Armenian Presbyterian Church?

[bellthecat]

I was having a look at H. F. Tozer's 1881 book "Turkish Armenia" today. When he was in Kayseri he stayed at the large house of an Armenian Protestant minister named Kerope Yakobian. He had trained to be a minister in Scotland, where he had lived for 2 years. In a garden adjoining his house was a large Presbyterian church, which had been built by funds provided by friends and sympathisers in Scotland.

 

Anyone heard of this sort of thing before? Previous to reading this, I had only heard about Protestant churches set up by American missionaries.

 

Steve

[Arpa]

Don't ask me about the theology and the difference between one denomination and other but the Armenian Protestant Church in Paramus NJ calls itself Presbyterian even if they are a member of the AEUNA.

 

See for yourself.

 

http://www.armenianpresbyterianchurch.org/

 

You will notice that they also call themselves Hay Avetaranakan (Evangelical)in the Armenian title and Presbyterian in the English

 

Edit:

In the above site it states that they are one of the only two of such.

I thought the other would be the one in Fresno. Correct! They were very much in the news lately as they were fighting city hall trying to register and presserve their former building as a national treasure, as the first Armenian Protestant church in America. I don't know the outcome.

Edited February 10, 2004 by Arpa

[bellthecat]

Don't ask me about the theology and the difference between one denomination and other but the Armenian Protestant Church in Paramus NJ calls itself Presbyterian even if they are a member of the AEUNA.

 

See for yourself.

 

http://www.armenianpresbyterianchurch.org/

 

You will notice that they also call themselves Hay Avetaranakan (Evangelical)in the Armenian title and Presbyterian in the English

 

Edit:

In the above site it states that they are one of the only two of such.

I thought the other would be the one in Fresno. Correct! They were very much in the news lately as they were fighting city hall trying to register and presserve their former building as a national treasure, as the first Armenian Protestant church in America. I don't know the outcome.

A Presbyterian church is one where the entire church organisation is governed by the elected members of that church. Those that are elected can be lay members of the congregation, called "elders", as well as ministers, and all of them have equal rank. The word "presbyter" is Greek for "an older man", i.e. an "elder", though women can also be "elders", and elders don't necessarily need to be old!

 

I.E. in terms of its organisation, and Armenian Presbyterian church would be about as far removed from the Armenian Apostolic Church as it is possible to get!

 

Most of the concepts of Presbyterianism were formulated in Scotland, since that was the only country where it became the established Church.

 

I'm not exactly sure, but I think that Evangelical Protestants are generally more "fundamentalist" than other Protestant churches, and don't necessarily have the same structure as a Presbyterian church. Also (and again I'm not certain) I think that the Protestant churches founded by American missionaries must have been Evangelical and not Presbyterian, since (in the book that I mentioned) that was the first time I had heard the words "Presbyterian" and "Armenian" together. If there was not a difference then why would Tozer have mentioned it.

[America-Hye]

Arpa,

 

The granddaughter of the first minister, Midge Barrett, fought a valiant battle against the forces of development. She lost. The church was torn down.