriage ceremony. Others maintain close ties with members of the ethnic
church. Moreover, several respondents did not view their departure as
necessarily permanent. Some talk about returning to the Armenian Church if
the issues surrounding their departure can be resolved. Alternatively, others
consider attending an Armenian Church that better reflects their particular
theological convictions. Several respondents are looking toward the new
generation of younger, American-trained pastors who they hope will bring
about a conservative, Calvinist renewal to Armenian churches. Should this
happen, many respondents expressed their intention to return. While for some
intermarriage leads them outside the ethnic church, for others the pursuit of an
Armenian mate leads them to return, where they are more likely to find
someone who shares both their ethnic and faith perspective.
The experience of having children also leads many to consider
returning to an Armenian Church. Many parents face the task of
communicating their ancestral roots to their children and discover that they
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cannot do this on their own, leading them to enlist the help of the broader
ethnic community. While some consider enrolling their children in private
Armenian day schools or Saturday schools, many look to the church for
assistance. Respondents who married non-Armenians noted that their “mixed”
children had a lopsided understanding of their ethnic heritage. That is, the
children had a greater sense of belonging to the Armenian community than
they did with the other parent’s ethnic roots. Part of this results from the fact
that all of the respondents who intermarried had partnered with descendents of
white European immigrants for whom a distinct sense of ethnic heritage had
long been lost. Mary Waters (1990) documents that, despite the fact that most
view ethnicity as a primordial, inherited trait, white Americans of European
ancestry choose the extent to which they affiliate with and participate in
ethnicity. White Americans who are the product of mixed marriages
frequently choose to emphasize one particular ancestral origin, while
diminishing or suppressing the other. When an individual selects from among
European ancestries, s/he often chooses the one whose arrival to the U.S. is
more recent or selects the ancestry that seems more “ethnic” (Waters, 1990).
In several cases of intermarriage, the respondent noted that the Armenian
ancestry dominates their child’s sense of ancestral origin. On account of this,
even those who intermarry occasionally bring their children to the ethnic
church to receive language training and cultural knowledge.
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Conclusion
Armenians are being attracted to large, predominantly Anglo churches.
They are not forming their own English-language congregations, like second
generation Koreans. They are not attending African-American churches,
Latino churches, or Asian congregations; rather, Armenians are visiting and
joining churches attended by members of white European ancestry. The ease
with which Armenians take part in Anglo congregations suggests that, like
many European ethnics who arrived generations earlier, they face few
obstacles when it comes to integration into the dominant white culture. And
they are engaged in a process of integration. Respondents’ journeys into
American evangelicalism effectively altered their ethnic identity, giving it a
diminished role. By adopting a culture-less Christianity, ethnicity is
subjugated to the religious realm and they are introduced to white raciality,
where Western rationality is prized and ethnic traditions are viewed as inferior.
Their ethnic pursuits, for the most part, are now limited to life outside of the
religious sphere. Ethnicity is now secularized.
Granted, respondents maintained a strong connection to the ethnic
community and, in many instances, to the Armenian Church they left behind.
And, while the process of joining an American Church diminishes the role of
ethnicity in the life of the individual, respondents’ trajectories into mainstream
evangelicalism may not necessarily conform to a straight-line assimilationist
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pattern. After all, many respondents are eager to return to the ethnic church if
the issues surrounding their departure can be resolved.
For now, however, those who leave have removed themselves from the
chain of belief that united them with their ancestors. Instead, they place
themselves in a new lineage that connects them with a much wider community
of believers in the North American context, potentially severing ties for
generations to come.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
FAITH-BASED NGOS AND THE REBUILDING OF
RELIGIOUS MEMORY IN POST-SOVIET ARMENIA
One Sunday morning, I visited the small village of Saghmosa, a
community that exemplifies the tranquility of Armenia’s rural landscape.
Every vantage point in this village looks like a postcard; small buildings of
rock and stone are strewn on hillsides and tucked in small valleys; a snow
capped mountain juts out of the landscape to provide a breathtaking backdrop;
a farmer with weathered skin and a woolen cap directs a small herd of cattle
over a patch of grass; through the village and up a hill there sits an ancient
stone church, perched on the edge of a deep gorge.
As I admired the breathtaking scenery, I saw children and youth walk
in small clusters through the winding road of the village and up into the
church. Their Sunday school, housed in the village school, had just ended and
they were making their weekly procession to the church to participate in the
Divine Liturgy. They came wearing blue jeans and sneakers and were
unaccompanied by adults.
The church itself was built in the fourteenth century and exhibits a style
of architecture characteristic of historic Armenian churches, with thick stone
walls, high ceilings, and few windows. While the outside of the church is
imposing and fortress-like, the inner sanctuary is small and intimate. A few
modem elements give the space a feeling of warmth and comfort; folding
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chairs are provided for seating; carpet covers the stone floor and gives children
a place to sit at the front of the sanctuary; a heater removes the chill and
dampness from the air; and a few well placed spotlights highlight the smoke
from the incense, reveal stone-carved script on the walls, and generally help to
create a mystical worship experience. The sanctuary also possesses a sense of
intimacy because it is full on Sunday mornings. Each week, men and women,
young and old come to participate in the Divine Liturgy. And unlike the North
American practice of coming and going throughout the service, the villagers
tend to stay for the entire mass. I noticed, in particular, that a group of elderly
women seemed to participate in the Divine Liturgy with much emotion. At
some points they knelt on the carpet, with eyes closed tightly and hands
clasped together. At other points they stood with arms outstretched, as if they
were expecting to receive a divine gift.
This church is now an integral part of village life, a rare instance of
religious revival in a country still emerging from seventy years of communist
rule. At the center of this church’s transformation is a faith-based non
government organization (NGO): The National Leadership Institute (NLI).
NLI, supported in large part by diasporan funds, adopted the church at
Saghmosa and has worked successfully to reinvigorate the parish. Rather than
start their own sectarian groups, faith-based NGOs are actively involved in re
building the historic apostolic religious memory. Their efforts at re-building
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are shaped by a social context that simultaneously provides opportunities and
constraints. For faith-based NGOs, faith fuels their mission to address
widespread poverty, the absence of ethics that undermine economic
development, and the general population’s minimal commitment to ecclesial
structures. The climate of religious control, however, channels their activities
to invoke the apostolic tradition. In-so-doing, the apostolic religious memory
returns to occupy a central role in the future prospects of the nation, as the
cornerstone of Armenia’s future economic and political prosperity.
Independent Armenia:
A weakened apostolic tradition and widespread poverty
Religious leaders in Armenia seem unanimous in recognizing that the
nation’s religious infrastructure is underdeveloped. For some, the Apostolic
Church’s initial weakness can be traced back to the genocide of 1915,
predating the Soviet suppression. They note that many intellectuals, educated
priests, high-ranking Bishops, and Patriarchs were killed in the genocide,
stripping the church of its most qualified leadership. While many village
priests survived, they were typically less educated and were principally
focused on administering the church’s sacraments.
Church leadership fared no better under Soviet rule. Priests were
kidnapped and deported to Siberia where they were presumably killed.
Churches and seminaries were either closed or subject to severe restrictions.
Only forty seminarians were allowed to enroll at any given time and this
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limited enrollment typically produced one priest every two years. As a result
of the shortage of priests and the destruction o f churches, the parish structure
was decimated under Soviet rule. According to Der Ktrij, the Apostolic
Church’s Foreign Press Secretary, in 1911 there were 245 parishes in the city
of Yerevan which had a population of 250,000 people. The Apostolic Church,
therefore, had approximately one parish for every 1,000 residents: “Every
parish had a priest, so one thousand people went to one church and had a
relationship with one priest and that priest was the person who baptized their
children, who married their brothers and sisters, and buried their
grandparents.” By 1940, there were only nine Armenian churches operating in
the entire Soviet Union (Corley, 1996a).
Years of religious suppression under Soviet rule have also led to a
decline in the significance of religion in the consciousness of individual
Armenians. The government promoted a program of scientific atheism in the
schools, an attempt to supplant religious notions with a secular ideology. And
there was a general fear of being involved or associated with religion. One
Armenian man recalled, “If you [say] only one word - God, somebody will
hear it. They will tell about it. And they will take you with black cars, Soviet
black cars... and you will be never back to your home.”
Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, conditions had improved
for religious communities, including the Armenian Apostolic Church.
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Gorbachev’s principles of glasnost and perestroika contributed to a new
climate of increased religious freedom. On the eve of Armenia’s
independence, there were at least 33 churches registered in Armenia and 27
more were in the process of being formed (Corley, 1996b, 1998); construction
had begun on a major new church in the capital city of Yerevan; the state had
re-established a Department of Theology at Yerevan State University. There
was also a movement within the Apostolic Church to rekindle the church’s
religious mission. A group calling themselves the Brotherhood held prayer
groups in homes and larger events in stadiums and meeting halls. A priest,
Father Abel Oghlookian, believed that there was increasing interest in the
church among the population at large (Corley, 1998).
Despite some improvements, religious leaders within and outside the
Apostolic Church seem to agree that the “Mother Church” was simply
unprepared for the social and religious conditions that it would encounter in an
independent Armenia. The church, denied any role in social service provision
in Soviet times, was suddenly confronted with a populace in desperate
circumstances.
Armenia was among the most industrialized regions of the former
Soviet Union, exporting a significant amount of industrial and military
products to other Soviet republics. In 1988, an earthquake shook the northwest
region of Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people (though many estimates place
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the number of deaths much higher) and destroying 40 percent of Armenia’s
industry (Miller & Touryan Miller, 2003). Three years later, the collapse of
the Soviet Union and its system of trade and manufacturing dealt a further
blow to the Armenian economy, since much of its industrial sector was only
viable within the Soviet infrastructure. Struggling economic conditions were
further exacerbated by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which closed the eastern
and western Armenian borders, hampering the flow of both exports and
imports. These factors combined contributed to widespread poverty and an
immense need for social services. However, government funded assistance
programs disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union and were difficult
to develop in Armenia’s fledgling economy.
In 2004, roughly half the population continues to live in poverty and
16% live in extreme poverty. Large deficits prohibit the government from
adequately developing programs to assist those in need. A report prepared in
2004 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
states: “Pensions currently average $13.50 per month, Poverty Family Benefits
are $13 per month, and unemployment assistance is $5 per month. These
benefits are well below the minimum living standard of $34 per person per
month” (USAID/Armenia, 2004, p. 39).
In response to widespread poverty, the Apostolic Church has created
and maintained an array of programs: monthly stipends for over 2,000 orphans,
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orphanages, soup kitchens, hospitals, a prison ministry, and youth centers.
From 1991 to 1998, one hundred percent of the Apostolic Church’s expense
budget was spent on social services. After 1998, when the country’s economic
conditions began to improve, the church started to spend a portion of its budget
on Christian education. The majority of its finances, however, continued to be
spent on social services. In 2004, the church devoted 80% of its expense
budget to the various social needs of Armenians.
In recent years, the Apostolic Church has made significant progress,
redeveloping its churches and enhancing its presence throughout Armenia. As
of 2004, there are over 100 functioning Apostolic churches in Armenia, many
of which have successfully recreated the parish structure. One church, for
instance, boasts an active congregation with a Ladies’ Guild and an annual
church picnic. Over the past decade, enrollment has increased dramatically in
the apostolic seminary. In 1992, a year after independence, there were 125
students enrolled in the seminary in Echmiadzin and 25 students at the Lake
Sevan seminary. In 2004, the Apostolic Church has three seminaries with a
combined enrollment of over 300 priests. Before they are accepted into the
seminary, potential candidates for the priesthood must pass entrance exams and
for every candidate that is selected two are turned away. Typically, the church
now ordains 30 priests each year and this rise in priests has enabled the
Apostolic Church to expand its ministry into many villages.
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Much energy has been spent on developing programs for youth,
considered to be, by one priest, “the one segment where we can make the most
difference.” To this effect, the Apostolic Church has developed a system of
Sunday schools and, with the approval o f the state, has implemented a
Christian education curriculum in the public schools. The Apostolic Church
has also converted several former “Pioneer Palaces” - where youth in Soviet
times were indoctrinated into the Communist Party - into youth centers where
young people are taught art, sport, acrobatics, and dance alongside Christian
education. In total the church has established seven youth centers in Armenia.
The goal of these youth centers is, according to one priest, “to instill in these
young men and women ethical values, moral traditions which come from
Christian education.”
The Apostolic Church has also entered new arenas of society. The
church owns a television station and produces one of the more popular shows
in Armenia, an investigative program that examines old KGB files and
describes stories of assassinated priests and exiled clergymen. Another show
tours ancient churches and spiritual shrines in the countryside, explaining their
significance. Other programs interview bishops and priests on a number of
different topics, from ethical dilemmas to current events.
Evidence of increased participation among the populace in the life of
the church is largely anecdotal. Renewed interest in the church was noted by
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an Armenian woman from San Diego who has made repeated trips to Armenia
since the 1960s:
This year, I went to Armenia. It was my third time that I went to
Armenia. It was entirely different picture. Churches and people,
especially I went to a newly dedicated church and I saw, I am not
exaggerating, hundreds of people and it was not Sunday or Saturday or
a special day, it was just a regular day. Hundreds of people back and
forth, carrying their babies or themselves. They were getting baptized.
This I saw with my own eyes... every time I have went, I visited the
churches and I saw the difference: 1963, 1986, now this one in 2003,
it’s... Christianity is blossoming there. O f course, it means lots of
work because I visited some homes, they don’t know the Lord’s Prayer,
they don’t know how to make the sign of the [cross], but they believe
that Armenian Church is their church.
On Palm Sunday in 2004, the largest church in Yerevan sold 125,000 candles
and had over forty thousand worshippers come and go during the course of the
day. Der Ktrij noted: “We are noticing an increase in adult baptisms and
baptisms of young men and women who are not baptized as infants. We are
noticing an increase of typically all of the liturgical services, weddings have
gone up, baptisms have gone up, home blessings...”
Despite significant signs of renewal in the Apostolic Church, leaders
believe that much more work needs to be done. In Yerevan, for instance, there
are ten Apostolic churches for a population of approximately one million
people; a ratio of one church for every one hundred thousand residents. Der
Ktrij noted: “If every parish has ten priests in it, which it doesn’t, it is still not
enough to develop a personal relationship with your priest and they are not
located, necessarily, in convenient locations for these people who often times
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have to walk to church.” Several religious leaders noted that the general
population is indifferent to religion. One Protestant leader remarked: “In the
first period [following independence] people were very interested because it
was new. Today, people are interested in religious thinking, but the faith, the
relation with G od... a Christian style of life, I don’t think there is a lot of
people who are interested... people are very indifferent.” A leader in the
Apostolic Church provided a similar assessment: “I would not say that
Armenians in Armenia are atheists. I would say they are indifferent when it
comes to the faith. They realize that they are Christian, but they do not know
what that means. It is not a part of their active, daily lives, being a Christian.”
Latent religiosity beyond the walls of the church
The experience of Christianity in Armenia is, in many respects,
qualitatively different than it is in the heavily-Protestant North American
context. An assessment of the religious restructuring of Armenia following
independence must be careful to employ measures of religion appropriate for
the terrain. Indeed, my own measures of “religiosity,” at times, proved
inadequate at capturing the experiences of those I met in Armenia. For
example, I asked one young woman if she was “actively involved” in her
Apostolic Church. Her brow furrowed and she countered with a question:
“What do you mean actively involved?” She noted that Armenians do not go
to church every Sunday, but that she attended many religious ceremonies as a
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child and was baptized in the church. Inquiring about active involvement, my
question attempting to measure religiosity reflected the voluntary, participatory
character of religion in the North American context. It also focused on
participation in religious institutions. As will be evident shortly, a focus on
religion within institutions neglects a significant amount of faith in Armenia.
Just because Armenians are not active churchgoers does not mean that they are
irreligious.
Being just over a decade beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union,
scholars are beginning to emerge with data on the religious climate after
communism. Among these scholars, discussions of religion tend to focus on a
common set of themes: institutional vitality, new religious movements, and
government regulation (Pankhurst, 1998; Froese, 2004). Typically, they focus
on the quantifiable aspects of institutional vitality, such as church attendance,
the number of existing churches, and the proportion of the population who
affiliate with a church. Similarly, discussion of new religious movements
focuses on the number of such groups present in different regions of the former
Soviet Union. Finally, scholars show much interest in the extent of
government regulation that exists in these regions. Many are taking their cue
from the religious market perspective and believe that government regulations
restricting religious activities will result in a not-so-vital religious landscape.
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The work of these scholars proves inadequate for several reasons.
First, by focusing on institutions, these scholars are preoccupied with official,
organized religion and neglect the variety of ways in which religion exists in
the everyday lives of people in the former Soviet Union. To the extent that
some participate in the Apostolic Church, they often arrive only to light a
candle and do not stay to participate in the liturgy.
Second, the use of attendance rates as a measure of religious vitality
seems to accompany a view that voluntary denominationalism is a more pure
and intense version of religious practice. For example, after finding that less
than ten percent of Russians attend church at least once a month, Jerry
Pankhurst questioned how many of these attenders might be “committed
believers” versus those who are just following the crowd or who are motivated
out of nationalist or patriotic feelings (Pankhurst, 1998, p. 131). Here the
author clearly values those who embrace a privatized and differentiated
“religion for religion’s sake” over those who mix faith with ethnic or national
identity.
Third, it seems of limited use to ask people about their religious
affiliation in a nation where Christianity is synonymous with national identity,
which is arguably the case in the Armenian context. Respondents described
several instances where Armenian women took their children to be baptized in
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the Apostolic Church, believing that the act of baptism would make their
children Armenian.
Fourth, there are instances where the authors’ data seem inconsistent
with their depictions of religious suppression under Soviet rule. Froese, for
instance, noted that following “the first 50 years o f communist rule, nearly
half... [47%] stated that they were either atheists or non-believers” (Froese,
2004, p. 63). He also noted that “Dominant religious groups, in most Soviet
states, lost over 30 percent of their members by 1970” (Froese, 2004, p. 63).
Despite the closure of churches, government programs promoting scientific
atheism, and stories about priests being kidnapped and transported to Siberia
where they were presumably killed, after 50 years of communist rule 53% of
people in the former Soviet Union continued to profess some form of religious
identity and dominant religious groups maintained 70% of their members.
Such figures seem to illustrate the resilience of religion in the former Soviet
Union, rather than its decimation under communist suppression.
The point here is simple. Many scholars seem to be looking for
evidence of religious vitality in the former Soviet Union using a narrow,
Western conception of what constitutes religion. By applying the religious
marketplace model to a non-Westem region, scholars are assuming that the
same principles underlying the vitality of religion in the United States can have
the same affect elsewhere. Such an assumption seems naive, ignoring the
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ways in which history and culture help to determine a religious context
regardless of official religious control or deregulation. By widening the
conception of religion to include less institutionalized and less conventional
forms, religion is much more pervasive than what Western conceptual tools
can detect.
The production of art in Armenia provides a case in point. In Armenia,
religious art pervades the nation’s landscape. Some of this art is very old and
is displayed in city museums and ancient churches. Khachkars, for instance,
are a very unique form of medieval Armenian art. They are usually carved
from rock and resemble a tombstone. While some identify graves, others are
designed “to commemorate important historical dates in the life of the nation
(a military victory for example), or the community (the completion of a
church, a fountain, a bridge)” (Baliozian, 1980, p. 146). Khachkars appear in
many shapes and sizes. You can see them on rocks in the countryside, in
cemeteries, carved on the sides of churches, or near the entrance of a building.
They involve lacy designs and intricate patterns of geometric shapes with a
cross in the middle. Khachkars are still being produced today. Local
craftsmen sell wooden replicas of ancient stone khachkars at tourist sites,
outdoor markets, and gift shops.
Armenia is also well-known for its collection of ancient illuminated
manuscripts that depict a variety of different biblical narratives. And, like
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khachkars, local artists paint replicas of ancient manuscripts to sell at outdoor
venues in the capital of Yerevan. Other pieces o f art sold in public venues also
bear religious imagery and symbolism. Many of the watercolor and oil
paintings sold at an outdoor market in the capital of Yerevan depicted ancient
churches, priests, and khachkars. A few of the most well-known ancient
churches are common subject matter and are painted repeatedly.
The production of khachkars, illuminated manuscripts, and religious
scenes is not merely a tourist trade. As mentioned earlier, the Apostolic
Church has seven youth centers where children and youth are taught artistic
skills - painting, sculpture, woodwork, and dance - alongside Christian
education. Here, the children learn to produce similar kinds o f religious art
that can be seen in the local markets and gift stores. The children’s art,
however, is not for sale; they are simply honing a craft.
The production of religious art provides evidence of the persistence of
material religion in the everyday lives of some Armenians. What is more, the
production and reproduction of the same kind of religious art - over and over
again - seems to mirror Armenians’ experience o f liturgy in the Apostolic
Church. The Armenian Apostolic liturgy has been performed in a similar
manner for over a millennium. It is a predetermined structure that the
worshipper repeats each Sunday, and it also connects the worshipper with his
or her past - ancestors, myths, and saints. In the same way, these artists are
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continually participating in the production of the same religious objects. They
are following the predetermined structure of the art’s form and design. And,
in-so-doing, they are connecting themselves with the past, the religious art of
their ancestors. Art is a form of liturgical worship and is a vehicle through
which religious memory is transmitted.
As evident in the production of art and the sense of attachment that
most Armenians express toward the apostolic tradition, faith remains deeply
embedded within Armenia’s cultural landscape, although few express
themselves religiously through participation in an ecclesial structure. Faith, in
other words, is latent. The work of faith-based NGOs is in many instances
geared toward the revitalization of the culture’s latent religious inclinations.
Corruption, after all, is hampering efforts at economic development and a
revitalized religious ethic is believed to be the antidote.
The problem of corruption
Despite more than a decade of independence, the effects of seventy
years of communist rule linger to the present-day and form a stranglehold on
Armenia’s development. In the former Soviet regime, workers were paid basic
government salaries and often developed illicit means of earning a
supplemental income; black market businesses and a system of bribes provided
many with an extra source of personal revenue. Economic practices that
circumvent official laws are still prevalent in Armenia today and are generally
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referred to as forms of “corruption.” A Canadian-Armenian who has worked
in Armenia for several years describes the pervasiveness of corruption in
Armenia as follows:
.. .corruption [is] at every level. I mean, a policeman gets 15,000
Dram, which is about thirty dollars. He can’t survive on that salary.
That’s only enough for bread, not even cheese, so he’s got to live on
something. Now, you see these things [policemen asking for bribes],
but other things you don’t see. You take a drawing for approval. The
official rate is ten dollars. He sees there is a business behind it. You’re
building four apartments to sell to various people and they say “give us
ten thousand.” Otherwise, they won’t give you anything. There’s no
one that you can go to and say “hey, the official price is this and that.”
Your son goes to the army. They want to send [him] to Karabakh. You
don’t want [him] to [go]. You go and pay somebody two thousand
dollars and they can stay in Armenia and in Yerevan... These people
are getting rich. Whoever is in that position to demand, to demand as
much as you want because sometimes you’re stuck. You need that
particular service.
Corruption, then, is pervasive and takes place at multiple levels of society,
between individuals, businesses, and within the government.
Individuals and businesses operate within a system where unofficial
payments or bribes are required of those who wish to access services.
According to a 2001 survey of 998 households conducted by the Armenian
Democratic Forum (ADF) and funded by the World Bank, half of the
Armenians surveyed gave unofficial fees to access health care, public
education, or state-supported social services. Thirty-nine percent of
respondents in the survey gave unofficial payments and nine percent gave
some form of gift when visiting the hospital. Forty percent of respondents
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provided an unofficial payment to a state-funded kindergarten; most of the
respondents provided the payment to enroll their child (Armenian Democratic
Forum, 2001).
Respondents also frequently mentioned that they provided unofficial
payments to the police and judiciary and many believe that there is widespread
corruption in these sectors too. Many respondents reported being stopped by
traffic police for unexplained violations and two-thirds of the respondents
provided some form of unofficial payment to avoid paying an official penalty.
The judiciary is also viewed by many as a corrupt entity. Fifty-eight percent of
respondents noted that it was impossible to resolve an issue through the
judiciary without providing some form o f bribe. O f those who used the
judiciary, 20% mentioned that they provided some form of unofficial payment
ranging from 1000 drams to 300,000 drams (about $2 to $545 U.S.); and half
of those who gave a payment did so to influence the court’s decision in a
favorable manner.
At times, unofficial fees are demanded by those performing the
services. At other times, an individual initiates the donation, believing that this
is merely how the system works. There is, as a result, a certain ambivalence
surrounding whether or not unofficial fees are actually “bribes.” Others in the
survey mentioned that unofficial fees were given to ensure a higher quality of
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medical treatment or greater attention for a child in school. These fees, then,
are given to both access and improve the available services.
ADF also conducted a survey of 400 private enterprises in Armenia to
examine the accessibility of public services for private entrepreneurs.
Specifically, more than a third of the entrepreneurs reported that corruption is
extensive in Customs and Tax Services. Many also noted the prevalence of
corrupt practices in the Office of the Prosecutor and the Power Supply. The
system of corruption produces an environment where the taxes and operating
expenses charged to businesses are not administered evenly. The ADF report
concludes by noting that private enterprises encounter corruption at every stage
of their operation and this corruption is a significant obstacle to economic
development.
On the political level, allegations o f corruption surround the issue of
campaign financing. In the 2003 presidential election, most of the political
parties failed to disclose their campaign expenses as required by law. A report
prepared by the World Bank notes that political parties did not adequately
account for the money they spent on political advertising for television as well
as the number of political publications they produced and distributed
(Saribekyan, 2004). Concerning the political climate of Armenia, a Canadian-
Armenian commented: “It’s not a democracy. It’s gangsterism. I think that’s
what it is. It’s gangsterism pretending to be a democracy.”
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The system o f “unofficial” payments perpetuates inequalities between
the rich and poor. The ADF survey found that individuals who are poor make
such payments more frequently. This may be explained, in part, by the fact
that individuals with minimal income require public services more often and,
as a result, encounter more situations where unofficial payments are required.
Bribes, then, are disproportionately paid by those who can least afford them.
But, it is also likely the case that more affluent members of society possess the
social networks to bypass the system of payments. For instance, several
Armenians reported that the wealthy, that tend to drive luxury cars, are never
stopped by the traffic police. A policeman, some report, could lose his job if
he were to stop someone of high importance.
Continuing widespread poverty and a stark contrast between rich and
poor are viewed as a direct consequence of government corruption. One leader
from a faith-based NGO commented: “You know, there’s huge inequality of
wealth... And that is not to do with purely poor financial policy. It’s to do
with corruption... So, you know, the frustration with the government is that
Armenia should not be in the mess that it is in. I mean, if you see how much is
coming in from remittances from the diaspora in general and the large diaspora
donors. It is millions and millions and millions of dollars.” Confirming the
fears of many diasporans, this NGO leader believes that much of the money
sent to aid Armenia is being pilfered by those who hold positions of power.
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The prevalence of corruption impedes diasporan help and the prospects
for Armenia’s long-term development. Stories about Armenia’s corrupt
environment have become commonplace among members o f the diaspora,
including those who have never visited the country. I asked a young
American-born Armenian if she hoped to visit Armenia. She replied:
I’ve heard so many people who have gone and I think it’s just sad to
go... the government is so corrupt. Those people are getting all of their
money taken from them. Those people are begging in the street for a
dollar, you know. That’s so much money over there. I guess the only
thing you could provide for them as a tourist is your money, but I don’t
even know who it goes to. You know what I mean? It’s just so corrupt
you don’t even know if you’re helping them out by giving them a
dollar.
Many Armenians in the United States and Canada who have never traveled to
Armenia know about corruption from the ethics of those members of the
California diaspora who emigrated from the Republic of Armenia. In other
words, corruption is exported. As noted in chapter two, Armenians from the
former Soviet Republic of Armenia are often believed to be engaged in the
black market economy of Los Angeles. American-born Armenians and those
from other regions of the diaspora commonly note that the unethical practices
of Armenians from Armenia have sullied the otherwise good reputation
Armenians have earned in Los Angeles. The association of Califomia-
Armenians with corrupt activity is even present in other regions of the
diaspora. I asked a Canadian-born Armenian about his impression of
Califomia-Armenians. He replied:
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California has become very corrupt and I ... my impression, what I hear
of Califomian-Armenians is that they are all robbers and crooks and
they do things dishonestly because [that is] what they did back home.
Those who were rich and were crooks back home, they made money
and had the money to get out of the country, they got out and where did
they go? California... whatever they were doing back in Armenia, now
they are doing it in California.
The linking of Armenians with criminal activity has been featured in prime
time television. In February 2003, ABC aired an episode of the police drama
LA. Dragnet, a re-make of the popular show from the 1950s that featured a
similar title. Set in Los Angeles, one episode was based on a storyline about
Armenian “gangsters” who “came off the boat killing.”
Corruption is an ethical problem with serious economic consequences
for the nation of Armenia. Unofficial payments are disproportionately paid by
the poorest members of society, perpetuating stark inequalities between rich
and poor. Labeled as a corruption-prone nation, individuals from outside
Armenia are cautious investors. At the level of the government and judiciary,
investors are leery of the unevenly applied tax, customs, and regulatory laws.
At the level of individual workers, investors lack confidence in the work ethic
of potential employees. However, while corruption discourages economic
investment, it encourages moral and spiritual investments. The work of faith-
based NGOs - blending a religious and moral framework with economic
development - seems particularly well-suited to the task of battling corruption
and improving the nation’s economic prospects. They must do so, however, in
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an atmosphere of control, where the apostolic tradition receives special
benefits and protection.
The context of religious control
In October 1990, shortly before the Soviet Union disbanded, a law was
passed establishing freedom of conscience. In June 1991, the independent
nation of Armenia established its own law on “Freedom of Conscience and
Religious Organizations,” guaranteeing “freedom of conscience (to believe or
not to believe) and profession of faith (to conduct religious rites individually or
with others) and the equality of all citizens before the law, regardless of
religious belief or affiliation” (Corley, 1998, p. 314). The new law established
an absolute separation between church and state and forbade the state from
either interfering in the activities of any religious group or financing any
religious organization. But, the new law also accorded special privileges to the
Apostolic Church. It declared that the Armenian Apostolic Church was the
country’s national church, since it served “as an important bulwark for the
edification of its spiritual life and national preservation” (Corley, 1998, p.
314). The law also banned proselytism (a word that means “soul hunting” in
Armenian), but allowed the Apostolic Church to preach without restriction,
including in the state schools. Religious groups were allowed to raise funds,
tax-free, from their own members. However, groups having a religious
headquarters outside of Armenia were not allowed to receive money from
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abroad. The Catholic Church, having a spiritual head in Rome, was only
allowed to collect money from its own members and could only receive funds
from sources outside of Armenia when conducting charitable work (Corley,
1998). Felix Corley, writer and historian, aptly describes the historical and
cultural factors that led to the specific formulation of the law on “Freedom of
Conscience and Religious Organizations”:
The 1991 law seemed to be an uneasy alliance of three competing and
contradictory elements: the traditional Armenian belief that the
Armenian Church should be the protected national Church; the Soviet
tradition that every organization, including religious organizations,
must be registered and have official approval before undertaking any
activity; and international norms regarding religious freedom and
human rights (Corley, 1998, p. 315).
Religious groups not recognized by the government were severely restricted,
unable to own or rent property, “publish newspapers, sponsor broadcasts,
collect money, conduct charitable work or sponsor visas for visitors to
Armenia” (Corley, 1998, p. 315). Non-apostolic religious groups recognized
by the government also faced restrictions. They were considered
“communities” and were allowed to preach only among their own members.
Despite official restrictions, many new religious groups gained
followers in Armenia, including the Hare Krishna Movement, Transcendental
Meditation, Mormons, the Unification Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
Protestant Christian churches (Corley, 1998). The exact number of adherents
belonging to each of these groups is unknown. And while their presence has
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sparked great discussion and fear, several church leaders believe that the
number of followers belonging to such organizations is greatly exaggerated.
Just as it was not ready for the social conditions of independent
Armenia, so too was the Apostolic Church unprepared for the new religious
groups that would show-up on Armenia’s doorstep. And, according to some
church leaders, this lack of preparedness gave new religious groups a foothold
in the nation’s religious economy. In response, leaders in the Apostolic
Church frequently articulated their opposition to proselytism. Fear over
competition from sectarian movements even garnered the attention of the
Apostolic Church in the diaspora: “Collections were taken up in the diaspora
churches to support the revival of the Church in Armenia and priests and
young people were sent to aid missionary w ork... much of this work seemed to
be focused on preventing Armenians falling under the influence o f ‘sects’”
(Corley, 1998, p. 321).
Church leaders in Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant churches paint an
unflattering portrait of new religious groups in Armenia. Several church
leaders stated that these new groups entice converts through monetary
incentives. One apostolic priest commented: “they are passing out butter or
sugar or milk or nutrition or clothing or financial enticements and using the
social status of that family in order to win a convert. When the Armenian
faithful [believe] that even his faith is something that they can sell... then
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everything is for sale. Then their moral compass is lost.” A young apostolic
seminarian believed that new religious groups also received money from
abroad for each new convert they brought into the fold; Jehovah’s Witnesses
supposedly receive $100 US for each new convert. A couple of church leaders
suspected that new religious groups represented foreign interests. One young
man I spoke to in a cafe in Yerevan told me that the CIA and other secret
agencies from Europe are sending spies to Armenia under the guise of
preachers and members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I asked the young man
why foreign governments would send secret agents to Armenia. He believes
that their mission is to gather information about the country in an attempt to
gain control of its activities. An apostolic priest noted that sectarian
movements are dividing families and that there is a correlation between the
presence of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a marked increase in suicide in some
villages. Such descriptions of new religious movements seem intent on
vilifying and discrediting their activities, a practice common in many areas of
the former Soviet Union (Davis, 2003).
Officially, the Armenian Evangelical Church and the Armenian
Catholic Church are recognized as religious communities. In contrast to
newly-arrived religious groups, the historic presence of Catholic and
Evangelical churches gives these communities a sense of establishment. One
young apostolic noted that he accepts Protestants and Catholics because they
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are “historical churches.” Their presence among Armenians for well over a
century has given them a certain indigenous quality and a corresponding sense
of legitimacy. Both Evangelical and Catholic churches are members of the
World Council of Churches Roundtable (WCCR), a regular gathering of a
select group of church leaders and representatives of faith-based NGOs. The
WCCR aims to help the poor, build civil society, and foster inter-church
dialogue and cooperation. But, new religious groups are conspicuously absent
from the WCCR. Indeed, involvement in the WCCR seems restricted to those
groups officially recognized as religious communities by both the state and the
Apostolic Church.
While the Apostolic Church officially recognizes and cooperates with
the Evangelical and Catholic churches, members o f Evangelical and Catholic
communities often feel marginalized. One Evangelical leader noted: “when
they [the Apostolic Church] want to give us some difficulties, in some
interview, in some speech, they say all are sects, cults, Jehovah’s Witness,
Mormon, Evangelical, and on and on.” Another Protestant leader noted that
while freedom of religion exists in Armenia “in principle,” the Apostolic
Church openly criticizes other religious groups for stealing those who they feel
“belong” to them: “they [the Apostolic Church] look at it as their monopoly. I
mean who gets to come and steal their flock... they just talk in terms of our
people.” A few recounted specific instances where the Apostolic Church
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limited the work of the Evangelical Church. In the following quote, an
evangelical worker recalls an instance where apostolic leaders reportedly
stopped the construction of an Evangelical Church:
When we first started building in, on our lot, on our first lot, they came
and stopped them. The Orthodox Church, the local bishop. He
probably had the blessing of the, uh, Catholicos too because they are
scared of the spread of anything that’s not Orthodox... So, they came
and stopped it. They use kids, women come and lie in front of the
backhoes, excavators, you know? And they went to court saying the
city gave a permit without the knowledge of the residents.
By North American standards, the Armenian government’s stance toward non-
apostolic groups appears discriminatory. Their legislation on “freedom of
conscience” seems to reflect an official toleration of religious groups, rather
than complete freedom. But, in the context of other regions, like Europe,
Armenia’s policies are not atypical. Sectarian groups, like Jehovah’s
Witnesses and Mormons, have previously been denied tax status and labeled as
“dangerous cults” by the French and German governments. In fact, state
churches and governments often work in tandem to discredit sectarian
movements. Official state churches are accorded special privileges and often
receive tax dollars (Finke & Stark, 2000). What is more, other regions in the
former Soviet Union have similarly instituted controls that provide benefits for
historic churches - like the Russian Orthodox Church - while minimizing the
potential for new groups to take root and gain followers (Davis, 2003). Placed,
then, within the context of nations with historic connections between the state
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and an established, Christian Church, Armenia’s laws that paradoxically grant
freedom of conscience and restrict religious activity are not out of the ordinary.
Expressing concern over the recruitment of Armenian sects and,
occasionally, Protestant and Catholic Churches, may prove to be an effective
strategy to mobilize the Apostolic Church to act more aggressively toward
developing and maintaining their membership. That is, given the historic and
contemporary dominance of the Apostolic Church, the illusion of competition
is just as effective as competition itself in mobilizing both the Apostolic
Church in Armenia and in the diaspora. Moreover, the Apostolic Church also
views itself as battling seventy years of atheistic influence, a historic
competitor whose influence is still felt today and is countered by the church
(Froese, 2004).
It is within this context of control that a new form of religious
organization has taken root and flourished: the faith-based non-govemment
organization. Not being labeled a church or a sectarian movement, faith-based
NGOs operate with a degree of freedom not experienced by ecclesiastical
communities. Faith-based NGOs, however, also face limitations on
proselytizing activities and their ability to support non-apostolic ecclesiastical
structures. This leads faith-based NGOs to adopt particular strategies for
success; three such strategies will be outlined in the following section.
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External assistance: Diasporan support and faith-based NGOs
The events surrounding the Armenian genocide were horrific. Between
1915 and 1923, it is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were
killed through Turkish pogroms (Miller & Touryan Miller, 1993, p. 44).
Armenians fleeing the genocide settled in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq -
among other places. Adding insult to injury, these regions experienced, in
turn, their own conflicts. In fact, a significant proportion of the California
diaspora fled events that occurred in other diasporic regions, making these
immigrants “serial” diasporans (Safran, 2004). Lebanese-Armenians, for
instance, fled the civil war that ravaged Beirut in the 1970s. Iranian-
Armenians left when the ultra-conservative mullah came into power in 1979,
threatening religious and ethnic minorities. However, while the events of the
genocide were devastating for Armenians, the dispersion created by those who
fled has now become, ironically, Armenia’s lifeline. The Turks may have tried
to annihilate the Armenian people, but their actions helped to create the
affluent and powerful Armenian community in the United States, ensuring the
nation a level of financial and political support that few other countries receive.
The support from the United States is staggering and comes from
multiple levels: government, non-profit organizations, businesses, and
individual donors. The U.S. is the largest bilateral donor, having provided
over 90 million dollars in support in 2003. Kirk Kerkorian, majority-owner of
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the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas, established the Lincy Foundation which
has given $145 million (US funds) to help rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Lincy has paved roads, renovated cultural centers, repaired sidewalks, built
housing in the region devastated by the earthquake, and - through these
projects - given thousands of workers temporary employment. As noted
earlier, the Apostolic Church in North America provides the majority of the
operating funds for the Apostolic Church in Armenia. Father Ktrij noted:
The Armenian Church in Armenia, exists due to the generosity of our
benefactors from outside of Armenia: the diasporan Armenians. The
Church today receives 17% of her income from within Armenia - that
is candle sales and donations from within Armenia. 83% of our income
is from the generosity of our benefactors, from the diaspora. I could
easily say 90% [from the] US, the rest Europe and everywhere else.
It’s the United States.
A young apostolic seminarian noted that the Archbishop of the Western
Diocese (U.S.A), Hovnan Srpazan, is accorded more respect and privilege than
the Catholicos, since Hovnan Srpazan is directly in-charge of the most affluent
community of Armenians in the world. Given the extent of the Apostolic
Church’s reliance on diaspora funds - particularly from the United States, the
project of creating more engaged worshippers in North America seems
important for ensuring financial support for the Apostolic Church in Armenia.
Several European nations, including Germany, France, the United
Kingdom, and the Netherlands have provided significant help to the
development of Armenia’s economic system and civil society. There are also
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several multilateral donors that provide generous forms of support, including
the World Bank, the European Union, and the United Nations. At the
individual level, Armenians in various regions of the diaspora provide $110
million dollars (US) per year (4.6% of GDP) in the form of remittances
(USAID/Armenia, 2004, p. 3). These remittances are sent directly to
Armenian households and assist people with basic necessities as well as funds
for starting businesses and purchasing property.
In recent years, many have noted that the diaspora has experienced a
form of philanthropic burn-out, as they’ve been disillusioned by the slow
progress achieved through their financial support. Following the first few
years of Armenia’s independence, many wealthy Armenians from the diaspora
provided substantial funds to develop businesses and help in the nation’s
economic recovery. But, poor work ethics and corruption hampered the
success of their investments.
In an atmosphere of donor burn-out, NGOs become a reliable means
through which donations can be channeled. NGOs are organizational experts
when it comes to efficiently using resources from the diaspora to produce
tangible outcomes. Many Armenians living in the diaspora have never lived in
Armenia and do not know how to navigate through the country’s legal,
political, and cultural landscape. NGOs, in this environment, act as brokers
between Western funds and practices and the nation of Armenia.
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Not all of the support that comes from the diaspora is financial or
material. Diasporans are also keenly aware of the need to provide non
material or “social remittances,” where migrants send ideas and practices from
the host society to the country of origin (Levitt, 2001). In particular, the
Armenian diaspora in North America sends ideas and practices that strengthen
faith, civic virtues, and a good work ethic; values that many believe were
stripped from the Armenian people during the seventy years of communist
rule. One young Canadian-born Armenian living in Los Angeles noted:
When we talked about Armenia being, you know, suppressed for years
and years and years, it’s our responsibility to take that back to them.
It’s our responsibility to enrich them in the deep-seated traditions that
our church does have... They respect the church... They don’t embrace
it. It’s not a full part of their lives. So, I think that we need to take that
back to them and say, church is about... it’s about the parish life, it’s
about coming together w ith... the people who live around you and to
worship and to, you know, have dinner... things like that.
Social remittances frequently introduced to Armenia from the West include
Christian education programs for children and youth. The Armenian Church
Youth Organization has plans to expand their chapters in Armenia. And
Apostolic churches have been introducing Sunday school programs that
previously did not exist.
Over the last two decades, non-government organizations have become
more numerous and increasingly prevalent in world affairs and many of these
organizations have a pronounced religious persona and mission. The “Jubilee
USA Network” - an effort to erase the debt of third world countries - is
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supported by an impressive array of Jewish, Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and
Evangelical organizations, including World Vision, the Mennonite Central
Committee, and Lutheran World Relief.
The term “non-government organization” was coined by Article 71 of
the United Nations Charter, which “created a political space for self-appointed
representatives of public interests to interact and organize for the promotion of
common goals” (Berger, 2003, p. 15). NGOs work toward the betterment of a
particular facet of society. Being non-profit, the work of NGOs lies outside the
economic self-interests o f for-profit corporations. And, while their missions
tend to be oriented toward public issues and are often directly geared toward
influencing public policy, NGOs are independent of government bodies.
NGOs are non-violent, self-governing, and can exist both within and across
national boundaries (Martens, 2002).
Religious or faith-based NGOs represent a distinct and prominent
manifestation of the more general category of non-government organizations.
Bearing the same general qualities of secular NGOs, faith-based groups have
an identity and mission that is “self-consciously derived from the teachings of
one or more religious or spiritual traditions” (Berger, 2003, p. 16). Where
secular NGOs approach their work using a “rights-based” discourse, Julia
Berger describes the mission of faith-based NGOs as “duty-oriented” (Berger,
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2003, p. 19). That is, the mission of faith-based NGOs is derived from a sense
of obedience to a divine being and a sense of responsibility to fellow humans.
The development and success of faith-based NGOs over the past two
decades provides clear evidence that religious groups are not necessarily
relegated to the private sphere, as secularization theories have long been
suggesting. Rather, religious groups - often in the form of NGOs - can
emerge forcefully in public discussions to make a significant contribution to
public policy decisions (Berger, 2003).
The presence of faith-based NGOs in Armenia is a relatively new
phenomenon. In Soviet times, it was illegal for religious groups to conduct
charitable work (Corley, 1998). Currently, faith-based NGOs in Armenia
represent a variety of religious traditions, although most are Christian.
Evangelical, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Catholic, Apostolic, Seventh Day
Adventist, and Mormon organizations perform a number of tasks, including
health-care, orphan assistance, care for the elderly, arts programs, and peace
building. Most are involved with some form of educational program. A faith-
based NGO, for instance, might adopt a particular school, providing food for
the children, money for teachers’ salaries, and resources for the maintenance of
the physical structure. Many faith-based NGOs are also involved in creating
programs that help children with disabilities integrate into the wider society.
Particular themes, like assistance for children with disabilities, often reflect the
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resources that are available to NGOs. As mentioned earlier, the single largest
funding source for Armenian NGOs is USAID and NGOs’ focus on assistance
for children with disabilities reflects the availability of USAID funds
earmarked specifically for these kinds of programs.
Three strategies of faith-based NGOs:
Hybridity, ecumenism, and humanitarian-focused
It is in a nation where most have little or no connection to an
ecclesiastical structure and half of the citizenry live in poverty that faith-based
NGOs - blending faith with social activism - find a high degree of
responsiveness to their programs. But, faith-based groups, including NGOs,
face a restricted environment. Operating in a social context where the
Apostolic Church is given official and popular support, non-apostolic faith-
based NGOs adopt different strategies to further their goals of economic,
social, and spiritual development, while simultaneously respecting the historic
importance of the Apostolic Church. It is through this landscape of
ecclesiastical control that faith-based NGOs must negotiate their identity and
mission. In what follows, three NGO strategies are outlined as “ideal types.”
They are heuristic constructs that help to delineate a particular category by
exaggerating the essential features of a social phenomenon. At times, an NGO
may exhibit all three strategies. Each organization, however, has a tendency to
emphasize one of three distinct strategies: hybridity, ecumenism, or
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humanitarian-focused. In the following section, each of these strategies will
be discussed in turn.
Hybridity
Petros Malakyan founded the National Leadership Institute (NLI) in
2000. He developed a vision for NLI when he was a student at Fuller
Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school located in Pasadena,
California. NLI selects twelve “disciples” each year for an intensive
leadership training program. Using Jesus’ example of gathering disciples,
Petros selects a group of twelve young professionals and works with them
intensely over the course of a two-year period, developing their spiritual and
moral character. As part of their discipleship training, Petros and his students
adopt an Apostolic Church and work to revitalize the parish structure. At
Saghmosavank, a thirteenth century Apostolic Church not far from the capitol
city of Yerevan, Petros and his students have developed a choir to accompany
the liturgy; they’ve created a Sunday school program; and they’ve invited
people from the small village to participate in the weekly liturgy. On the cold,
drizzly morning that I visited the church in April of 2004, the small inner
sanctuary was filled to capacity.
Organizationally, NLI operates as a registered NGO in Armenia and
also has an organizational counterpart in Los Angeles: “Christian Leadership
International” (CLI). CLI is a non-profit religious organization registered in
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the state of California. Practically, CLI raises funds from California-based
supporters to undergird the work of Petros and his staff in Armenia. And,
where CLI is a “supporting” organization, NLI is an “implementing” entity.
The National Leadership Institute is clearly influenced by both Petros’
Protestant upbringing and his vision for a spiritual and moral transformation in
Armenia. Petros utilizes typically Protestant practices, including a focus on
biblical inerrancy, personal devotion, discipleship, and piety. Yet, however, he
uses these strategies - not to start his own, separate church - but to
reinvigorate and strengthen the Apostolic Church. Petros’ mix of Protestant
and Apostolic strategies and practices gives him a liminal status and others
often look upon him with confusion. One young apostolic seminarian initially
expressed uncertainty over Petros’ identity, noting that, at first, he thought
Petros was Protestant:
I will tell you a very sincere thing. There was a period during our co
working that I looked on him with very strange eyes. And I told him,
many times during that period, why are you being Protestant in church?
I think you are Protestant. He was just trying to always explain, I’m
not Protestant. I’m just Christian.. .But, now I think he’s more
Apostolic than Protestant.
Petros’ mission and organizational strategy involve a hybrid; he uses Protestant
religious practices to help in the reconstruction of the indigenous, Apostolic
Church. At face value, Petros’ work seems to be a classic case of
“glocalization”; after all, he takes global Christian practices and gives them a
local character. But, to some, NLI appears thoroughly apostolic, since its aim
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is to invigorate and strengthen the Apostolic Church. If, indeed, Petros
employs global, homogenizing forces, he puts them through such a complete
process of indigenization that they are often not recognizable to the very
communities from which they originate. This is evident in the lukewarm
acceptance that Petros’ ministries receive among many evangelicals in
Armenia.
Practically, one of the ways in which faith-based NGOs situate
themselves within the apostolic religious memory is through the arts. Art
cloaks the evangelical NGO with an air of legitimacy. Given the pervasiveness
of religious art in the nation and the way the reproduction of religious art
perpetuates the historic Christian memory, teaching children how to create
religious objects, sing religious songs, and perform traditional dances allows
the NGOs to possess an indigenous quality.
Other religious communities in Armenia also exemplify hybrid
identities, yet these groups are often not received well by the Apostolic
Church. When hybridity is used to establish a church, it is looked upon merely
as a surreptitious strategy to gain converts to evangelicalism. One apostolic
seminarian recounted the following about the pastor of an evangelical
congregation that employs apostolic elements: “I don’t like him and we don’t
like him. Why? .. .he tries to present him as an apostolic way for the lay
people... he’s using our songs, he’s using our prayers, he’s using our hymnals,
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our pictures [to] show that I am an aspotolic, come to me, come to me.” The
young seminarian noted that many people cannot recognize that the
evangelical pastor is not apostolic. Hybridity is only a welcome strategy when
it is used to support the Mother Church and the historic apostolic memory.
Ecumenism
Another strategy employed by faith-based NGOs involves ecumenism.
Using this approach, an organization retains its original integrity as a distinct
non-apostolic faith tradition, but chooses to cooperate and support the
dominant, Apostolic Church. World Vision, for instance, helped the Apostolic
Church to develop Christian education resources for use in the public school
system. One woman who works for World Vision noted that her involvement
with the NGO has helped her to understand the Apostolic Church: “World
Vision helps me to understand a lot even inside of [the] Apostolic Church.”
Sister Arousiag, who runs an orphanage in a region that was devastated by the
earthquake, pays to have her apostolic children baptized in the Apostolic
Church, encouraging them to retain their familial religious roots.
Rather than being a strategy invoked by religious groups themselves,
ecumenism is a privileged status in Armenia, granted by government officials
and the Apostolic Church. Membership in the World Council of Churches’
Roundtable, housed at the Apostolic Church headquarters in Etchmiadzine,
seems to be a litmus test for legitimacy. Groups allowed to participate in the
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Roundtable are allowed to exist officially. Faith-based NGOs that are granted
official status include World Vision, Jinishian Foundation, and Caritas.
Humanitarian-focused
In Pasadena, California, the Armenian Gospel Mission collects
financial and material resources from Americans and ships them to its
organizational counterpart in Armenia: the Armenian Relief and Development
Association. The two names “Armenian Gospel Mission” and “Armenian
Relief and Development Association” reflect the different strategies o f the twin
organizations as well as the different national contexts in which the two
operate. The “Armenian Gospel Mission” solicits donations from a
community that is predominantly Christian and whose faith compels them to
share some of their financial and material blessings with those who need
assistance. The “Armenian Relief and Development Association” (ARDA)
focuses on the distribution of humanitarian aid and has a rather benign title,
reflecting the controls faced by religiously-oriented groups in Armenia. ARDA
is registered as a humanitarian NGO and is not allowed to conduct religious
work among Armenians, restricting its work to humanitarian assistance. It has
adopted, for instance, several public schools and provides these institutions
with materials for the physical infrastructure, money for the teachers’ salaries,
food for the children, and heat in the wintertime.
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The staff of both AGM and ARDA is motivated by an evangelical
impulse. Their sense of mission to assist “the poorest of the poor” is derived
from their deeply held sense of duty to serve both God and fellow-humans.
They also believe that God is at work through the things that they do;
humanitarian work is a form of religious practice. And while the organizations
have no interest in starting ecclesiastical structures, their day-to-day
interactions with people often lead them to talk about their faith and their
desire to see others also embrace a deeper expression of Christianity.
Focusing on humanitarian causes, AGM and ARDA avoid the stigma
and control that is experienced by non-apostolic religiously-oriented groups.
But, at the same time, the act of focusing solely on humanitarian causes
reflects AGM and ARDA’s self-censorship, as they steer clear o f a decidedly
religious identity that would gamer disapproval and sanction from those in
power. Humanitarian work, however, also cloaks ARDA with a sense of
legitimacy; the government and Apostolic Church can hardly criticize
humanitarian groups that are fulfilling essential needs - such as the provision
of food and clothing - that would otherwise be left unmet.
Given the political, legal, and cultural context of Armenia, faith-based
non-government organizations are particularly well-suited for the task of
developing the nation’s religious infrastructure, while simultaneously
addressing the social needs of the Armenian people. Where new churches are
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viewed suspiciously as encroaching on apostolic territory, faith-based NGOs
are given a wider girth in which to operate. Most faith-based NGOs, focused
primarily on administering social services, do not bear the stigma attributed to
non-apostolic ecclesiastical structures. Their relative freedom is granted
because they are not building churches and, hence, are not viewed as
competition for the Apostolic Church. In fact, faith-based NGOs are granted
more legitimacy to the degree that they cooperate and support the work of the
Apostolic Church in Armenia. That is, to the extent that a faith-based NGO
bolsters the religious memory of the Apostolic Church, the organization is
granted freedom to operate. Alternatively, faith-based NGOs can downplay
their religious mission - to focus overtly on humanitarian causes - and, in so
doing, minimize the potential for restrictions.
Not only can faith-based NGOs avoid the attention and control faced by
ecclesiastical structures, but they can also operate with a greater degree of
flexibility. For instance, their legal status provides them with increased access
to financial resources. As mentioned in the previous section, any religious
group whose headquarters lies outside the borders of Armenia cannot collect
money from abroad and must rely on financial support from Armenians
domestically. NGOs do not face such restrictions and are allowed to use
money from outside Armenia for the purpose of work devoted to development
and relief. Some faith-based NGOs also have more internal flexibility to
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institute programs. Though there is a wide variation, faith-based NGOs tend to
be much more pliable than church structures, since they usually lack a
formalized and hierarchical chain of command. Leaders on-the-ground have
freedom to institute new programs and administer funds without having to
obtain prior approval from an organizational authority.
Faith-based NGOs, re-imagining the religious memory,
and re-building Armenia
In 2002, the World Bank gave the Armenian government $300,000
(U.S.) to draft an anti-corruption strategy. Since then, the government has
adopted some anti-corruption initiatives, including regulations that prohibit
public officials from illegal involvement in business. But, according to a
World Bank report, most Armenians are not aware that the government has
adopted anti-corruption initiatives. What is more, most Armenians believe that
the government itself initiates corruption and, as a result, cannot be expected to
fight wholeheartedly the existence of corruption within its own offices
(Saribekyan, 2004). Many NGO workers believe that low salaries among
government workers create an environment for corruption. Being in a position
of power and having little remuneration, officials often supplement their
income by demanding bribes for services that are supposed to be administered
through a flat rate.
That economic development can only result in a long-lasting
transformation if it is accompanied by an improved moral outlook and ethical
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behavior is a belief that is widely held among faith-based NGOs. After all,
development on its own - without a moral, ethical, or spiritual renewal - has
already proven unsuccessful. And there is a general consensus that attitudes
and behavior can be changed by focusing on the young. Faith-based NGOs are
not narrowly concerned with saving souls, as some might expect. Rather, their
desire to see a spiritual transformation is closely linked with a practical
concern for Armenia’s economic and political rejuvenation. Two cases are
particularly illustrative: Sister Arousiag’s orphanage and the National
Leadership Institute.
Sister Arousiag is a member of the Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception, an order of Armenian Catholic nuns. She runs an orphanage in
Armenia’s second largest urban area, the city of Gyumri. For Sister Arousiag,
Armenia’s recovery remains stunted by the lingering effects of the seventy
years of communism that destroyed the faith of Armenians. Sister Arousiag
noted: “Armenia’s population, the majority, they don’t know the faith.” But
more than faith, it has also had a much more profound impact on the basic
values of the Armenian people: “this communism has killed humanity in
humans. Humanity in humans. More values are non-existent. They will
cheat.”
Sister Arousiag expects that it will take three generations before there
will be a change in the moral outlook of Armenians living in Armenia. The
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children that she currently looks after in her orphanage are still affected by an
adult generation that does not possess good values: “Fm not expecting
anything from my own children because they’re still under the influence of the
adults, the environment. They see us. They learn from us, but they are
constantly inclined because that’s what they are exposed to. Inside of these
walls, they see one thing. When they go to school, they see something
completely different. And we continuously encourage them to fight and fight
and fight. How much can they fight?”
Despite the continuing influence o f adults, Sister Arousiag is optimistic
about three of the students that attended her orphanage. These young girls are
now university students and, according to Sister Arousiag, “are constantly
fighting” the corruption they encounter in the school system and the wider
culture. Sister Arousiag reminds these students to confront injustices through
their faith: “every time I talk with these children, I say whenever you are
confronted with a decision, always say to yourself, if Jesus were here, what
would you do? I said, try to answer that question. You know, how he fought
the Pharisees, you know, how he did... now, you have a decision to make.
What would he do?”
Rather than raising more money to send to Armenia, Sister Arousiag
believes that Armenians in Armenia need more interaction with people who
exemplify good moral behavior: “I personally feel that we need people here to
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come and continuously work with the people. Show them that there are better
ways of doing things, that they don’t have to resort constantly to cheating,
lying, stealing. That if they have some good work ethics, they will be able to
keep their jobs because in the present market, many of them lose their jobs...
because of their cheating and stealing.”
The absence of ethics also indirectly leads to a sense o f hopelessness.
People are without hope because they don’t have work. People don’t have
work because they are missing a good work ethic. The absence of available
employment is a genuine concern for Sister Arousiag:
It is true that people lose their jobs because of lack of values that they
have, work ethics that they have. But, at the same time, what will help
to transform these people is when they come to my door for help, I
would like to be able to say to them, there is a factory on x street that
needs workers. I will call the director to give you a job. I cannot say
that today. My vision is, for the diaspora to come and work, educate
these people, values, so that the diaspora people, organizations,
investment groups, whatever, diaspora Armenians will come and begin
businesses so that there will be work for these people. It’s a vicious
circle. You see, what is happening now is, the diaspora people who
have come in the early nineties, every single one of them has lost
because of the lack of work ethics or, you know, these people want to
become rich overnight. And they have come back, they have told their
friends, don’t even think about doing something over there unless
you’re ready to lose a million or two, prepared to lose that, so we do
not have the enthusiasm that you had in 1994, 1995, 96.
For Sister Arousiag, Armenia needs time. Change will not occur
overnight, but will take place over several generations. She notes that many
people come from the diaspora to help and desire to see instantaneous changes,
but such quick fixes are simply unrealistic: “A country who has gone downhill
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seventy years cannot go uphill in ten years. If I was with very bad company
for thirty years, forty years, you don’t expect me to become a saint in two
years. I believe in miracles, but in a natural way. You need time.
Transformation, first of all, is acceptance that you need that transformation.
Well, I don’t think Armenians yet have that strong feeling that they need to be
transformed in the first place.”
The National Leadership Institute, like Sister Arousiag, aims to change
the tenor of the Armenian nation through the development of Christian
leadership. As mentioned earlier, NLI selects twelve young “disciples” each
year and puts them through an intense training program based on Christian
education. One of the NLI staff said: “if we educate these people... create the
leaders, like Christian leaders, they will run this country in different ways, not
like this. We have to have a strong country with strong Christian leaders.”
Petros makes a direct connection between strong Christian leadership and
Armenia’s economic prosperity. Government corruption is prohibiting the
nation’s growth. The lack of a good work ethic, a lingering effect of
communism, is keeping the nation in a state of economic dependency. That is,
without a reliable, hard-working, and honest workforce, outsiders will be
unwilling to make investments in the nation’s economy and Armenia will
remain dependent on humanitarian aid.
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Petros’ philosophy linking Christian values with economic progress
resonates clearly with Weber’s classic thesis connecting “the Protestant ethic”
with “the spirit of capitalism.” However, rather than reinvesting excess
income into the economic sphere (a practice Weber observed among
Protestants), Petros believes that the wealthy in Armenia need to be introduced
to the Christian ethic of charity as a practice that helps to redistribute wealth.
Petros is keenly aware of the huge disparity between the wealthy economic
minority and the vast population of poor Armenians. And he believes that the
wealthiest in Armenian society do not help the poor or conduct any charity
work, despite the fact that Armenians believe that they are part of a Christian
culture. For Petros, Christian education needs to be given alongside economic
assistance: “I’m more than convinced that before you give money to a person,
you need to teach the person what the value, how God values money, and how
God wants you to use that money...” Whereas Weber argued that Protestants
prize the virtue of frugality, Petros believes that God values charity.
Educating the young is also a focus of other faith-based NGOs. In
cooperation with the Apostolic Church, World Vision created a Christian
education curriculum for the state-run school system. The Armenian Relief
and Development Association and the Armenian Missionary Association of
America have both acquired schools where they provide the operating
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229
expenses and emphasize Christian education. Mihran Jizmejian, the President
of the Canadian Armenian Missionary Association, notes:
The neediest area would be the school system, educational system,
because I believe that schools are the places w here... prepare people
for life and without the moral and Christian values instilled in these
kids, the generation will not be able to effect on the coming generation
as much as we would like to. That’s one thing. The second one I
would go for [is] job creation. As we say, instead of giving the fish,
let’s teach them how to fish so that it would not be constant money
coming from outside for them to just use it. They would know how to
work and make the money. It would be easier for them to be, to stand
on their own two feet and do it.
A focus on youth reflects the generally-held notion that young Armenians are
malleable and can be taught good work ethics. Adults, by contrast, are “set in
their ways” and more difficult to influence. It is also the case that programs
for young Armenians provide more marketable fundraising efforts. Among
potential donors, it is much easier to evoke sympathy for children than it is to
market an employment initiative for adults.
Where the World Bank and USAID have focused resources on
improving the transparency of political and legal processes, faith-based NGOs
have been much more focused on the grass roots level, attempting to incite
change within individuals. But it is hoped that the long term ramifications of
these individual changes will result in the transformation of Armenia’s
economic and political climate.
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230
The de-differentiation of religion in Armenia
Faith-based NGOs are among the most active players in the
reconstruction o f not only the religious infrastructure, but also the Armenian
nation as a whole. Blending faith with economic principles, faith-based NGOs
are attempting to create a nation that is attractive to foreign investment. Their
work is more “this worldly” than “other worldly,” more concerned with
practical outcomes of conversion than the idea of souls being saved for
eternity.
The current project - supported by NGOs - where the Protestant ethic
is invoked to assist in the nation-building process is at once thoroughly
Western and also something completely foreign to the Western world. It
involves the rebuilding of the nation in a way that creates intimate connections
between faith, economics, and the political process. This is not the
differentiated social system characteristic of Western nations, wherein the
religious sphere is separated from other distinct realms of society in such a way
that the other realms are autonomous and have their own system of rules. The
work of faith-based NGOs represents a reversal of the processes that have long
been assumed to accompany modernization. Religion is becoming de
differentiated.
To what extent is there evidence to suggest that religion is re-entering
the public spheres of society in the process of building an independent
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231
Armenia? There is religious education in the state schools. Health institutions
are run by the church and some health services are provided by faith-based
NGOs. There are micro-economic programs established and maintained by
faith-based NGOs. The only arena that appears to be differentiated is the state
political system, although government legislation provides special benefits to
the Apostolic Church. Also, faith-based NGOs imply that impartiality in
government and the judiciary can be achieved through Christian leaders. That
is, while current practices that are administered with an element o f favoritism
are corrupt, Christianizing the economic and political sphere is associated with
values of justice and impartiality.
While religion during Soviet times was not eradicated, it was certainly
relegated to the periphery and denied a notable public role. The re-emergence,
then, of religious institutions into public realms represents a reversal of
imposed secularization from Soviet times. Whether or not the current de-
differentiation process is a temporary phase, the start of a civil religion, or a
precursor to an established state church is yet to be determined. What is sure,
however, is that Armenia’s historic connection between faith and ethnos seems
amenable to the de-differentiation process. And faith-based NGOs play a key
role.
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232
Conclusion
While corruption provides the impetus for a moral mission and poverty
spurs an agenda of economic development, the environment of religious
control directs faith-based NGOs to support the rebuilding of the historic
apostolic religious memory. The reconstruction of religious memory in
Armenia is part of reducing poverty and creating economic progress for the
nation. Placing themselves in the apostolic memory, faith-based groups ensure
that their message of spiritual and moral renewal has a much wider appeal than
if it were attached to a different, non-apostolic tradition. Leaders of faith-
based NGOs and churches invoke a 1700 year Christian tradition to usher-in a
new economic model that relies upon hard work and honesty. Rather than
relegating religion to the periphery, faith plays a central role in the
reconstruction of Armenia’s economic prosperity. And by placing the
reinvigoration of religious memory at the center of the nation’s economic
hopes, the church returns to occupy its historic role as protector of the nation.
While today the Apostolic Church in Armenia is dependent on the
diaspora, church leaders in Armenia hope that, one day, the Apostolic Church
in Armenia will be a center of strength for all of the diaspora churches. Father
Ktrij explains: “If it wasn’t for the diaspora, the church in Armenia would be
in a dire situation, but it has to come to that point where it makes that final
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233
switch. When Etchmiadzine becomes strong, then the diaspora will be strong,
because everything will be coming from Etchmiadzine.”
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234
CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION: COMPETITION, LINEAGE,
AND THE TENSIONS SHAPING ETHNO-RELIGIOUS MEMORY
The four case studies presented in this work illustrate the variety of
ways that religion interacts with ethnicity and nationalism, reinforcing,
reshaping, and dissolving the contours of Armenian-ness in the North
American diaspora and the Republic of Armenia. One of the unique elements
of this study is its comparative angle that explores two major religious
traditions - Apostolic and Evangelical - within a single ethnic group. This
concluding chapter will consider some of the broader themes recurrent
throughout the four case studies, focusing on the insights gleaned from the
comparative analysis. Of primary interest are the various forces that impact
the survival and shaping of Armenian religious and ethnic memories. The
forces that prove most prominent include religious competition, the strength of
lineage, and a series of recurrent tensions.
The competitive marketplace
Competition between different religious movements and organizations
represents one of the most significant dynamics shaping Armenian religious
communities, confirming the ongoing relevance of the marketplace model
advanced by Stark and Finke (2000), among others. On North American soil,
competition with mainstream evangelical churches leads Armenian
evangelicals to adopt new, conservative theologies and more contemporary
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235
styles of worship to stem the loss of members to larger, American
congregations. In the Republic of Armenia, the increasing prevalence of new
religious groups - like the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Pentecostals -
has motivated the Apostolic Church to train more priests and, generally, work
more aggressively to re-establish its presence in the post-Soviet landscape.
As predicted by the religious marketplace model, the Apostolic Church
in the North American diaspora, having a monopoly-like status, fails to attract
a large proportion of active parishioners. Rather, as noted in chapter two, the
vast majority of Armenians seem to rely on clergy and a select group o f lay
leaders to carry-out the millennium-old traditions of the church on their behalf.
Many recent initiatives have been focused on creating a more engaged laity,
but most Armenians continue to participate in the Apostolic Church only on
important holidays and for rites of passage.
Therein, however, is a sociological puzzle that defies the predictions of
the marketplace model. Despite abysmal attendance rates and the church’s
complacency toward being “relevant” in the North American context,
Armenian Apostolics do not seem to be tempted to join any of the aggressive
religious suppliers that pervade the Los Angeles landscape. They remain
deeply committed to the apostolic tradition, and content to participate
infrequently. The presence of religious competition represents only one of the
dynamics shaping Armenian communities.
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The pull of lineage and the strength of the Apostolic Church
What, then, accounts for the resilience of the Apostolic Church? The
strength of religious memory or pull of ancestral ties is a central component of
the resilience of Armenian churches in the face of surrounding competition.
Four forces, in particular, help to reinforce religious memory: a culture of
vulnerability, the experience of migration, the needs of the homeland, and the
nature of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The process of remembering historical and contemporary threats calls
attention to the vulnerability of Armenian-ness, and the need to preserve ethnic
and religious memories in the face of pressure to dissolve. The most obvious
example is the remembrance of the genocide. Events, monuments, and stories
recalling the massacres remind Armenians today of the near-annihilation of
their community, and o f their duty to maintain a sense of Armenian-ness for
which their ancestors were killed. The history of Soviet-imposed atheism
similarly reminds Armenians, especially those who are more committed to the
church, of the seventy years when their religious traditions were highly
restricted and, in some cases, prohibited. Today, the North American diaspora
is concerned over pressures of assimilation, what some refer to as a “white
genocide.” That is, the fear that Canadian- and American-born youth will
forsake the traditions of their ancestors and blend into a larger, white identity
leads some to compare processes of assimilation to a new form of genocide,
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237
where a sense of being Armenian is destroyed and replaced with more generic
Canadian and American identities. Being reminded of historical and
contemporary threats, Armenians today are instilled with a sense of duty to
retain and transmit their historic ethno-religious traditions. Armenians’ culture
of vulnerability acts as a powerful mechanism through which a lineage is
recreated across generations.
In her analysis of the changing forms of religion in contemporary
France, Daniele Hervieu-Leger (2000) points out that religious memory is
waning. Youth today, bombarded with massive quantities of information, are
increasingly incapable of placing that information in the historical processes
from which it derives. As a result, memory is increasingly fragmented and
homogenized and the sense of lineage that lies at the heart of religious memory
is broken and diffused. By contrast, the experience of migration brings
memory and lineage to the fore. Surrounded by a new and different socio
cultural context, migrants to North America consciously recreate the traditions
of their ancestors, and they establish institutionalized mechanisms, including
churches, to transmit these traditions to subsequent generations. Traditions
that were taken-for-granted in the country of origin are now consciously
practiced and are, at times, pursued with greater commitment. Moreover, the
vibrant character of the religious marketplace in the United States likely
encourages Armenians to recreate the specifically religious aspects of their
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238
ancestral traditions. Where religious memory wanes in certain socio-cultural
contexts, the process of migration provides opportunities for the recreation of
religious memory, strengthening the lineage of believers.
The newly independent Republic of Armenia has commanded the
attention of the diaspora, mobilizing and uniting many Armenians in a
common project. The economic collapse that followed the break-up of the
Soviet Union created an immense need for social services and, in response, the
diaspora has developed dozens of non-government organizations to transmit
money, goods, and human resources from wealthy regions of the diaspora to
the fledgling nation of Armenia. But more than just economics, many
Armenians have organized to address the nation’s religious needs. In
particular, churches and faith-based NGOs in North America have engaged in
the task of rebuilding the religious landscape of Armenia depleted during the
seventy years of Soviet control. The rebuilding process benefits both the
Republic of Armenia and the North American diaspora; Apostolic youth in
Toronto and Los Angeles, for instance, raise funds each year to participate in
CYMA (Canadian Youth Mission to Armenia (in Canada) and Christian Youth
Mission to Armenia (in the United States)), where they spend one month living
in Armenia, volunteering with a variety of religious and civic organizations,
and strengthening bonds with their “homeland” and “Mother Church.” The
poverty of Armenia - both economic and religious - provides valuable
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opportunities for Armenians to re-establish their lineage and encourage others
to become more involved.
Finally, religious memory is reinforced by the traditions of the
Apostolic Church. The liturgy and ritual of the church’s traditions are infused
with references to the past, and some note that their participation in the Divine
Liturgy enables them to experience a sense of connectivity with their
ancestors. The desire to keep the Divine Liturgy intact, despite pressure by
some to conduct the liturgy in English, shorten the service, or find ways of
making it more culturally relevant, reflects a desire to preserve the nature of
the ritual as it has been performed by Armenian forbearers. New programs,
like Sunday school, can be added to the apostolic tradition, as long as they
support participation in the ancient liturgy.
The case of Armenian evangelicals, outlined in chapter two, reveals
that a sense of lineage can change, and that, in fact, this is happening. As a
younger generation of Armenian evangelicals self-identify as “conservative,”
they are increasingly distancing themselves from their ancestral lineage, and
moving toward integration with mainstream evangelicalism. Ironically, the
new conservatism is believed to be an antidote to attrition; by becoming
conservative and, hence, more like their mainstream evangelical counterparts,
many believe that the Armenian Evangelical Church will become strengthened
and will retain more youth.
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If the experiences of Armenians are used as a guide, different religious
traditions seem to have different prospects for survival in the North American
context. Traditions consistent with larger, established religious communities
face stiff competition, while traditions that are dissimilar to established
communities seem to have greater potential for longevity. The Armenian
Apostolic Church, with its own unique history, liturgy, Saints, and festivals, is
sufficiently different from mainstream American congregations to avoid
competition. In the language of rational choice, Armenian apostolics have
their own unique religious capital that possesses little currency elsewhere.
Paradoxically, the strength of the Armenian Apostolic Church in North
America may be its distance and irrelevance to Canadian and American
culture. Armenian evangelicals, by contrast, have religious capital that can be
used in any number of evangelical congregations, making the switch from
Armenian to American evangelicalism less difficult and costly.
Race, like religious tradition, plays a key role in explaining the ease at
which some Armenians participate in the competitive marketplace. As a white
ethnic group, Armenians have a certain freedom to experiment in a wide array
of religious communities without experiencing much prejudice or
discrimination. Second generation Armenian-Americans can even become
pastors of Anglo congregations without anyone recognizing them as anything
distinct. Just as Armenian evangelicals’ propinquity to the prevailing religious
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traditions in the surrounding culture places them in a more vulnerable state,
Armenians, more generally, are open to the market’s competitive forces, since
their racial status enables them to participate fully in mainstream
evangelicalism.
The Canadian and American religious markets may be officially
unregulated by the state. But some religious traditions, like Armenian
apostolics, have a monopoly on a particular segment of the market. Racial
structures provide open opportunities for some, yet channel others into
specific, limited directions. While not officially regulated, competition in
America’s religious market is structured by the nature of religious traditions
themselves as well as the way race is constructed.
The shaping of religious memory: Four broad tensions
The Apostolic Church, while somewhat immune from the effects of
religious competition in North America, is shaped by a broader series of
tensions between competing projects, ideas, events, and places. In the
introduction, four tensions were mentioned as having the most profound effect
on shaping religion in the Armenian community. I want to return to these four
tensions, by pointing-out illustrations from each of the four case studies.
Between rootedness and multilocality
Armenians living in the North American diaspora express a desire to
maintain global connections with Armenians in other diasporic regions and in
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the Republic of Armenia; however, they are simultaneously becoming
embedded within their American and Canadian socio-cultural contexts. As a
result, the Apostolic Church is faced with the task o f maintaining the historic
elements of the apostolic tradition that link worshippers with a global
communion, while concurrently engaging those who are increasingly
embedded in North America. The use of PowerPoint to project English
translations as well as efforts to teach Armenians about liturgical elements
represent the church’s attempts to strike a middle ground and resolve the
tension. However, there remains a leadership devoted to the preservation of
the historic Divine Liturgy as it is performed in a dialect few understand and a
group of American-born Armenians who are interested in the development of a
more accessible liturgy performed in English.
Between tradition and innovation
In many ways, the tension between tradition and innovation is
exemplified in the pull between rootedness and multilocality. For instance, the
apostolic leaders’ desire to engage worshippers in the Divine Liturgy reflects
an attempt to keep tradition, but find innovative ways of increasing
participation, such as the use of PowerPoint. In the Republic of Armenia,
Sunday Schools, television programs, and art classes provide more up-to-date
mechanisms through which the Apostolic Church is teaching the population
about the ancient Christian traditions developed and practiced by their
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243
ancestors. For the Apostolic Church, the desire to keep tradition while
fostering innovation reflects an attempt to increase the involvement of those
who are nominally affiliated.
Among Armenian evangelicals, classic evangelical hymns are still the
mainstay of worship, but the occasional appearance of more contemporary
worship experiences - with guitars, drums, and a bass player - represent the
church’s desire to cater programming to the American-born youth who have
acquired tastes for the religious goods of the larger American evangelical
movement. As with the apostolics, evangelical leaders are hoping that these
innovations will increase involvement. Although in the case of Armenian
evangelicals, the implementation of these innovations also reflects a proactive
strategy to keep youth from leaving their congregations for American
evangelical churches.
Between ethnic solidarity and fragmentation
Keeping the ethnic community together within a single religious
organization, despite a wide variety of religious tastes, is a challenge for both
Apostolic and Evangelical churches. The Evangelical Church refrains from
divisive doctrinal issues, like a clear stance on Calvinism, in an effort to avoid
alienating members and causing divisions. This strategy of avoidance,
however, is nevertheless problematic; the absence of clear doctrine leads some
people to leave the ethnic church in search of religious communities that
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244
explicitly embrace particular, favored beliefs and practices. Similarly, the
conservatives’ desire to place the primary emphasis on religious elements,
minimizing ethnicity, represents an attempt to, paradoxically, strengthen the
ethnic church and keep members from leaving.
In the apostolic tradition, the desire to retain the Divine Liturgy as it is
performed in the ancient Armenian dialect is often based on the desire to retain
a consistent set of core rituals in apostolic churches throughout the world. An
English Divine Liturgy, after all, would create a distinct North American
practice, separating them from an experience of global communion. In the
Republic of Armenia, the desire for faith-based NGOs to work alongside and
within the Apostolic Church is, in part, a strategy to create ethnic solidarity and
avoid fragmentation.
Between social structure and the dynamism of agency
In the Republic of Armenia, government control of non-apostolic
religious groups restricts the work of Protestant and Evangelical faith-based
NGOs, but these organizations develop creative ways of circumventing
controls and accomplishing their mission. As noted above, Armenian
evangelicals in North America have the freedom to experiment with a wide
range of religious groups and they move easily between Armenian and
American congregations. Apostolics, by contrast, do not appear to be easily
lured away to new places of worship. The structure of the religious
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245
marketplace provides different prospects for evangelical and apostolic
traditions.
The four tensions described above overlap and interact in a variety of
ways. Rootedness and a desire for innovation seem to go hand-in-hand; as
Armenians become embedded in the North American environment the need to
find new ways of recreating the traditions of the Armenian Church is
increasingly apparent. An awareness of multilocality and a desire for ethnic
solidarity are, in some instances, mutually reinforcing. The desire to connect
with the global Armenian community leads some to participate in the Divine
Liturgy; conversely, as a result of the Divine Liturgy, some experience a sense
of global communion. While religious competition shapes some aspects of
Armenian religious communities, the strong pull of lineage and a broader set of
tensions seem to play a more significant role and pervade all four cases.
Unresolved questions and directions for future research
A similar study conducted among a different ethnic and racial
community would help to further unpack the effects of race. A study, for
instance, among Chinese Buddhists and Christians might reveal if Buddhists -
like apostolics - are buffered from competitive forces, and whether Chinese
Christians are lured away to predominantly Anglo American congregations.
Or, perhaps, their experiences are racially constrained and they are more likely
to join pan-Asian congregations.
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A detailed study o f the religious networks in a diaspora community is
also needed. Peggy Levitt’s study of transnational religious ties among five
different communities in Boston highlights many important dynamics, but
research is needed to investigate the unique ties fostered through the
experience of diaspora. How are diasporas connected with one another? Do
Lebanese-Armenians, Iranian-Armenians, and Canadian-Armenians truly
sustain a web of networks that span these multiple locations, connecting them
with the Republic of Armenia? How does religion facilitate this process? A
detailed study is needed to explore the nature and prevalence of diaspora
connectivity.
Finally, the Western Diocese of the Apostolic Church in the United
States is potentially on the cusp of dramatic change. A new Archbishop,
Hovnan Derderian, was appointed in 2003 and he has already infused the
church with new energy and programs. Much of his work is focused on
increasing the involvement of youth and laity; to this effect, he has created new
committees of lay people, ordained new Deacons, and has established new
parishes. His work, though just beginning, has been swift and, for the most
part, well received. As a result, another study - conducted in a few years’ time
- might reveal a vastly different religious landscape than the one characterized
in these pages. Religious memory, after all, is not stagnant; it is constantly
changing.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Fisher, Timothy Norman (author)

Core Title In church with my ancestors: The changing shape of religious memory in the Republic of Armenia and the North American diaspora

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Sociology

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,religion, general,sociology, ethnic and racial studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Miller, Jon (committee chair), Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (committee member), Miller, Donald (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-401302

Unique identifier UC11336452

Identifier 3196805.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-401302 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3196805.pdf

Dmrecord 401302

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Fisher, Timothy Norman

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA