Secular?

[Arpa]

Of late the word has all but become synonymous with a certain country which not only is run by an Islamist junta, but is also known to oppress, and at times murder any one who falls outside that so called “secular state”

What does it really mean?

Is Armenia really a secular state?

We have seen, on many occasions, here as well how we find it difficult to accept anyone that does not profess the Christian faith as “real Armenians” . Brings “muslim Hamshenites” to mind.

Secular=Askharhik=Worldly

Johannes correctly interpreted “apashkharhel” to mean “ to turn away from the world”.

 

The Eng-Arm dictionary defines “secular” as Աշխարհիկ աշխարհական and goes further to դարավոր, հարիւր տարին մէկ անգամ տեղի ունեցող.

See why.

isec·u·lar (sĕk'yə-lər)

adj.

Worldly rather than spiritual.

Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body: secular music.

Relating to or advocating secularism.

Not bound by monastic restrictions, especially not belonging to a religious order. Used of the clergy.

Occurring or observed once in an age or century.

Lasting from century to century.

n.

A member of the secular clergy.

A layperson.

 

 

See the below articles here;

http://www.agbu.org/publications/news.asp?date_id=51

Observe these back to back articles in that same issue.

 

4/1/2007

RECOVERY: POINTS OF VIEW ON THE IMPACT OF ANTI-RELIGION ON THE FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION

Armenia

by Julia Hakobyan





The mission of today's Armenian Apostolic Church includes its continued battle to undo moral and spiritual damage inflicted by 70 years of soviet anti-religion. The young-adult generation of present-day Armenians represents those whose lives straddle one social regime that maintained power through repression, and another that has yet to fulfill the promises of freedom.

 

As this generation now raises children who represent the future, it does so with a shallow history in which moral/spiritual foundation was part of the national conscience. Grandparents of the generation that represents future society lived under the influence of a social structure in which practice of religion was a crime, and deference to religion was a betrayal of national party. This is not a promising legacy in a society such as Armenia, where family remains the most influential factor on maturation.

 

Sociologists say two factors help define a society: religion and language. What, then, has been the impact on the national psyche of a people only recently free to enjoy their spiritual heritage?

 

A priest's perspective

 

The Very Reverend Father Hovakim Manukian's spirit lifts when watching young people coming for worship. Girls, who otherwise giggle and gossip, grow quiet. Boys, who otherwise posture for the giggling, gossiping girls, suspend machismo with humility.

 

The spiritual leader is concerned, though, whether outward reverence for the Church indicates inner understanding of the role of spirituality in development of character.

 

"It is pleasant seeing so many youth in churches, especially during the Church holidays. But generally they come to the church to light a candle, to cross themselves, to pray for something. They say to each other: 'let's go to the Church for a Mass' but they don't know what that particular Mass means. It is their own perception of church, but not an insightful understanding of their religion."

 

In the Very Reverend Father's opinion, the communists managed to retard several generations of Armenians in religious education and in the spirit of mercy and morality. Many parents of today's youth used to be communists, and even though now they too attend churches, the gap in their own religious education hampers their effectiveness in teaching religious values to the family.

 

Very Reverend Father Manukian, head of the Inter-churches Relations Office at Holy Etchmiadzin, says the decades-long religious repression was a test of endurance for the Armenian people and these teenage years after independence are showing that Armenians passed the test.

 

"No one can say that during the Soviet Union people turned their back on their Church. The dictatorial regime can make people quell or hide their true attitude to the Church but it can not erase the historical memory each Armenian bears," says the Very Reverend Father.

 

Very Rev. Fr. Manukian says that even during the peak of repression, people did not forget their relations with Church traditions. Women would make the sign of the cross while baking bread, and men would lead family prayers at home after the churches had been locked up or converted into state buildings.

 

But the gap between symbolism and application of faith cannot be filled by history alone, which is why the Church today prepares lessons on "History of the Armenian Church" for schoolchildren, publishes a religious newspaper and produces films and television programs for broadcast on the Church television station, Shoghakat.

 

A soldier

 

Arkadi Karapetian was an atheist all his life, until the Karabakh war when death could come at any moment...

 

"I believed in God. I can't explain why and how it happened. I just needed to believe. And since I believe in God I did not want to die un-Christian," says Karapetian.

 

Karapetian, better known as Ago, is a well-known veteran of the war, one of the initiators of the Karabakh Movement and a member of the first commandos of Karabakh's self-defense troops in the early '90s.

 

Originally from Karabakh, Karapetian was baptized during the war. He says that the Armenian Church immediately became an ideological symbol of what it meant to be "Armenian."

 

During the Soviet era, Christianity in Karabakh was suppressed on two sides-by political mandate of the Communists, and from Azerbaijan's policy of elimination of Armenian historical monuments from the region.

 

"There was no practice of religion in Karabakh. There were churches and monasteries, where the Azerbaijani shepherds took their cattle to pasture. Armenians had great respect toward the spiritual landmarks, but not because they were associated with God, but because they were their historical monuments."

 

Karapetian, who is 49, says "To deprive the nation of religion means to strip it of its history. For Armenians, cutting off religious practice deprived them of their Christian education and morality. It does not mean that Armenians stopped being Armenian, but a nation that does not know its history is doomed."

 

Karapetian believes that all powerful empires fell because of a lapse of morality. As for the Soviet Union, he says, it collapsed because none of its concepts of statehood related to goodness or mercy, the foundation of most religions.

 

A psychologist

 

From the point of view of psychology, religion-or at least an awareness of belief-is an inseparable part of personality.

 

"The Communist regime failed because it imposed two concepts that contradict the mentality of humankind-collectivization and atheism. Materially and psychologically, man needs exactly these two factors-possessions and spiritual beliefs," says Karine Nalchajian, lecturer of psychology at the Bryusov Linguistic University.

 

While the impact of communism is still felt in the Armenian national psyche, the psychologist says its 70-year reign was minor, in terms of global change in mentality.

 

"Ethnic mentality is formed over thousands of years, not decades. In Soviet times religion was banned, and it seemed that people became atheists. Who can say how many people stopped believing? As soon as churches were opened again, people started to attend because, by his very nature, man is programmed to believe in a supreme power. Mankind without religion is mankind out of control."

 

If for no other reason, the psychologist says, humankind needs to believe in a supreme being for the sake of discipline.

 

The Communists, she says, cultivated atheist leaders whose "god" was the party and who feared party punishment. For that reason (the fear of reprimand for "sins") they believed in their own morality.

 

"The Soviet regime was just a lame political experiment by people who, among other mistakes, devalued religion, a million-year-old component of man's mentality," Nalchajian says. "They created a generation of people who feared other people, instead of fearing gods. But man could worship only gods. This explains why regimes are temporary, but religion is eternal."

 

A woman of age

 

Zaruhi Khudikian does not hold degrees in theology or psychology; nor was her faith born of a threat of death or danger. Her belief has been shaped through 50 years of service at Holy Etchmiadzin, where she started as a cleaning lady at the time of Catholicos Vazgen I.

 

Zaruhi was born in 1930, in the era when repressions on religion started to intensify throughout the Soviet Union. She graduated secondary school in Etchmiadzin in 1947, just when Josef Stalin had allowed Armenian churches limited liberties, and she came to work in Holy Etchmiadzin in 1957. Now she is 70 and all these years she observed the changes in the place that she calls "my home."

 

"I don't remember much of repressions. During the school years there simply was no talk of Church and religion, as if it did not exist. Then it changed. When the churches were reopened, the believers appeared at once."

 

The veteran servant of the Church believes whatever current problems Armenia has, they result from the long years of social development in which expression of spirituality was forbidden.

 

"A religion is something very pure, very innocent. It is very vulnerable as it needs people's attention. No attention, no religion," Zaruhi says. "Our parents were educated on Christian principles. That's why today the old people of my generation are apt to be more merciful than our youth."

 

And then this.

 

 

 

 

AT ODDS WITH GOD: COMMUNIST REPRESSIONS WERE A SETBACK, BUT NOT A DEFEAT

Armenia

by Julia Hakobyan





In 1985 Suren Ter-Grigorian, an assistant cameraman for Armenian State Television, had a Church wedding. Soon after, he was summoned to Raikom, the Communist Party Regional Committee, where Ter-Grigorian was strongly chastised and ridiculed for the religious ceremony.

 

Rather than apologize, Ter-Grigorian replied that "the Armenian people survived due to the church." The committee issued an order for Ter-Grigorian to be fired. He was, though, a respected professional, and his chief interceded and got Ter-Grigorian's job back after a month.

 

Had the wedding taken place 50 years earlier, during the peak of Stalin repressions, Ter-Grigorian would likely have been exiled and the priest persecuted. By the 1980s, conditions had relaxed considerably; however, Communists still were not keen to give religion a place, and especially not among people on the party payroll.

 

"Religion and communism are opposite ideologies-spiritual and national-and could not exist in one society," says Stepan Danielian, political expert of Collaboration for Democracy (Non Governmental Organization). "Communists had to suppress religion to introduce a new political system-the cult of personality. There could not be two gods to worship, and atheism, an ancient doctrine, was used as a political instrument against religion."

 

Enthroned after the October Revolution of 1917, Vladimir I. Lenin expressed his position towards religion in a well-known letter to the Politburo dated 1922: "The confiscation of values, especially in rich monasteries and churches should be carried out with pitiless resolution, undoubtedly without hesitating in very short terms. The more representatives of reactionary bourgeoisie and reactionary clergy we can shoot, the better."

 

The cleansing of Armenian churches started during Lenin's rule, with hundreds of churches closed and looted and property seized.

 

But the situation drastically worsened when in 1924 totalitarian dictator Josef Stalin came to power after the death of Lenin. Stalin created a repressive regime in the Soviet Union that dominated all aspects of society. He perpetuated a policy of nationalization of businesses, collectivization of the land, and suppression of political ideology contrary to communism.

 

The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD, which produced the KGB), the Soviet secret police, became an execution machine, implementing persecutions and torture of priests or other "anti-Soviet elements." The NKVD "troika" was a commission of three people charged with administering quick punishment of anti-Soviet elements, without public trial or investigation. Times and places of execution of death sentences were ordered to be held in secret.

 

"Father of the nation" vs. "Mother Church"

 

In 1997 historian Armenak Manukian published The Repressed Priests of the Armenian Apostolic Church 1930-1938. Though it was not the first work on that period, the data was significant because it was taken from the archives of the KGB, where Manukian worked from 1991-2003 as the head of the Information Department. (After independence KGB became the National Security Service, but has, colloquially, maintained its title.)

 

Manukian says he thoroughly studied all the documents related to the repression of priests in that period, which included comprehensive information. The book includes interrogations of priests by NKVD officers.

 

"It was a desire to shed light on those times, and a response to the subjective impressions and apprehensions of that time," Manukian says.

 

According to KGB archives, in the eight years between 1930-1938, there were 208 cases brought against Armenian priests, 148 of whom were censored; 84 were executed.

 

Manukian mentions that the verdicts against the men were clearly because they were priests. Officially, though, they were not charged for their religion, but for anti-Soviet propaganda, or espionage, or for affiliations to the Dashnak party.

 

One of the documents, an excerpt from the protocols on Very Reverend Father Titair Dollakian of December 2, 1937, reads:

 

"...Accused, in 1923 of being an anti-Soviet element with established ties to Armenian clergy, holding the title of Archimandrite. In 1927 he hosted an Italian consul and had with him a curiously long conversation." The verdict: "sentenced to be shot." The document, followed by the resolution of NKVD Troika, reports that the sentence was carried out on December 6 at 2 a.m."

 

A "directive letter" of NKVD of 1930 concerning the order to repress and eliminate any manifestation of religion says: "We have to take into account that most people in rural areas are influenced by religious ideology..." The letter further reads that the NKVD had a task to crush the churches that were conducting anti-Soviet propaganda. That letter approved use of force on the "enemies of the nation," and became a license for the State's machine of torture and elimination of Armenian priests.

 

The Church was not crushed, but it was unquestionably damaged by the loss of leadership.

 

In 1932 the Armenian priesthood elected Khoren Muradpekian as Catholicos of All Armenians (Khoren I).

 

According to NKVD archives, Armenian priests were interrogated and some tortured, but none conceded to NKVD attempts to have statements signed implicating the Holy Father as an Enemy of the State.

 

The devotion of his priests, however, was not sufficient protection, and Khoren I was murdered in 1938, though the NKVD said he died of a heart attack.

 

Khoren I was buried by his killers in a common grave. Later, his remains were reburied at Holy Etchmiadzin.

 

The elimination of the Catholicos was the culmination of widespread persecution in the Armenian experience of the so-called "Great Purge." Some sources have said that one woman was among those who carried out the assassination of Khoren I.

 

The KGB archives showed that Stalin killed 14,904 Armenians, the overwhelming number-8,837-were between 1936-1938. During that period 4,434 people were put to death by shooting.

 

According to other sources, in 1938 alone, 300 priests were persecuted and, in all, 25,000 Armenians were deported to outposts of the Soviet Union.

 

Those churches which had not been destroyed were turned into barns; religion was derided in newspapers and remaining priests were scoffed. It was a period when using the word "God" or making the sign of the cross could cost a life.

 

Yerevan resident Anahit Sanayan recalls stories from her grandmother about persecution in a village near Leninakan, now Gyumri.

 

The grandmother told how Stalin's henchmen set priests backward on donkeys and sent them through villages. "People were horrified," she told her granddaughter, "but no one dared to object. The Chekists (executioners of Stalin's orders) were writing insults in chalk on the priests' robes, or some communist slogans, or signs showing that the priest had renounced religion."

 

It remains unknown exactly how many Armenian churches were destroyed during the period of communist rule. A record had been kept in a book at Holy Etchmiadzin, but the book was lost sometime after 1945. Records maintained at Holy Etchmiadzin do, however, show that between the Genocide and the peak of Soviet oppression, Armenia lost some 5,000 priests-during a period of only about 20 years.

 

Facts about churches in Yerevan are a little clearer, as today's landmarks have replaced them.

 

For example, the Moscow cinema-a prominent landmark in central Yerevan-now stands where the Church of Paul and Peter stood until the late 1930s. (The Apostolic Church was not the only victim. During the purge, the Nikolaevskaya Russian Orthodox Church, the tallest church in Yerevan, was destroyed and in its place was erected a memorial to Stepan Shahumian, the Armenian Bolshevik revolutionist.)

 

Stalin's death in 1953 ushered in a period historians call "the Khrushchev Thaw," when hard-line attitudes against religion were relaxed. According to KGB archives, from 1955-60, 46 Armenian priests received amnesty from charges brought against them. Still, until Armenia gained independence in 1991, the Church was subjected to KGB scrutiny and control.

 

But after independence, Suren Ter-Grigorian, reprimanded by the Communists for having a church wedding, got a job as cameraman for Shoghakat, the television…

 

 

[annannimusss]

Armenia has no reason to be supposedly secular. It is and always will be a Christian Nation.

[Zartonk]

Yes, and prosper in our compassion so the world can stop and love us. Get real.