When visiting Armenia for the first time, one’s itinerary invariably includes a multitude of churches and monasteries. Modern Armenia is the land of churches. Historic Armenia in Anatolia was also a land of churches, with nearly 4,000 churches and monasteries. The Van Lake region alone had over 300 churches. The ancient city of Ani, dubbed the “city of 1,001 churches,” contained 40 churches. We are proud of our churches, awed at their architectural beauty and intricate construction techniques, and amazed at their settings, perched as they are on inaccessible mountaintops.
Yet, this obsession with churches, when combined with our tragic history, makes me think, “I wish we had fewer churches to visit, and instead many more victory monuments like Sardarabad. I wish our Armenian kings, princes, political leaders, and wealthy notables in the past had spent less time, talent, resources, and money on these churches, and instead more on fortifications and defense of our lands and territories.”
Delving into the reasons why these churches were built, it becomes apparent that it was not merely to meet the religious needs of the population; rather, it was to bring glory to the benefactor and perhaps help him “ease into heaven.” Throughout history, our religious leaders have told benefactors that there is no better way to serve God, Jesus Christ, and Armenians than to build another church. Therefore, regardless of political, economic, or social realities and upheavals, Armenians continued to build churches, in both historic and modern Armenia, as well as in all corners of the world, often times disregarding other needs and priorities. This was the case in medieval Armenian kingdoms in historic Armenia, in Cilicia and Eastern Anatolia up until 1915, then in the diaspora, and now in modern Armenia.
When future generations look back on our 22 year-old Armenia and on the diaspora, they will see the challenges we faced in establishing a new country from the ruins of the Soviet Empire, while at the same time fighting the deadly Karabagh war, dealing with the closed borders and economic blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan, the disastrous 1989 earthquake, and most critically, the continuing depopulation of Armenia due to a lack of employment and investment opportunities. And they will also see examples of vast church-building activities both in Armenia and the diaspora. In 1997, in the midst of urgent needs to reconstruct Armenia and Karabagh, Armenians found the money to build the St. Gregory Illuminator Cathedral in Yerevan. In 2001, diasporans in Los Angeles started the construction of a huge cathedral, while there was and is still scarce resources to keep Armenian schools open. In 2011, an oligarch donated all the funds to build the St. Hovhannes Cathedral in Abovyan, while the starving local population had almost emptied the town. Just last month, wealthy Russian Armenians opened a vast new cathedral in Moscow. The Etchmiadzin Catholicosate has become a Vatican-like complex continuously expanding with new buildings. The combined total expenditure on these large churches, as well as several other smaller church projects, easily exceeds $200 million. These projects are not funded from revenue-generating sources or regular budgets, but instead, from one-time significant donations from benefactors, mostly from the diaspora. They will not generate any revenue, either, but will create a continuing need for additional donations for upkeep and maintenance.
One wonders if these donations could be used for more worthwhile projects, such as helping Armenians remain in Armenia, or helping Armenians remain Armenian in the diaspora. There seems to be a widely accepted belief that neither the government nor the church is in touch with the concerns and needs of the common people. During a recent private audience with the Catholicos, he was asked what the Armenian Church can do to keep our youth more interested in the church and attached to their Armenian roots. His curt response was, “This should be done at home and at school.” The much-anticipated Bishops Synod, assembled last month for the first time in 600 years, did not produce any tangible resolutions to address the concerns of the common Armenian, be it in Armenia or the diaspora. Most benefactors do not want to invest in Armenia, due to a fear that government corruption and required bribes will make their investment useless—and, in so doing, will fail in creating economic benefits for either themselves or the Armenian population. Unless the government takes concrete steps to change the valid perception that investments only end up in the hands of the governing oligarchs, there will not be much participation in the desperately needed economic growth of Armenia. In the meantime, church leaders will continue to preach the tried and true argument that the most beneficial donation a benefactor can make for himself and his family is giving to the church.
Of course, there are truly worthwhile church-building and restoration projects, with strategic and significant benefits for all Armenians. One example is the restoration of the Ghazantchetsots Church in Shushi, undertaken immediately after the Karabagh war. During the war, Azeris controlling Shushi used this historic church as an arms depot and military center, from which they continuously bombarded Stepanakert in the valley. They knew that Armenians would never attack or fire on their own church. When Armenian commandos victoriously entered Shushi in May of 1992, they found the church in shambles, burned, desecrated, and full of human excrement. Today, it stands as a symbol of victory against all odds.
The other critical restoration project is the total reconstruction of the Diyarbakir/Dikranagerd Surp Giragos Church in Turkey in 2011, the first time a church was restored as a functioning church (and not merely a museum) in historic Armenia after being destroyed in 1915. This project was strategically significant for a number of reasons: First, the restored church is concrete evidence against the denialist state version of history of the government of Turkey, as it demonstrates that there was a large Armenian presence in Anatolia before 1915. Secondly, it immediately became a religious and cultural center, helping the Turkish and Kurdish population of Turkey understand the realities of 1915 through media events, conferences, and concerts. Third, and for the first time since 1915, the foundation that restored the church started the process of reclaiming the properties belonging to the church (but confiscated after 1915) with several properties already secured through negotiations and courts. Fourth, the church became a living genocide memorial, attracting tens of thousands of Armenian visitors from the diaspora and Armenia annually, and starting a dialogue while fostering closer relationships with liberated Kurds and Turks who have faced the historical truths of 1915, and now demand their government to do so as well. Last but not least, the most significant outcome of the restoration of this church has been the emergence of “hidden Armenians.” Islamized Armenians have started “coming out,” visiting and praying in the church, getting baptized, participating in Armenian-language courses, helping build an Armenian museum on church grounds, contributing to the security and administration of the church, demanding acceptance of their real identity by the government, and so on. The church acts like a magnet for these people. More than 100 people visit on average per day, coming from all over Anatolia, and not just Diyarbakir, to try to find their Armenian roots. New initiatives are underway to restore and reclaim other destroyed Armenian churches and monasteries in historic Armenia.
It is my sincere hope that future government and church leaders, as well as future benefactors, will decide more wisely on what projects to invest in, giving higher priority to the needs and wants of the Armenian people compared to their own.
Raffi Bedrosyan
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To be honest I’m tired of hearing this very very short sighted excuse for wantonly wasting resources.
First of all although we claim to be a Christian nation, we’re very far from being a religious people. We have per capita far fewer churches than other nationalities. Take for Example Glendale California.
http://glendaleca.areaconnect.com/churches.htm
I included the link so no one thinks I’m fabricating numbers. Armenians represent 40% of the population or about 80,000 out of 200,000 people. Yet we have only 9 Churches out of 97 total, representing 10% of the churches.
Have you been to Armenia lately? How many operating churches are there in Yerevan for a population of 1 Million churches. 1000, 500, no not even 100 churches for a population of close to a million people. Please get off the churches case and perhaps go assess the Banquet Hall as your target for wanton spending… HOW MANY BANQUET HALLS DOES A NATION NEED!!!!!!
However I have to say regardless of the type of venue, construction is great, it takes money from the wealthy Oligarchs and puts it in the hand of the craftsman, the mason, the cement worker, carpet mill, basically it keeps the economy going. These benefactors are not going to build you a pipeline, or a laboratory, they’re going to buy a yacht in the Mediterranean, but hey if they want to spend 5 million on a church in Yerevan or Shushi it’s money well spent. It’s not mutually exclusive, let’s have our high tech investments but don’t browbeat the beat of another drummer.
Till then I’m donating to projects building up Armenia’s infrastructure.
Amen.
Absolutely correct…sometimes I fear we will drown in our religious past and that our biggest benefactors are more interested in their own stature than the best interests of the nation and the people.
Thank you for this article. I’m a religious sympathizer and am aware how integral a role the church has played in our history and at times it has been a unifying factor and others divisive. At the same time, I agree that there are an excessive amount of churches and believe it would be great to have more community centers with schools to teach Armenian language, history, culture, etc. If one has an open mind and knowledge of Armenian history, one can see that the long downfall of Armenians can be partially attributed to Krikor Lusavorich and the acceptance of Christianity to unite and also tax Armenians who had many nakharars (instead of complete leadership) and many geographical mountainous regions which separated us. He also organized the burning of powerful mystical books and texts that contained the keys to power we used to build our once vast empire.
Raffi, thank you very much for your excellent article, I agree 100% that there are too many churches ( being also a structural engineer,I do admire the architecture and structural features of these structures; however; I believe our ancestors should have built fortifications….).
Christianity has helped Armenia in some ways, but hurt it in many others. I am not completely convinced that it was the sole thing that maintained Armenia’s identity, as the Armenian church likes to claim. Let us not forget the end of the Arcacid dynasty and the collapse of the Kingdom of Armenia, which happened because the Armenian church was too stubborn to allow the king to ask the Arian-Christian Byzantine Empire for help against the Persians due to petty religious differences.
Mr. Bedrosyan this is a very lucid and realistic analysis of how not to allocate scarce resources.
It reminds me of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt. He hardly engaged the Egyptians in battle and the mighty Egyptian empire collapsed. At that time, Egyptians had become so brainwashed with myths about the “after-life” that they were spending 35% of their GNP on industries dedicated to the afterlife (from building tombs, temples, and momification – at the time of Alexander, common Egyptians even momified their pet dogs, cats and monkeys).
In Armenia today, people will borrow money to build a “proper” sepulture for their deceased parents.
While it is correctly underlined in some of the comments, that these expenditures are mainly locally produced (we have plenty of stones and masons) nevertheless the choice of using these same stones and masons to improve the infrastructure is available to us.
I agree with you regarding the churches you cite as “truly worthwhile projects” but then shouldn’t “we” also have one cathedral capable of accomodating a large number of worshipers in a city the size of Yerevan? Also 10 years ago Ejmiadsine was an unimpressive little church and now we have all these imposing church buildings around; do we not deserve that?
I completely agree with the author.This past summer I spoke with someone who worked on Gagik Tsarukian’s mansion. He said he quit after one week because he wasn’t paid. He said many men worked longer than him and didn’t get paid. The oligarchs decide how much of their money goes into the local economy. They enjoy “above-the-law” status.
There are 64,000 families in Armenia living in substandard housing. For the past ten years, I’ve been working with a group that has provided 650 families with decent affordable homes and not one of the families have emigrated. In fact, after having a decent home, their total household income has increased 40%. So here’s a program that has proven to help socially, economically, and stops emigration. Now, they have the luxury of going to church. This is where we need to put our efforts – housing. Please visit this link – http://www.fullercenter.org/global-builders/armenia.
If the Oligarchs have so much money instead of building churches just to show off their wealth ,they should build work places and bring big companies to give work to the people.Armenia is beeing depopulated at an alarming rate.What good is a church when there
will be no one to go to.Building a church gives jobs only temporarely
and then people must spend money to keep it up.A church does not
give any production but expenses.Rich people should invest in businesses in Armenia,people are starving and leaving the country and
even our priests in Armenia could care less .Their only business is to kiss the rear end of the rich so they can drive a BMW or a Bently
while the poor people are starving.I have always said it, most of our priests are a bunch of good for nothing,all they do is suck up the finances of the community.During these days when Armenia is in a mess
and in the hands of a bunch of mafia thieves,we should have better places to spend our money then on useless churches.Armenians need another church like we need a whole in the head.Yes build your churches so the Turks will come and blow them up.
Armenia itself need work places not churches.Let our oligarghs build
work places for the people instead of churches just to show off their wealth.People are leaving Armenia at an alarming rate,and no one in the ruling party could care less.Churches give jobs temporarely ,then we must pay to keep it up.Today Armenia needs work places not churches.And our priests in Armenia are busy kissing the rear end of the oligarghs so they can drive a BMW or a Bentley while the people are starving.Now is the time to build up busnesses in Armenia not churches.We have build churches through out history and what happened to them?The Turks destroyed them all.Its better to build up the economy and the army of a country then to build useless chuchers.Today they are very few christians in Armenia.Especially the ruling party which are full of corrupted people ,mafia gangs and murderers.Is this beeing christian?
It requires many strands to make a healthy nation and our churches and Christianity must be regarded as an important strand. Our bishop in the UK is a very good example as to how the church can play an important role in promoting our nation and youth. Since his arrival in the UK the churches in London where I live are always well attended and he has created social groups for the youth to promote their religious belief and their nationality. Before he arrived our community was at the brink of extinction.
For all of you that still claim we have too many churches please explain what is too much because we have far far fewer churches than most christian peoples. I think you’re taking out your frustration on an easy target, And also jumping to a conclusion without any data to support this claim. The facts speak for themselves we have very few churches. In Armenia today there are hundreds of condo projects as well as business endeavors from wineries to software development. Armenia fund alone has spent over 100 million on infrastructure, what we are talking about is pure fabrication. .
To Levon N,
When I was a student in London viz.1947…Sourp Sarkis built by Caloust Sarkis Gulbebnkian, near Dept- store Harrods was the only one,later when visited London there was another much larger one donated to the Armenian community by the Anglican church(most similar to ours as to Catholicos Karekin 1….may his soul rest in peace.Latter also helped built the Cathedral in Yerevan,St.Grigor the Illuminator,half million dollars donated by him.
Just today in Tavoush8border area ST.George, or Sourp Gevok was inaugurated…
Churches will be built,no doubt about that,hopefully mainly in R.of Armenia,as in diaspora we do have enough.We need to spend on Armenia ourselves DIRECTLY.Not through other entities.That is why I am advocating a Diaspora NAT´L INVESTMENT TRUST FUND!!!
BASED IN Geneva, CH-not Yerevan.In latter an ALL ARMENIA BANK Hamahaykakan Bank was established(with very little success,if any at all…) in Dilijan ? or was it Tsagdzor where the Elite-read Olis-thrive or around those areas…
I think it best to have Bishops like the one you have who can promote our CAUSE and keep the faith alive.Our own Apostolic,while also respecting the Catholic, Anglican etc.
As to Investments-WHERE TO INVEST-I have said enough(written=) but no response from our posters here. To what can we asttribute that…you guess..
Parev hasgcoghin
Regarding The investments in Armenia. You can go to the CIA.gov website or you can search Google for the number of dollars invested into the Armenian economy annually. The estimates range between 750,000,000 to 1 .3 billion annually since 2010. So let’s say about $4 billion over the last four years. Are we really that naïve to think that spending 2, 5, even $10 million on churches over the last five years is a significant amount of resources compared to $4 billion. That’s like saying the US economy would’ve been far better better off if we had not spent so much money on bowling alleys. Absurd isn’t it?
You are telling me that a billion dollars have been invested in the Armenian economy,where did that money go when Thounsands of people are jobless and leaving the country.Is the catholicos of Etchmiadjin
fighting poverty in Armenia?Is it telling the government to create jobs for its christian population.Is he trying to stop the injustices done by the oligarghs? there is no justice and no jobs in Armenia.Has our church done anything to stop the depopulation in Armenia?
I agree with Richard. I think no one really knows what to do or intention to change this tragic situation, where thousands are going without even looking back. These people are extremely angry and desperate for not having a proper job and a decent life.Who is going to care about these people? Is it enough to donate money to All Armenian Fund once in a year and sit back? I think first of all our government has to put this issue on the table right now and find the solutions as soon as possible, otherwise tomorrow is going to be too late.
A very good article, thanks to you Raffi ! And almost all the comments following it, express the real problems of todays Armeni Maybe it was necessary to build a big church for the celebration of 1700 years of Christianity. But how could it become such an ugly church ?
Raffi, I doubt that more fortifications could have kept the Seljuks away.The arrogance and ignorance of the Byzantine emperors allowed the Turks to invade. Armenia alone could not beat the invaders and fortifications wouldn´t have helped much.
Concerning to Surp Giragos I am also convinced that these $ 3 Mill. were a good investment. Especially as one third of the amount came from the Kurdish side.
What is hard to understand is, why need some 2 million Armenians need an Echmiadzin becoming slowly the size of the Roman Vatican.
No comment mentioned the new Palace of the Catholicos on Sayat Nova Street ! Since far longer than 1000 years all official visitors to the Catholicos had to travel to Echmiadzin to meet him. In the future the Catholicos comes to Yerevan to meet these visitors ?
Dear Richard, it is not not I but United States government and other international organizations that track the amount of investment in foreign countries and it is clearly stating that up to $1 billion a year have been invested in the Republic of Armenia over the last four years.
Some simple examples are the airport in Yerevan which is been completely renovated over hundred million has been spent their alone. mining, diamond processing, infrastructure Projects, aluminum foil manufacturing, in fact last month there was a protest amongst some workers of a brand-new factory built by Russians to produce locomotive parts, The factory is located in Gyumri and I thought it was very refreshing to see that the workers were disenchanted and were asking for higher wages. Armenia has many small companies in the IT sector, The Digitech conference in Yerevan last month attracted over 20,000 visitors. One of the companies spotlighted at the conference is producing drones and was just awarded a contract from the Netherlands to produce 10 Drones a month..
The bottom line is you cannot seriously consider the construction of a Church or churches that represents .0125% of the total investment in a country to be material part of a serious analysis.