Countries
Armenia
Also Known As Armenian
Asia
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Armenia traces its Christian identity to the conversion of King Trdat by Gregory the Illuminator, traditionally dated to 301 and widely described as the first adoption of Christianity as a state religion. The Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the Oriental Orthodox communions that did not accept the Council of Chalcedon in 451, has its see at Etchmiadzin and holds the allegiance of the great majority of Armenians. The invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots around 405 was undertaken to make scripture readable in Armenian and became the foundation of a national literature. The genocide of 1915 destroyed the Armenian population and church infrastructure of Anatolia, and the memory of it is central to religious as well as national identity. The constitution recognises the exclusive historical mission of the Apostolic Church while guaranteeing freedom of religion.
Facts
Law and State
Establishment StatusPrivileged Never Established 3 The constitution recognizes the exclusive historical mission of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church as the national church, holding privileges in education and public ceremony no other religious body has, while guaranteeing freedom of religion generally. State Funding MechanismArmenia funds no religious organization from the state budget, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, despite the constitution recognizing the Church's exclusive mission as the national church in the spiritual life, national culture and national identity of the Armenian people. The constitution bars the state from establishing an official religion or affording preferential treatment to any religion, including through the use of public funds to support religious organizations, so the Church's special constitutional recognition is honorific rather than financial. 4 Apostasy or Blasphemy LawArmenia's Criminal Code carries no offense titled blasphemy. Article 226, part two, point one, punishes incitement of national, racial or religious hatred carried out through violence, public statements, the mass media or abuse of an official position, with a fine of 200,000 to 500,000 drams or imprisonment of three to six years; the law separately prohibits, without defining, so called soul hunting, a term covering both proselytism and forced conversion, and bars members of the armed forces and security services from belonging to a religious organization, a bar the Constitutional Court upheld in 2023. 3 Registration or Recognition RegimeArmenian law does not require a religious community to register in order to worship, but registration is required to hold property, rent premises, or open a bank account in the community's own name. The Office of the State Registrar grants it on an assessment from the Prime Minister's Division of Religious Affairs and National Minorities, applying a legal standard that the community rest on "historically recognized holy scripture" and be "free from materialism," terms the law leaves undefined; the requirement does not apply to a faith tied to a recognized national minority, including Assyrian, Kurdish, Russian and Yezidi communities. A refused community may appeal through the courts. 3 Ban or Official WatchlistArmenia bars employees of the National Security Service and members of the armed forces from belonging to, or founding, a religious organization; the Constitutional Court upheld the bar in 2023, reasoning that membership in a religious group carries an obligation to proselytize incompatible with security service employment. In Nagorno-Karabakh, proselytizing is lawful only for the Armenian Apostolic Church, the country's majority faith, closing the practice to every other religious community there. 3 Concordat BasisArmenia has no concordat with the Holy See. Article 18 of the 2015 Constitution instead recognizes the exclusive mission of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church as the national church in the spiritual life of the Armenian people, in the development of national culture and in the preservation of national identity, while Article 17 separately guarantees the separation of religious organizations from the State. 5 Government
Government Typeparliamentary democracy; note - constitutional changes adopted in December 2015 transformed the government to a parliamentary system 2 Sovereignty StatusSovereign UN member state 2 Established Year21 September 1991 (from the Soviet Union); notable earlier dates: 321 B.C. (Kingdom of Armenia established under the Orontid Dynasty), A.D. 884 (Armenian Kingdom reestablished under the Bagratid Dynasty); 1198 (Cilician Kingdom established); 28 May 1918 (Democratic Republic of Armenia declared) Status
Legal StatusThe constitution guarantees freedom of religion while recognising the exclusive historical mission of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church as the national church, which holds privileges in education and public ceremony no other body has. 3 Demographics
Religious CompositionAround 92 per cent belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the highest single denomination shares in the world, with small Armenian Catholic, evangelical and Yazidi minorities (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1 Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. Location
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Religion and History in Armenia
Armenia's claim to be the first Christian state rests on the conversion of King Trdat III by Gregory the Illuminator, traditionally dated to 301, which places it ahead of Constantine's empire by a decade or more. The date is debated by historians, some preferring 314, but the priority is not seriously in question. What followed mattered as much as the conversion.
Around 405 Mesrop Mashtots devised an alphabet for Armenian so that scripture could be read in the language people spoke, and the translation that resulted is called the Queen of Translations; the alphabet made possible a continuous literature and is the reason Armenian identity survived the loss of the Armenian state for most of the next fifteen centuries. In 451 the Armenian church, occupied that year with the battle of Avarayr against Sasanian Persia over an attempt to impose Zoroastrianism, did not attend the Council of Chalcedon and subsequently rejected its formula on the natures of Christ, placing Armenia among the Oriental Orthodox churches alongside the Copts, Syriacs and Ethiopians. The monasteries carved into gorges at Geghard and Tatev, and the khachkars, intricately carved cross stones of which tens of thousands survive, are the visible remains of that long medieval church.
Etchmiadzin, 1915 and the Church as a Nation
The Mother See at Etchmiadzin is said to stand where Gregory the Illuminator saw Christ strike the ground with a golden hammer, and it has been the seat of the Catholicos for most of the period since. Its authority is complicated by a second see, the Catholicosate of Cilicia at Antelias in Lebanon, which was reconstituted by survivors of the genocide and which administers dioceses in the Middle East and parts of the diaspora; relations between the two were poisoned during the Cold War, when Etchmiadzin operated under Soviet control, and have been repaired only partially.
The genocide of 1915 is inseparable from Armenian religion because it destroyed the church of historic Armenia: bishops and priests were killed with their communities, thousands of churches and monasteries in Anatolia were seized, converted or left to collapse, and the cathedral at Ani and the church of the Holy Cross on Akhtamar stand in Turkey as ruins and a museum.
The annual commemoration on 24 April is a religious observance as much as a national one, and in 2015 the church canonised the victims collectively, an act without close precedent in scale. The constitution recognises the exclusive mission of the Apostolic Church as the national church, which grants it access to schools and public ceremony and has drawn complaints from evangelical and Jehovah's Witness minorities.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Armenia directly: "and for the religion spreading from Armenia through Asia Minor and the Levant during the forty-five-year reign of Artaxerxes II, 405 to 358 BCE."
This source names Armenia directly: "Panorama.am (PAN) news report on Armenia's 2022 national census, stating that 95.4 percent of Armenia's population, 2,793,042 people, identified as followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church..."
The Armenian Apostolic Church, an Oriental Orthodox communion, holds the allegiance of about 92 per cent of the population and is recognised by the constitution as the national church.
This source names Armenia directly: "Christian states anywhere, alongside Armenia."
This source names Armenia directly: "Garsoian's 1999 study from Peeters, is a scholarly history of the Armenian Church's separation from the wider Byzantine communion, by a leading historian of medieval Armenia."
This source names Armenia directly: "Wikipedia article on religion in Armenia, community edited, carrying a census results table citing the Republic of Armenia's 2011 census (Statistical Committee, 2011, page 7), which recorded..."
This source names Armenia directly: "scholarly two volume history of the Armenian people from antiquity to the modern period, with chapters from named specialist contributors, edited by Richard Hovannisian, covering the Armenian..."
This source names Armenia directly: "The Church of Armenia, Her History, Doctrine, Rule, Discipline, Liturgy, Literature and Existing Condition, written by the Armenian Church Patriarch Malachia Ormanian and translated by G."
This source names Armenia directly: "n, 405 to 358 BCE, when it reached from Armenia through Asia Minor and into the Levant."
Contains
Dvin, Cities The site lies in Ararat province in modern Armenia, beside the villages of Hnaberd and Verin Artashat.
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Kingdom of Armenia, church established at Vagharshapat.
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