Armenian Evangelical Church
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The Armenian Evangelical Church ( Armenian Հայաստանեայց Աւետարանական Եկեղեցի , transcription: Hajastaneajz Awetaranakan Jekeghezi ) is an Armenian- speaking Protestant church that is spread across the world with the Armenian diaspora . It was created in Constantinople in 1846 by splitting off from the Armenian Apostolic Church .
Emergence
In the 19th century a religious movement began among the Armenian Christians in Constantinople, which was based primarily on Bible study as a source of religion and which soon found contradictions between the Bible texts and the practice of the Armenian Apostolic Church. This movement received support in the 1820s through Bible translations into Turkish and New Armenian; From around 1830 missionaries from the USA promoted evangelical reform efforts among the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire , also through work in elementary schools. In 1828 a theology seminar was founded under the Armenian Patriarchate , which, under its director Krikor Peshdimaljian, was supposed to train qualified clerics for the Armenian Apostolic Church. In this seminar, the Reformation ideas spread so far that Patriarch Stepanos III. Zacharian felt compelled to fight the movement that had meanwhile founded a “Pietist Union”. Patriarch Matheos II finally excommunicated the followers of the pietistic movement in 1846 , whereupon on July 1st of that year 37 men and three women founded the Armenian Evangelical Church by means of a creed in twelve sections, which the authorities of the Sublime Porte named the following year own Millet was recognized. With the Armenian diaspora, the church spread worldwide.
The church today
Today there are 90 Armenian Evangelical congregations in the states of Egypt, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Georgia, Greece, Iraq, Iran, Canada, Lebanon , Syria , Turkey, Uruguay, the United States and in the United Kingdom and Cyprus. In the Syrian city of Aleppo alone there are three Armenian Evangelical churches: the Bethel Church , the Immanuel Church and the Martyrs Church. They are organized in seven churches (date of foundation in brackets):
- Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Middle East (UAECNE, 1924)
- Armenian Evangelical Union of North America (AEUNA, 1971)
- Armenian Evangelical Union of France (AEUF, 1924)
- Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in Armenia (1995)
- Armenian Evangelical Union of Eurasia (1995)
- Armenian Evangelical Society of Europe
- Union of Armenian Evangelical Communities in Bulgaria (1995)
Web links
- On the history of the church (French)
- Web presence of the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America (English)
- Country information on the Caucasian Republics of the EKD ( PDF , 137 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Creed of July 1st, 1846 ( Memento of the original of January 7th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (engl.)
