Armenia is probably going through its worst historical phase in the last 60 years in terms of the dangers it faces with regard to its future existence and the foundations of its ancestral religiosity.

In effect, the government in Yerevan is acting to substantially weaken the religious faith of Armenians, which has the oldest Christian community in the world, to co-opt and control the Armenian Apostolic Church, and to fundamentally reduce its influence on the geopolitical course it is trying to implement in Armenia.

According to numerous reports brewing in Armenia and spreading to the outside world from its very bowels, the power clan that supports the current government wants to go further, in dogmatic matters, and co-generate a code of faith that is a syncretism where precise traditional articles of faith are revised, updated and profiled so that they are manufactured in a combination with values corresponding to the dogmas of globalism.

In other words, we would be proceeding to the establishment of a “globalist Christian” religious faith, although, doctrinally and essentially, it is impossible to unite true Christianity with the foundations of globalism because both are supposed to be antithetical.

Therefore, those who are convinced that circles of power only want to have practical control of the Armenian Church and not bring about changes, in practice, with regard to the articles of faith of Armenian Orthodoxy, well, they are mistaken.

But speaking of the escalated and harsh confrontation over the Armenian Christian space between the state run by such cenacles of power and the Armenian Apostolic Church, it is important to underline the document that the pro-freedom organization of Samvel Karapatyan – who is an Armenian businessman who is imprisoned by the Pashinyan government – “Since June 2025, Armenian authorities have arrested multiple senior Church leaders: Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan (arrested June 25) on charges of plotting a coup, along with 17 parishioners Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan (arrested June 28, convicted October 3) sentenced to two years in prison for analytical comments made over a year earlier Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan (arrested October 15), nephew of the Catholicos, along with 12 other clergy on charges of coercing participation in public gatherings When security forces attempted to arrest Archbishop Mikael at the sacred grounds of Holy Etchmiadzin on June 27, hundreds of priests and parishioners formed a human shield to protect him, forcing armed units to retreat. The next day, the archbishop voluntarily surrendered to spare his flock from violence.

Why this is happening?

The Church’s offense is clear: it dared to criticize Pashinyan’s catastrophic failures in defending Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2020 and 2023, Azerbaijan launched military operations that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 Armenian Christians and the ongoing destruction of their ancient churches and monasteries. The Armenian Apostolic Church, fulfilling its constitutional duty to preserve Armenian culture and identity, has defended the rights of displaced Armenians and condemned the erasure of their heritage.

Pashinyan, whose approval rating stands at just 13%, cannot tolerate this legitimate criticism. Rather than accept accountability, he has launched a campaign to silence the most trusted voice in Armenian society. His “Real Armenia” project seeks to rewrite history and national identity to absolve himself of responsibility for losing Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The Armenian Prime Minister is one of the great promoters of the dismissal of the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, contradicting the elementary norms of both the Church and the traditional civic concord of the Armenian people which, in the case of the former, prevents the state from dismissing the Head of the Church and selecting and defining his replacement.  while, in the second dimension, the Armenian people historically accepted that it is the same ecclesial structure that designates its Head without the interference of secular or state powers.

The systemic pressure suffered by the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II and his loyal clergy includes being constantly followed by security agencies and even imprisonment without justifications that are really valid from the point of view of legality, according to the Christian community.

In this regard, political scientist Suren Surenyants recently stressed that Pashinyan’s conduct towards the Armenian Apostolic Church constitutes “a direct interference in the autonomy of the Church and openly contradicts the Constitution, according to which the Church is separate from the State and is independent in matters of internal government.”  Surenyants equates the practice of the Yerevan authorities “with repressive interventions of the Soviet era,  when the State tried to control and subjugate the spiritual life.”

Samvel Lulukyan, a member of the leadership of the Central Council of Armenians in Germany, also shares the position that Pashinyan’s agenda against the Armenian Apostolic Church is unconstitutional.

As documented by Armenians opposed to the national government, Yerevan’s ruling elite promotes a parallel clergy in its attempt to break ecclesial unity and force the resignation of the Spiritual Leader.

As part of this plan, in the last few hours, ten bishops made public a letter calling for the resignation of Catholicos Karekin II in an internal environment where there were chants of the faithful of the Church accusing  the bishops of “Judas”, and demonstrating their support for Catholicos Karekin II.

Previously, the political forces aligned with the government brought people to demonstrate against the leadership of the Patriarch in the Mother See of the Holy Echmiadzin, producing incidents, among the results of which a priest loyal to Karekin II, Father Vrtanes Baghalyan, suffered an acute myocardial infarction and his life was saved thanks to the effectiveness of the medical emergency that treated him.

In these events, there were demonstrators who are employees of Pashinyan’s government structure and who were brought to the protest with threats of losing their jobs if they did not attend the protest against the spiritual leader.

It is obvious that between the authorities of state power and spiritual power there is no gap, but there is a full-fledged war where the factions that control state institutions want to subordinate a Church that, for centuries, was the great authority respected and venerated by the Armenian people.

On the whole situation, Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan was not afraid to express his opinion saying that “Several centers of power have told me, for a long time, that they want to turn Armenia into a territory where state borders will not matter, where LGBT people will be raised, a territory that will be a transit point for drugs and money laundering,  if they do not eliminate this government” and added that Pashinyan probably wants to become monarch by controlling the state and the church.

“Pashinyan wants to show the world that he does not fight against the Church, but we all know that he arrests priests and fights against the independence of the Armenian Church,”said Narek Karapetyan, leader of the “On Our Path” movement.

All groups that are loyal to the spiritual leader, along with other opposition political forces, are unanimous in declaring that the Armenian Apostolic Church is the last custodial fortress of Armenian historical identity.