The last beacon under siege
Why Armenia’s war on the Church should end U.S. blind support for Israel
America’s foreign policy has become a moral blackout. Billions are poured into nations that actively enable the destruction of Christianity’s oldest strongholds, then act shocked when ancient churches burn and priests are dragged from altars. The latest casualty is not in Gaza or Ukraine, but inside Armenia itself — the world’s first Christian nation — where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is waging an unprecedented war against the Armenian Apostolic Church.
If we are serious about defending persecuted Christians, this should be the final straw that forces us to rethink our blank-check alliance with Israel. Armenia adopted Christianity as its state religion in 301 AD — 13 centuries before the United States even existed.
For 1,700 years, the Armenian Apostolic Church has been the unbreakable spine of a people who survived Persian fire temples, Arab caliphates, Mongol hordes, Ottoman genocide and Soviet atheism. When there was no Armenian state, the Church was the state — preserving language, script and faith in mountain monasteries and diasporan enclaves. One of the reasons the 1915 genocide targeted Armenians was because they were Christians. The Church’s survival was nothing short of miraculous.
Yet today, in the independent Republic of Armenia, the government is trying to finish what the Ottomans started. Since mid-2025, Pashinyan has:
- Publicly accused Catholicos Karekin II, the spiritual leader of Armenians worldwide, of fathering a child and demanded his resignation.
- Ordered the arrest of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan — one of the most prominent voices against territorial concessions to Azerbaijan — on trumped-up charges of plotting a coup.
- Sent masked police to raid the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in a scene reminiscent of Bolshevik commissars storming cathedrals in 1918.
- Declared his intent to “liberate” the Church from “anti-Christian elements” and install a new, state-friendly leadership structure.
This is not reform. This is Bolshevik cosplay with better PR. Pashinyan’s real crime, in the eyes of the opposition, was his willingness to cede Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to Azerbaijan — the same Azerbaijan that expelled 120,000 Armenians in 2023 with Israeli drones circling overhead like vultures.
And who made Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing possible? Israel. Between 2016 and 2022, Israel supplied 69% of Azerbaijan’s weaponry — kamikaze drones, missile systems, cluster munitions — turning Baku into a regional juggernaut. In return, Azerbaijan pumps 40-55% of Israel’s crude oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, keeping Tel Aviv’s tanks rolling and its economy humming. When Armenians were fleeing Stepanakert under fire, Israeli technicians were reportedly on the ground in Azerbaijan helping calibrate the very drones that bombed their churches.
Under the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016, the United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in military aid annually — no questions asked — knowing full well that Israeli arms are being traded for oil secured by expelling Christians. Then, we watch silently as Armenia’s own government, desperate for Western approval and Turkish-Azerbaijani favors, turns against the Church that helped keep Armenian identity alive through centuries.
This is not geopolitics. This is a coordinated assault on Christianity itself.
- In Gaza, Israeli snipers shoot Christian women taking refuge in churches.
- In Artsakh, Israeli drones drive ancient Christian communities into exile.
- In Yerevan, a government we prop up with IMF loans and EU praise jails archbishops for defending those exiles.
If our mantra of “religious freedom” means anything, it must mean this: No more American dollars for nations that arm the persecutors of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
The Armenian Church is not just a national institution; it is a living witness to the Resurrection. When its bells fall silent — whether under Azerbaijani shells or Armenian police batons — the loss belongs to every Christian on earth. We have ignored the cries of Gaza’s Catholics, Ukraine’s Protestants, Lebanon’s Maronites. We cannot ignore Armenia. Because if the first Christian nation can be stripped of its faith by governments we bankroll, then no church is safe.
America once sent missionaries to the world. Now, we send Hellfires. It’s time to choose which legacy we want history to remember.
“When there was no Armenian state, the Church was the state”. The problem is today the Church still thinks they’re the state and that they can meddle in internal AND external politics of Armenia. Just imagine the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury call for the overthrow of the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Or, key leaders in US major Baptist churches, such as Clint Pressley for the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Samuel C. Tolbert Jr. for the National Baptist Convention of America, and Rev. Dr. Gina C. Jacobs-Strain for American Baptist Churches, call for the overthrow of the US president.
Stop trying to convince your readers that there is a so-called anti-church prosecution in Armenia. Nobody is buying it. Stop trying to convince us that Armenia’s Catholicos, his brother enthroned in Moscow, his cousin leading in one church in the south, his nephew leading in another church in the north, and God knows what other relative somewhere else, are anything else than greedy “business men” acting as Kremlin agents.
Stop taking your readers for fools!
Zareh Sahakian
@Zareh Sahakian
When Pashinyan is constantly appeasing the two Turkic thugs Azerbaijan and Turkey with no quid pro quo and with no security guarantees whatsoever, which could result in Armenia losing even more territory (200 square kilometers of Armenian territory is already occupied by Azerbaijan since 2021) and become their puppet state, any Armenian who has a shred of patriotism must speak out and protest, including the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Church is NOT protesting for “privileges”, is NOT protesting against the “separation of church and state”, and is NOT “meddling” in the day-to-day affairs of the state; it is protesting against Pashinyan’s power grab and his selling out of Armenia. The right to peacefully protest, is not banned in the Armenian constitution, and everyone has the right to peacefully protest, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, even though Pashinyan tries to restrict it in practice. When there was no Armenian state and no independence, it was the Armenian Apostolic Church which kept Armenian nationhood, language, culture and traditions alive during many centuries of foreign rule and persecution. If it were not for the Armenian Apostolic Church, there might not have been an Armenian nation today and might have shared the fate of many other ancient nations in West Asia who became extinct. Of course Pashinyan is persecuting the Armenian Apostolic Church, exactly for the abovementioned reasons and because he regards it as his biggest obstacle to subordinate Armenia to the Turkic predators. And until Pashinyan came to power, the Armenian Apostolic Church was never persecuted in an independent Armenia, which marks a new shameful chapter.
I agree completely, Mr. Sahakian, and I’m happy that more Armenians are voicing their opposition to this sham of a controversy supported and promoted by Russian agents to undermine Armenia’s sovereignty.
This is just absurd. Extremist and absurd. This is blatant, Kremlin-backed Dashnak propaganda that bears ZERO connection to reality. The short Truth here is that the Apostolic Church, from the top down, has supported the Russian-backed oligarchy since long before the revolution in 2018. With the revolution, they still supported the corrupt Old Guard. While their stance was and is morally questionable, there is nothing illegal about it. But as of this year, a well-organized campaign led by senior leaders in the Church started speaking openly about overthrowing the government and started stockpiling weapons making plans to do so. If any church leader in the US or Europe were to do the same, they would be in jail, as well. I’m sorry, but as an evangelical Christian pastor in Armenia, there is no persecution of Christians here, other than the persecution that comes from the Apostolic church towards Protestants. At a time when we need to be united as a nation, you are ginning up falsehoods to try and influence next year’s election. Shame on you.
Mr. Bartelsian is correct. This article, among many circulating these days, is part and parcel of a Russian-backed influence campaign fronted by the Armenian Apostolic Church. The same tactics have been used in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. If we open our intellectual aperture a little, we would see this sad recurring theme.
We should note now and recall for the future who has been overtly and implicitly supporting this campaign to shamefully “use” the Armenian Church to shill for Russian interests…