July 1, 1846, and Beyond

Vahe H. Apelian

The First Church Council of the Armenian Evangelical Church,
 Pera, Istanbul, Turkey

I may have more of a reason to remember that date because it is my official birthday, a hundred years later. In fact, I was born on June 22, in Lebanon. Apparently, it was not unreasonable that it would take more than a week to have my birthday registered and the certificate issued by the authorities.

Rev. William Goodell, who was a missionary on behalf of the most influential American missionary association called American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM), recalled July 1, 1846 and noted the following in his memoir: “Forty persons, of whom three were women, voluntarily entered onto covenant with God and with each other, and we, in the name of all the evangelical churches of Christendom, rose and formally recognized and acknowledged them as a true church of Christ.” The assembly on that day became the foundation of The Evangelical Church of Armenia--"Hayasdaniatz Avedaranagan Yegeghetsi" – «Հայաստանեաց Աւերտարանական Եկեղեցի».  

Why A Separate Armenian Church?

I quote Rev. Dr. Vahan Tootikian: “The causes of ”separation" were not random, shallow and capricious. Rather, these causes were a direct outcome of the Armenian Renaissance in the 19th century. It was part of the great upsurge of Armenian intellectual spirit. There was a revival of thinking in the social, economic, and religious realms. Some reform-minded Armenians in the Patriarchal Academy of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Istanbul insisted that the Armenian Apostolic Church should be revitalized. In 1836 these reformists established a secret society named Barepashtoutian Miabanoutune (The Society of Piety) in order to reform the church. They met the strong resistance and the opposition of the Armenian ruling magnates and the patriarch. Failure to reform the Church became the basic source of conflict. The reformists continued to push their demands, which provoked strong retaliation from the Armenian Patriarch Mateos Chookhajian. Persecution and suffering did not alienate the Armenian Evangelicals from the Mother Church. It was the act of excommunications of the Patriarch that forced them to organize themselves into a separate religious community, the Protestant Millet. It was this separation which resulted in the formation of the Armenian Evangelical Church on July 1, 1846.”

Indeed, there was a reform movement within the Armenian Apostolic Church. But the reform was not only in ecclesiastical matters but in temporal matters as well because the Patriarchate was in fact an Armenian government of sort in the Ottoman Empire. Sixteen years later, in 1863, the Armenian Millet would have its national constitution after centuries having the Patriarchate run the affairs of the Armenian nation (Millet) in the Ottoman Empire without a national constitution.

Why Did Excommunication Matter?

The Patriarch’s excommunication was not a mere rebuke or a moral reprimand. It had serious implications for the ostracized reformists. The Millet system constituted the core of the Ottoman Empire governance of its minorities. Rev. William Goodell found that system of governance as an “anomalous form of government, the Sublime Porte, 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 secular head of the Armenian Millet (confessional community) in the Ottoman Empire.

Consequently, excommunication meant that those reformists were banished from the Armenian Millet and were left without recourse. It was akin to  depriving forty natural born Americans of citizenship leaving them stateless. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, the present-day Istanbul, had the authority to marry, divorce, settle disputes, and even run its prison for the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Sultan and the Armenians conducted their affairs with the Ottoman authorities through the Armenian Patriarchate. By banishing the reformists, the Patriarchate disowned them and ceased to represent them. Consequently, the reformists were left on their own without recourse for any issue they might face. 

But the reformists treaded on. A year and a few months after the July 1, 1846, assembly,  on November 15, 1847, Rev. William Goodell noted  that “the grand vizier issued a firman, declaring that the Christian subjects of the Ottoman government professing Protestantism should constitutes a separate community...This firman was so worded that converts form among the Greeks and Jews who joined the Protestants might enjoy the same immunities”. The reformists now had their own “nation”. On Nov. 27, 1850, Sultan Abdul Mejid ratified the edict that became the “Magna Carta” of the Protestant community that stands, to this day, in the Middle East. The Armenian Evangelicals are part and parcel of the Protestant community from the get-go. In fact, they were instrumental in the founding of the Protestant Millet.

Was the Excommunication the Cause for the Separation?

The excommunication could very well have been a cause that acted as a catalyst for the inevitable separation of the reformists’ church. I do not have sufficient knowledge on  the Armenian church doctrinal matters to expand on the issue here. But any lay person who has attended both Armenian Apostolic and Armenian Evangelical churches surely realizes that these two churches have fundamentally different worship services and consequently also differ in some doctrinal and in administrative hierarchical matters.

We should also take into consideration the influence the American missionaries might have exercised for having facilitated the formations of a separate church, or a millet, but not necessarily advocating a separate church or a millet. 

After excommunicating the leadership of the movement, the separation of the Armenian Evangelical Church from the Armenian Apostolic church became inevitable.

A Different Church as Well?

Rev. William Goodell arrived in Constantinople on June 9, 1831. His arrival had coincided with a reformation movement within the Armenian Church. Fifteen years later, and after much agony and ecstasy, on July 1, 1846, the Armenian Evangelical Church came about and in 1863, the Armenian National Constitution. 

Was the separate Armenian Evangelical Church a different church as well? No doubt during the initial phase of its founding and accreditation as a separate Millet, the adherents of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Armenians, regarded the Armenian Evangelical Church faithful as members of a different church and even as different Armenians as well. Anointing the newborns with Holy Muron during baptism had made a person a Christian Armenian. The Armenian Evangelical Church did not require its adherents to be anointed in Holy Muron and on Sundays they worshiped in an altogether different service in their sanctuaries.

Rev. William Goodell’s parting letter hints to the schism that had come about between the two churches.  Rev. Goodell left Constantinople on June 27, 1865, some 40 years after leaving his homeland. Through those over four decades, he had visited his country, the United States of America, only once. Before taking leave for good, he addressed his brethren in the Evangelical Churches in the Ottoman Empire and alluded to the recent schism in the Armenian nation that led to the formation of the Armenian Evangelical Church. Rev. Goodell wrote in his last letter: “When we first came among you, you were not a 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 a distinct denomination separate from the Apostolic Church.

Driven with a Christian missionary zeal for service, the adherents of the Armenian Evangelical Church rendered much service to the Armenian nation, enriching it way more than one would have expected from the meager demographic constituency of its faithful. I quote Rev. Vahan Tootikiian: “Within a decade after its birth, the Armenian Evangelical Church had grown by leaps and bounds. To administer these churches effectively, the following four church Unions were organized: Bithynia, Eastern, Cilician and Central Unions. These Unions lasted until 1915, prior to the Armenian Genocide.

The Genocide changed the whole dynamics. More than 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives. Most of the Armenian Evangelical churches, schools and institutions were destroyed. Prior to the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Evangelical community in Tur key numbered 51,000. It had 137 organized churches with 82 ordained ministers and 97 preachers and evangelists. In the aftermath of the Genocide, the Armenian Evangelicals counted 14,000 members, 31 churches, with 25 ordained ministers and 13 preachers.” 

Thus, in time the Armenian Evangelical Church came to be the evangelical front of the Armenian Church. A separate but not a different Armenian church. I used the adjective evangelical for brevity for the purpose of this blog and did not mean to imply that the Armenia Apostolic Church is not. 

The Indispensable Heritage.

Whenever I think of the Armenian Evangelical Church, Rev. Barkev N. Darakjian’s book “The Indispensable Heritage” (Անփոխարինելի Ժառանգութիւնը) comes to my mind. The book is an in-depth presentation of the Armenian Evangelical Church in an impeccable Western Armenian. Rev. Barkev N. Darakjian cites three pillars on which the Armenian Evangelical rested when it came about. The three pillars he cites are the following: that the church is Evangelical (Աւետարանական), that it is rooted in the Armenian Christian experience (Հայաստանեաց), and that it is a movement (Շարժում).

One hundred and seventy-five years (175) years have passed since that fateful day on July 1, 1946. Has the Armenian Evangelical Church remained true to the three pillars on which it stood?  I invite interested readers to contemplate and draw their own conclusions.

Sources:

1.      “Armenian Evangelical Church – A Brief History” by Rev. Dr. Vahan H. Tootikian, in the AMAA NEWS, April.May.June 2021.

2.    “Forty Years in the Turkish Empire or Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell D.D, Late Missionary of A.B.C.F.M at Constantinople”, edited by his son-in-law, E. D. G. Prime, published by Robert Carter and Brothers (New York). Its fifth edition, posted online by Google, is dated 1878.

3.    Վեր. Պարգես Ն. Տարագճեան, «ԱՆՓՈԽԱՐԻՆԵԼԻ ԺԱՌԱՆԳՈՒԹԻՒՆԸ», Հայ Աւետարանչական Ընկերակցութիւն, Փըրամսշ Նիւ Ճըրզի, Ամերիկայի Միացեալ Նահաններ, 2004. (Rev. Barkev N. Darakjian, “The Indispensable Heritage”, published by Armenian Missionary Association of American, Inc., Paramus, NJ, U.S.A., 2004)