As it celebrates past, Armenian Church worries over future

[Azat]

As it celebrates past, Armenian Church worries over future

 

Intermarriage and assimilation are big concerns

 

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff, 10/20/2001

 

This should be, and in many ways is, a moment of great celebration for the Armenian Church.

 

Seventeen hundred years after King Tiridates III made Armenia the first country to declare Christianity its state religion, the church is celebrating not only an anniversary, but an arrival.

 

Armenia, or at least a part of what was once the civilization of ancient Armenia, finally won its hard-fought independence in 1991 after six centuries of foreign rule.

 

The country's church won a much-sought visit from Pope John Paul II last month, and the pope used an Armenian word, ''metz yeghern,'' that Armenians interpreted as validation of their claim that a 1915 massacre of Armenians was genocide, and not the battle deaths claimed by Turkey.

 

But Armenians are on edge about the current world crisis, fearing that the United States, in its desire to have allies in the Muslim world, will somehow give short shrift to Armenia as it seeks to curry favor with Armenia's foes in Turkey and Azerbaijan.

 

And here in the United States, the Armenian Church - started in Worcester 110 years ago - faces the twin challenges of most ethnically based denominations: intermarriage and assimilation.

 

"The church has been growing, and we continue our growth, opening new parishes, trying to continue an ancient Christian faith in this new world and keep some of the traditions," Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, primate of the Armenian Church of America, said in an interview this week. "Sometimes, it is not easy. It is a struggle. But there are good things happening."

 

The church, which counts about 1.2 million Armenians in this country, is at once losing and gaining members.

 

A huge percentage of Armenian-Americans - as many as 90 percent in some parishes - marry adherents of other faiths, and many of those families do not join an Armenian church.

 

The church is also struggling to transmit Armenian culture to its American-born youngsters - some of whom come from families that have not lived in Armenia for four generations. Like other faiths that historically have worshiped in a language other than English, the church has long since given up hoping that its young will speak the language of its traditional liturgy; instead, Barsamian says, ''the most important thing is that when they see the Armenian alphabet, they recognize that it's the Armenian alphabet, and they feel proud.''

 

But the church is growing, thanks to ongoing immigration, mostly by ethnic Armenians who have moved to the United States from parts of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East.

 

National identity and religion are closely intertwined for Armenians, and many are worried about how the war against terrorism, and America's courtship of Muslim support in the region, will affect them. Regional relations, particularly with Turkey and Azerbaijan, have long been strained, not only over the deaths of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, but also over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Artsax.

 

"I hope the State Department will be very sensitive, in this process of destroying this evil power of terrorism, not to create other problems, like giving strength and power to Muslim countries like Azerbaijan that could use this power against Armenians," Barsamian said.

 

In part, Armenians are using their anniversary as a reminder of their solidarity with the West.

 

"Seventeen hundred is a big number - that's 1,700 years that Armenia has continuously and ceaslessly served Christ, and it's been a buffer zone for the European Christian countries, and has given millions of people who have died for their faith and their liberty,? said the Rev. Mampre A. Kouzouian, pastor of Holy Trinity Armenian Church in Cambridge. "This is an important event for us, and if falls at a time when Armenia has received its independence after 600 years of losing its kingdom. We are blossoming, and we still are witnessing."

 

 

A concert of sacred Armenian music celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the conversion of Armenia to Christianity will be held at 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 1400 Washington Street, Boston. The concert, by the Komitas Chamber Choir of Armenia, will be followed by an ecumenical service under the auspices of Armenian Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Roman Catholic Cardinal Bernard F. Law, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Methodios and the Rev. Diane C. Kessler of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.

 

[ October 21, 2001: Message edited by: Azat ]