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The Armenian Church and its clerics really need to stay out of politics.
Like it did when it was the head of the Armenian millet in the Ottoman Empire and the liaison to the Sultan.
Like it did when it was the head of the Armenian millet in the Ottoman Empire and the liaison to the Sultan.
Or like when 3 consecutive Catholicoi of Etchmiadzin initiated missions to Europe with the purpose of urging Christian rulers to free Armenia.
Or like when Khrimian Hayrik did...anything. But including printing an article in Artsvi Vaspurakan explaining what the National Assembly was so that a peasant in Van would understand what was representing him.
Or when he'd organize fact-finding missions of peasant grievances in the eastern provinces which would then be turned into official reports, "takrirs," sent to the Sultan to outline what was happening to the Armenians in the provinces.
Or when he was a delegate at the Berlin Congress and came back and delivered the Iron Ladle Sermon, the most important sermon in our history.
Or like when the Church refused the Czar's efforts to confiscate church property in 1903.
Or like when the cleric Yeghishe Ayvazian wrote: "When the Armenian settled in Constantinople sees that the cemetery of his dead is endangered, he is moved immediately. Why is that same Armenian not moved the same way when it is the cemeteries of the living that are endangered...
in the fatherland itself? Now all of its expectations are centered on the schools… But do we lack freedom because we did not have schools until now? And is it in the schools that the Armenian will learn to break the sword of the bloodthirsty Kurd?...
Let Armenians continue their indifference toward the suffering of their blood brethren and await for the British or Northerner to come to them. How can one expect pity from others when he does not pity himself?"
No one is suggesting the Armenian Church become head of state, but the Armenian Church is a national church. The typical rules people like to regurgitate of "separation of church and state" do not apply here. The Armenian Church and its members have been leaders...
who guide Armenians through difficult times. To disparage the priest who rightfully rejected Nikol, or to lend any legitimacy to upcoming protests at Etchmiadzin because the Church has become too uppity demonstrates a misunderstanding of what the Armenian Church has always been.
