In Sight
Building a democracy includes separation of church and state
In my previous column, I focused on the expectations of the diaspora ahead of Armenia’s parliamentary elections in June 2026.
There are two sides to the narrative. First, those of us in the diaspora should recognize the limits of our role compared to citizens of the Republic. Our mission should be to support Armenia’s interests through collaboration with the government within our own communities. Second, a prosperous democracy requires institutions that uphold its values.
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Stepan’s writings are characterized by his prudent and mindful choice of words, structuring of his sentences and his paragraphs to share his coherent thoughts, such as in this article. But I still will characterize it as daring, because I expect him to encounter run of the mill rebuttals.
It seems if clerics try to control the government the government has to try and control the church to keep it’s clergy curbed to ecclesiastical and spiritual matters
Well-meaning, kindly words. Only one side of this conflict is using guns, jailing people both clergy and ordinary citizens, walking away from soldiers and citizens in captivity in Azeri jails.
There can be differences between people, but this is our human church against perhaps incompetent, possibly evil people.