From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Armenians/Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill
The Armenian Apostolic, Armenian Roman Catholic, and Armenian Protestant or Evangelical churches have all been transplanted to Canada, and events outside this country have shaped them. Each has guarded its independence and retained distinctively Armenian and Canadian characteristics. As in the homeland, so in Canada, the Apostolic Church, both the Echmiadzin and the Cilicia sees, represents the majority of believers. In 1984 churches under the Echmiadzin catholicos established their own Canadian diocese under Archbishop Vasken Keshishian, with its centre at St Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Montreal. Currently, the diocese has five churches and an additional five congregations, including Canada’s first Armenian church, St Gregory the Illuminator, in St Catharines, founded in 1930. Parishioners under the authority of the catholicos of Cilicia look to the prelacy of the Apostolic Church in New York City. In 1994 Bishop Khajag Der Hagopian was appointed vicar-general of Canada, and Sourp Hagop (St James) in Montreal, the first Cilician church in Canada, founded in 1958, was named the mother church. There are now five Cilician churches in Canada.
The two sees do not differ in dogma, doctrine, liturgy, or rites; both view the Apostolic Church as the national church. Both admit as essential the dogmatic definitions of the first three church councils only and accordingly uphold the Nicene Creed. (By contrast, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches accept the decisions of subsequent councils.) The Apostolic Church accepts as part of the Universal Church all who believe in the Trinity, Incarnation, and Redemption of Christ. It does not condemn those who neglect its precepts, nor does it insist on rebaptism or reordination. Part of the strength of the Apostolic Church lies in its democratic constitution.
Joint lay and clerical councils elect all clergy, including the catholicos; elected lay and ecclesiastical representatives share church governance. The kahanas (lowerorder priests) are allowed to marry, but not the vartabeds (masters of divinity), from whose ranks the hierarchy is chosen. To date all Armenian priests in Canada, except one, have been recruited abroad.
The Apostolic Church still celebrates its liturgy in classical Armenian, though the sermon, some prayers, and readings may be said in the vernacular. Usually, the chants and hymns are from the music of Magar Yakmalian or Gomidas Vartabed. For North America, the church has had the Bible translated into the modern vernacular, shortened and reduced the number of services, and offered instruction on the ancient service and its symbolism. The church combines baptism, confirmation, and first communion in one sacrament shortly after birth. Confession is public, with ritualized prayers, and unction (not extreme unction) is administered in the visitation of the ill. Women have participated in the church largely as members of the ladies’ auxiliary, the choir, and sometimes the board of trustees. Apostolic Armenians celebrate five main feasts: Nativity (6 January), Easter, Transfiguration, the Assumption of Mary, and the Exaltation of the Cross. St Gregory the Illuminator (founder of the Armenian church), St James, and St Mesrob Mashtots are the principal saints.
The deaths of about five thousand clergymen during the Genocide, the resulting collapse of the church’s leadership, and the destruction and theft of its property plunged the Apostolic Church into chaos. Eventually, the seat of the catholicos in historic Cicilia (present-day southeastern Turkey) was re-established in AnÛ ilyˆ s, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon (1929). The Mother See of Echmiadzin, however, entered into a period of prolonged turmoil following the establishment of Soviet Armenia. Closure of churches and seminaries, confiscation of church wealth, and persecution and murder of the clergy placed the church on precarious ground. From 1920 to 1945, Communist leaders left the Echmiadzin see vacant for at least nine years and for the rest of the period held its catholicos under virtual house arrest. Initially, the church hierarchy defied Communist rulers, but finally, in order to retain a vestige of life, it adjusted to the new political order. The survival of the church in Soviet Armenia, although under conditions of “captivity,” and its profound influence on diasporan Armenians generated debate and rancour in North America. Reviled by his adversaries as a tool of the Communist regime, Archbishop Levon Tourian, primate of the Apostolic Diocese in North America, did not bring about rapprochement between the community’s opposing political camps, which in September 1933 locked horns at the National Representative Assembly and severed relations with each other. Events came to a head with Tourian’s assassination in New York City in 1933. Nine Tashnags were convicted, although the nationalist and anti-Communist Tashnag organization denied any role in the crime.
Thereafter two separate and parallel ecclesiastical authorities existed in North America. In 1956 the pro-Tashnag, anti-Communist parishes, which had been denounced by Echmiadzin, petitioned the newly elected catholicos of Cilicia to take them under his jurisdiction. The catholicos of Echmiadzin condemned these initiatives as an encroachment on its territorial rights, since, canonically, Armenian Apostolic parishes in North America fell under its jurisdiction. In 1957, however, a de facto division of North America between the two sees became a reality. Recent political changes and the fall of the Communist regime in Armenia have all but removed the grounds for schism. Concerted efforts to resolve the differences within the Apostolic Church have recently been undertaken by the catholicoi of the Echmiadzin and Cicilia sees. The recent death of Vasken I of Echmiadzin generated fears that another church crisis was imminent. A period of instability ended in 1995 with the election of the Cicilian catholicos to Echmiadzin as Karekin I and of Aram I as his successor at Cilcilia.
Like the Apostolic Church, Armenian Roman Catholics and Evangelicals have also tried to adjust to political changes in the homeland. The Armenian Roman Catholic Church, which is “united in dogma and faith with Rome,” adheres to the Vatican’s precepts on the nature of the sacraments, clerical celibacy, and the role of the hierarchy. But it uses liturgy similar to that of the Armenian Apostolic Church, reveres the same saints, and celebrates the same principal feasts, except that the Nativity is held on 25 December. Likewise, it holds services in classical Armenian, with some use of vernacular.
A small group of Arabic-speaking Armenian Catholics from Mardin settled in Quebec before 1914 and formed the beginnings of an Armenian Catholic congregation in Canada. Post-1950 immigration brought more Armeno-Catholics to Canada. Established as an autonomous parish in Montreal in 1966, they built their own church, Notre Dame de Nareg, in 1983, under the guidance of the Reverend Monsignor Edouard Kurdy. In Toronto, the Armenian Catholic congregation, established in 1974, built St Gregory the Illuminator in 1993. The pastors of both churches have been drawn from the Bzommar Order. Both churches fall under the direct jurisdiction of the Exarchate for Armenian Roman Catholics of North America in New York City (founded in 1982). In turn, the exarchate comes under the authority of the Armenian Catholic patriarch in Beirut, and ultimately the pope.
Before 1950 the few, dispersed Protestant Armenians in Canada had no congregation. They held prayer meetings in their homes and attended Canadian Protestant churches. More Protestants arrived with the third wave of settlers. In 1960 Montreal Evangelicals founded the First Armenian Evangelical Church, and their co-religionists in Toronto started the Armenian Evangelical Church of Toronto, under the Reverend Soghomon Nigoghosian. The Armenian Evangelical United Church of Montreal (founded 1964) and the Armenian Evangelical United Church of Cambridge (1970) are affiliated with the United Church of Canada. The four churches founded the Armenian Missionary Association of Canada in 1984 and are partners of the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America, set up in 1971. Services are in Armenian, with some use of the vernacular. The Armenian Brotherhood Bible Churches in Toronto and Montreal are conservative, Bible-centred, evangelistic churches, associated with the General Union of Armenian Brotherhood Churches in the United States (founded 1980–81) but totally independent bodies.
All three religious groups (Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant) face problems common to churches in Canada, such as consumerism, secularism, apathy, and the impact of technology. Like other ethnic churches, they must address competition from mainstream churches, recruitment of the young, the place of women, and tensions between different cohorts of immigrants and between foreign- and Canadian-born generations. In addition, they must deal with Armenian issues – whether to nurture spirituality or ethnic heritage, language of services (Armenians in diaspora possess a multiplicity of languages), involvement in relief missions to Armenia, and relations with the new republic.
Churches dominate Armenian community life in Canada. They publish newsletters and sponsor a host of organizations, including Armenian-language schools, ladies’ auxiliaries, youth and sports groups, senior citizens’ clubs, and theatrical, dance, and choral ensembles. Renewed interest in belief and spirituality and greater participation in feasts and traditions give church leaders hope of a spread of piety and a religious revival. Other currents reveal growing cooperation among the three religious groups, perhaps most evident in the combined sponsorship of the Genocide commemorations on 24 April. This is in keeping with a growing ecumenism among Armenian churches, notably marked by the work of Karekin II, catholicos of Cicilia, in the World Council of Churches.
