Armenian Church History

The History of Armenian Church

Armenian history cannot be fully digested without understanding the influence that Christianity and the Armenian Church have over all aspects of Armenian life. The Armenian Apostolic Church is the world's oldest National Church and is one of the most ancient Christian communities. By establishing this church, Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion in 301 AD (Ananyan 2016). According to the ancient tradition that is well supported by historical evidence, Christianity was evangelized in Armenia as early as the second half of the first century by the two disciples of Jesus Christ, namely, St. Thaddeus (John 14:22-24) and St. Bartholomew (John 1:43-51). During the first three
The church has preserved the national awareness of Armenian during the many centuries in which an Armenian state ceased to exist. The Armenian Church played a significant role in the succession of Muslim empires in which its faithful were located. The leaders of the Armenian were politically responsible for their communities since some of the empires were divided according to religious affiliation. During the twentieth century, the Armenian Church endured two devastating events: the genocide in Turkey, in which 1.5 million died, and the Sovietization of eastern Armenia, which ushered in seven decades of official atheism. Essentially destroyed by the Genocide, only remnants of the church in Turkey remain (Whooley
James, the Brother of the Lord. Armenian bishops of Greater Armenia visited the Holy Land and some may have lived there for extended periods of time. These pilgrim bishops, priests and laymen likely endured persecutions under Byzantine rule as a result of the schism in the church after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, since the bishops of Jerusalem adhered to the confidence of the Byzantine Empire, though the Armenians stayed consistent with the principles of the early church. In 637, when the Arabs seized Jerusalem, the Armenians took the opportunity to set up their own bishop. They elected Abraham, a cleric, to head the supporters of the Armenian confidence. It became traditional for the Armenian patriarchs to consider this Abraham as the first of the 91 succeeding bishops. The original title of the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem was Bishop/Archbishop of Jerusalem. In the later Middle Ages, the archbishops of Jerusalem assumed the title of patriarch and received recognition as such from the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, who were at that time in possession of the Holy Land (Badr