By David M. Herszenhorn
In this ancient city, tucked in a valley that has
witnessed the rise and fall of empires, King Tiridates III converted to
Christianity and declared Armenia to be the world’s first Christian state. The
year was 301, more than a decade before the Emperor Constantine put Rome on a
similar path.
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church gathered in
Echmiadzin.
ECHMIADZIN, Armenia — In this ancient city, tucked in a
valley that has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, King Tiridates III
converted to Christianity and declared Armenia to be the world’s first
Christian state. The year was 301, more than a decade before the Emperor Constantine
put Rome on a similar path.
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The church has endured splits and years of internal
strife.
Since then, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which still
has its main cathedral here, has survived conquest and dispersion, genocide,
and government-imposed atheism during the years Armenia was part of the Soviet
Union. It also endured centuries of internal rancor, including a split in 1441
that led to the establishment of a rival leadership now based in Lebanon.
As church leaders gathered here last week for a rare
bishops’ conference, they seemed to be ready to put at least some of those
differences aside as they confronted a new set of challenges: entrenched
secularism at home, assimilation of followers in the large Armenian diaspora
abroad and general disaffection with organized religion.
“The church is in dire need of renewal,” Catholicos Aram
I, the leader of the Lebanon-based faction of the church, said in an interview
as he strolled across the campus here of the Mother See. “And by renewal, I
mean the church has to be responsive to the needs and expectations of the people.”
He added, “The church has to respond to the challenges of
the present-day world.”
Exactly how the church plans to do that remains elusive,
however, and some skeptics said the split within the church leadership remained
as divisive as ever, while the number of people regularly attending church has
dwindled.
The church has more than nine million adherents
worldwide, most outside Armenia. Statistics show that more than 98 percent of
Armenians consider themselves Christians, but only 8 percent said they attended
services at least once a week — data that suggest the church is still
struggling to overcome the legacy of forced atheism 23 years after Armenian
independence.
There have also been a number of recent controversies,
including the resignation of the head of the church in France, Archbishop
Norvan Zakarian, in a dispute over demands by the church leadership to
reinstate a priest facing criminal assault charges.
“The whole situation of the division of the Armenian
church is not resolved,” said one Western-based archbishop who asked not to be
identified to avoid exacerbating tensions. “Yes, this is a conclave, but the
church is not unified.”
Aram acknowledged that he claimed the same basic title as
Catholicos Karekin II, the church leader based in Echmiadzin, who also has the
added designation of supreme patriarch of all Armenians. Still, Aram denied any
fissure.
“We don’t have any division in the Armenian church,” he
said. “We are one church. We are one people. We are one nation. We are one
mission. We have two Catholicoi, and we are rich — this is an expression of the
richness of the church.”
For his part, Karekin told his audience of 62 bishops in
black hoods and robes with purple accents, who had come from as far away as
Australia and Latin America, that it was time to come together.
“All these controversies and administrative divisions did
not allow carrying out unified reforms,” Karekin said. “We are an entire
century behind the opportunity to modernize the church.”
He added, “The time has come to consolidate all forces.”
To minimize the prospect of sharp disagreements at the
conference, a tight agenda was adopted: creating universal practices for
baptisms and confirmations, discussing the canonization of victims of the 1915
Armenian genocide in recognition of the 100th anniversary, and planning another
conference next year.
In an apparent bid to generate positive publicity around
the bishops’ conference, church officials billed it as the first synod of its
kind in nearly 600 years — a bit of snappy marketing that was widely repeated
by the Armenian news media and in a speech by President Serzh Sargsyan during
the opening ceremony.
“Now, we are witnessing the epoch-making event indeed,”
Mr. Sargsyan said. “For centuries, due to different circumstances, and
particularly in the last six centuries, it was not possible to invite a
bishops’ synod of the Armenian Church.”
Experts, however, said that was not quite true.
At the event nearly 600 years ago, a conclave in
Echmiadzin in 1441, church leaders decided to move the headquarters back here
from Sis, in what is now Turkey, where the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia had been
conquered by Egyptian Mamluks.
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Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Visitors lighted candles at the cathedral in Echemiadzin.
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A new leader, Kirako Virapetsy, was elected to replace
Catholicos Gregory IX, who was ill and remained in Sis. But when Gregory died,
officials in Sis elected their own replacement.
“The year 1441 is being mentioned here and there as if to
give it more importance and significance,” said Hratch Tchilingirian, an expert
on the church who teaches at Oxford University’s Oriental Institute.
Mr. Tchilingirian said a bishops’ synod was held here in
1969. Armenian clerics from the United States attended, even though it was
during the cold war, while those from Lebanon refused to attend.
He said that last week’s agenda seemed to ignore tough
issues in favor of safe topics. For example, before the 75th anniversary of the
genocide, both branches of the church issued statements about canonizing
victims.
Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, the director of ecumenical
and foreign relations at the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said
that reaching an agreement to canonize victims — the first saints designated by
the church since the 1500s — was a top priority.
“We, the bishops and archbishops living today, are
descendants of Armenian genocide,” Archbishop Shirvanian said.
“All of us are survivors. That’s the driving spirit
behind this meeting.”
Whatever the agenda, Echmiadzin, which is also called by
its original name, Vagharshapat, remains at the center of Armenian spiritual
life.
It is about 12 miles west of the capital, Yerevan,
between the biblical mountains of Ararat and Aragats. Priests in black robes
can often be seen strolling through downtown.
The conversion of Tiridates III in 301, a decade before
the Roman emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, is credited to St. Gregory
the Illuminator, the patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Living in Vagharshapat, the capital of Armenia at the
time, Gregory reportedly had a vision. As the faithful tell it, the skies
parted and a ray of light blazed down, surrounding a group of angels and a man
— Jesus — who struck the ground with a golden hammer and made an altar-shaped
structure appear amid a column of fire with a cross shining above it.
It was on that spot that Gregory oversaw construction of
the Cathedral of Echmiadzin — meaning, “Jesus Christ, the only begotten,
descended.”
Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
[publicrelations=armeniandiocese.org@mail23.atl71.mcdlv.net]
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