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| The First Armenian Evangelical Church in Beirut, in our school's courtyard |
It is well known that American missionaries among the Armenian, notably among them Rev. William Goodell, played an important role, if not in the founding, but in the officializing the Armenian Evangelicals as a distinct community in the Ottoman Empire. During family discussion, during my formative years, I would hear the elders of the family say that the American missionaries, failing to evangelize a single Turk, resorted to evangelizing the Christian Armenians.
Some time ago, I came across the memoirs of Rev. William Goodell. The book is titled “Forty Years in the Turkish Empire or Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell D.D. Late Missionary of the A.B.C.F.M. at Constantinople”. The books was edited by his son-in-law, E.D.G. Prime. It was published by Robert Carter and Brothers (New York). Its fifth edition, dated 1878, was posted online by Google. The quotes below are from the online book.
Rev. William Goodell left the United States and embarked on his overseas mission in 1822. After a long sojourn in Malta, Lebanon, and in Syria, he arrived in Constantinople, as Istanbul was known then. He had embarked on his mission on behalf of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (A.B.C.F.M.), which was the first and most influential and far-reaching American missionary organization at the time.
I was surprised to read that Rev. William Goodell’s primary if not sole, mission was evangelizing the Armenians. I quote: “When Mr. Goodell went to Constantinople, his mission was to the Armenians”. He was entrusted with the mission to Turkey because of his knowledge of Armenian and Turkish he has mastered while in Malta, Syria and in Lebanon. He was fluent in Arabic, Greek, and Italian. He translated the Bible into “Armeno-Turkish”, that is say reading the Bible in Turkish but in Armenian characters. I imagine that because of the phonetic richness of the Armenian language, Turkish can be sounded authentically in Armenian characters. My grandmother’s Bible was in Armeno-Turkish. The project was a twenty years long endeavor.
That assertion was a revelation to me but in hindsight, it makes sense. Sultan’s Sublime Porte would not have allowed American missionaries to carry on evangelical work in the Ottoman Empire among the Turks. The Sultan gave in to the Western Powers and allowed Americans to do missionary work in the Ottoman Empire as long as their evangelism was confined among the Christian subjects of the empire. In all probability, the missionaries, their organizations, if not their governments also were warned of dire consequences should they attempt to evangelize the Turks. No wonder that not a single Turk was evangelized.
Why should A.B.C.F.M., I wondered, embark in its evangelical mission singling up Armenians only when there were other Christian communities in the empire as well? Reading the memoirs presented an interesting picture of a way of life that did not have a natural evolution for reasons we all sadly know too well; the planned extermination of the Armenians, the Genocide.
Rev. William Goodell and family arrived at Constantinople on June 9, 1931. It appears that he was the first American missionary to have set foot in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. In a letter to friend in the United States, he noted: “My family is said to be the first who was has ever visited this place.” He stayed in Turkey for next forty years. Wikipedia notes that “during his missionary life, he and his devoted wife cheerfully endured many trials and tribulations.
Constantinople, where the Goodells established their residency, presented the following demographics according to him. I quote: “The city of Constantinople contained, including the suburbs, a population of about 1,000,000 of various nationalities and religions. The Turks and other Mohammedans comprised about half; the Greeks and the Armenians each numbered 150,000, the former being a more numerous, there were about 50,000 Jews; the remainder was made of Franks and people from almost every part of the world.”These distinct communities naturally intermingled but “ for the most part occupied different quarters of the city with the Turks having almost exclusive possession of the city proper.”
The millet system1 that constituted the core of the minority governance of the Ottoman Empire appeared odd to this Western visitor who found it to be an “anomalous form of government, the Sublime Port, as the Sultan’s government is called, being supreme, while each separate nation has its own head.” In the case of the Armenians, it was the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was also the temporal head of the Armenian community (Millet).
The A.B.C.F.M. Board and the Rev. Goodell knew well that the Armenians “were descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Armenia. The nation embraced Christianity about the commencement of the fourth century.” The zealous missionary and the organization that supported his mission apparently had already determined, even before the missionary arrived into the fold of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, that the Armenian Church needed to “embrace the truth”. According to Rev. Goodell, the Armenian church “has wholly given up to superstition and idolatrous worship of saints, including Virgin Mary, pictures, etc.”
The Armenian Evangelical Church of
Keurkune, Kessab.
There appears to be a more pragmatic, if not strategic reason for the A.B.C.F.M. and Rev. Goodell to single out the Armenians for their missions. I quote: “The Armenians were enterprising people, and the great wealth of bankers, who were nearly all Armenians, made them very influential throughout the empire, even the Turkish officials, who were largely dependent upon them for pecuniary advances and assistance. The various connections of this people with different parts of the country, and the influence which they were in a position to exert, in promoting the spread of the Gospel in Turkey; made it exceedingly desirable that they should embrace the truth.”
Mr. Goodell’s arrival in Constantinople coincided with a reformation movement within the Armenian Apostolic Church pitting the reformers against the sitting Patriarch who did not shy from excommunicating them, basically rendering the reformers stateless as they had no legal recourse any more being without a millet. Fifteen years after his arrival, and after much agony and ecstasy, on July 1, 1846, “Forty persons, of whom three were women, voluntarily entered onto covenant with God and with each other, and we, in the name of the evangelical churches of the Christendom, rose and formally recognized and acknowledged them as true church of Christ.” The assembly on that day became the foundation of The Evangelical Church of Armenia- “Hayasdaniantz Avedaranagan Yegeghetsi.” In time its adherents would render much service to the Armenian nation, enriching it way more than one would have expected from the meager demographic constituency of its faithful.
On November 15, 1847, “ the grand vizier issued a firman, declaring that the Christian subjects of the Ottoman government professing Protestantism should constitute a separate community…This firman was so worded that converts from among the Greeks and Jews who joined the Protestants might enjoy the same immunities,” On November 27, 1850, Sultan Abdul Mejid ratified the edict that became the “Magna Carta” of the Protestant community that stands to this day. The Armenian Evangelicals are part and parcel, if not the founders, of the Protestant community of the Protestant community in the Middle East.
Having lived through this turbulent period, Rev. Goodell left Turkey on June 24, 1865, to settle in his homeland, some 40 years after leaving it. Throughout those years, he had visited his country only once. Before taking leave for goo, he addressed his brethren in the Evangelical Churches in Turkey and alluding to the recent schism in the Armenian nation, he wrote: “When we first came among you, you were not distinct people, nor did we expect you ever would be; for we had not sectarian object in view, it being no part of our plan to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs. Our sole desire was to preach Christ and Him crucified.” By then the Armenian Evangelical Church was firmly entrenched among the Armenians as distinct denomination from the Apostolic Church that continues to this day from Armenia to Australia and in many other countries in between.
