Al Jazeera America
July 5 2014
The rise of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Caucasus
Armenia and Georgia were the first to adopt Christianity as their
state religion; now, American evangelical sects beckon
July 5, 2014 5:00AM ET
by Tara Isabella Burton
In the Armenian town of Artashat, a grid of Soviet concrete and
corrugated tin roofs an hour from the capital city of Yerevan, few
buildings stand out like the meeting hall of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Unlike the crumbling towers that
surround it, this building sports an impeccably white façade. On one
Sunday in May, more than a hundred Armenians — most in their 40s and
50s — are sharing what Mormons call spiritual “testimony,” their words
translated via earpiece to attending American missionaries.
Here in the Caucasus region, ethnicity and faith are often treated as
one. Christians in Armenia and Georgia — which in the fourth century
became the first two countries worldwide to adopt Christianity as
their state religion — almost uniformly belong to the Armenian
Apostolic and Georgian Orthodox Churches, respectively (93 percent in
Armenia, 83 percent in Georgia).
But a near-century of Soviet-imposed secularism dramatically weakened
the standing of state churches. Now, many ethnic Armenians and
Georgians are gravitating toward American evangelical sects with an
emphasis on attracting converts and a strong missionary presence in
the region, such as LDS and Jehovah’s Witnesses. In Armenia, the
number of Jehovah’s Witnesses here hovers around 11,000; LDS claims
more than 3,000 members (also known as Mormons). These may be small
numbers, but they are significant in this country of 3 million, where
practitioners of other faiths tend to be members of minority
ethno-religious groups, such as Jews or Muslim Kurds.
Both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons identify as Christians, although
their non-Trinitarian doctrine — both deny that Jesus Christ shares a
single fundamental divine essence with God the Father and the Holy
Spirit — has often brought them into conflict with mainline Christian
tradition.
“Ask any Armenian on the street and they’ll say, ‘Yes, I believe in
God. I believe in Jesus,’ ” says Varuzhan Pogosyan, president of the
LDS Mission in Armenia. “But they don’t always practice.”
Pogosyan’s journey started shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Then an expatriate in Russia, he attended a local Armenian church,
both for spiritual reasons and for the opportunity to socialize with
other ethnic Armenians. But an encounter with a Mormon missionary made
him realize he could do more than just attend services. “I could
participate,” he says. “I could be involved in the life of the
church.” In the absence of formal clergy, the LDS church offers
ordinary members a greater role in church affairs, Pogosyan explains.
It is this sense of involvement that inspired his colleague, Margarit
Ayvazyan, to convert. Like Pogosyan, Ayvazyan grew up nonreligious
during Soviet rule, adopting atheism as a philosophically inclined
teenager. Yet her encounters with LDS missionaries in the early 90’s
left her with a sense of spiritual fulfillment she had not found in
her parents’ Armenian Apostolic services. In a traditional Armenian
service, she says, “You just stand there and the priests pray.” Many
Armenians cannot even understand the classical Armenian used in
services. In LDS, where congregants are encouraged to share their
experiences and participate in Bible-study classes, she has a role to
play. Even those church members who do not become missionaries are
encouraged to circulate information among family and friends, recruit
curious “investigators” to visit services and keep track of lapsed
members. Pogosyan says most converts here grew up like Ayvazyan:
secular under the Soviet regime, but now seeking something more.
In some ways, he says, their history makes his mission easier, as
“Armenians have always been religious.” Soviet-era secularism was a
temporary aberration, and organizations such as LDS are ideally
situated to reach those whose religious needs have not been met
elsewhere or who feel that the Armenian Apostolic Church has failed
them. After all, in all the years since he left the Church, he’s never
once been contacted by any priests trying to win him back or find out
why he left: a striking contrast with the LDS church, whose members
actively identify and reach out to those whose attendance has lapsed.
Of course, there are challenges. Smoking, drinking and abortion were
all permissible under the Soviet regime, Pogosyan says, and
encouraging new converts to maintain what he calls a “healthier” way
of life is a struggle. The American missionaries at Artashat tell
stories of priests who attacked their brethren in neighboring towns,
boys who throw rocks at them as they walk down Yerevan streets (“I
think [the boys] thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” one laughs.
“They can’t tell the difference”).
But the biggest challenge for those seeking to convert others may be
reconciling converts’ faith with their ethnic identity. Many of
Pogosyan’s countrymen see those who leave the Apostolic Church as less
Armenian. He takes pains to emphasize the long-standing relationship
between Armenia and the LDS church, which first took hold in the
Armenian diaspora in 19th-century Constantinople, as well as the
increasing number of foreign missionaries of Armenian descent who have
come to their ancestral homeland to serve. He is also careful to
stress the cultural similarities between Armenia and the LDS church.
“We’re very big on family values in Armenia,” he says, making the LDS
church here a perfect fit. Ultimately, his faith has made him more
Armenian, not less. It has strengthened his relationship with his
family, his local community. “It has made me a better citizen.”
An LDS place of worship, also known as a ward, in Artashat. LDS Armenia
Minority evangelical Christian sects face similar challenges in
Armenia’s northern neighbor, Georgia, where religion and nationalism
are even more closely intertwined. Between 1999 and 2003, Jehovah’s
Witnesses lodged almost 800 complaints of religiously-motivated
incidents of conflict, many violent, says Manuchar Tsimintia, a lawyer
and practicing Jehovah’s Witness who frequently defends the church in
human rights cases. Following Georgia’s bloodless Rose Revolution in
2008 and the subsequent installation of Western-leaning Mikhail
Saakashvili as president, things drastically improved, but tensions
remain. This situation isn’t ameliorated by the fiercely Orthodox,
nationalist stance of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, which has
succeeded Saakashvili’s United National Movement. In early May, a
group of teenagers destroyed a cart of pamphlets Jehovah’s Witnesses
were using to proselytize in Tbilisi’s city center, although,
Tsimintia is pleased to report, the police charged and fined the
culprits responsible.
Still, he estimates that there are about 20,000 baptized converts;
another 20,000 or so attend meetings and worship: such figures, if
accurate, would comprise nearly 1 percent of Georgia’s population.
Like the Mormons in Armenia, adherents say they converted because of
disillusionment with Soviet-style anti-clericalism and existing
ecclesiastical institutions and a desire to participate more fully in
the activities of their church.
“It was the end of the communist regime,” Tsimintia says of his
joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “All people were seeking God.” But
Tsimintia, then enrolled in college, felt dissatisfied by the Georgian
Orthodox Church, which stirred him emotionally, but could not provide
him with the answers he sought. “Who is God? Who are we? Where do we
come from?” It was through independent Bible study, Tsimintia says,
that he came to the conclusion the Jehovah’s Witnesses had access to
spiritual truth.
Increasingly, he says, those who came of age after the collapse of the
Soviet Union are also finding themselves disillusioned with what they
see as hypocrisy and corruption within the current hierarchy of the
Georgian Orthodox Church, whose vast wealth and close financial
relationship with the country’s ruling classes have often attracted
scrutiny. In 2009, for example, each of Georgia’s 10 archbishops
received a luxury SUV from the Georgian government. And the
disenchantment has only grown more common in recent years as the
church has attempted to wield greater political influence through its
alliance with the Georgian Dream party ruling coalition. Many youths
are also critical of the church’s tacit approval of violence; in May
2013, local Tbilisi priests, leading a mob of 20,000, attacked a small
group of unarmed anti-homophobia protesters, injuring at least 12.
“They are not living according to Bible standards,” Tsimintia says.
“[That is what] young people see.”
His colleague Tamaz Khutsishvili recalls a friend who sought spiritual
guidance from an Orthodox priest, only to have the priest turn up at
his home “so drunk he could not stand up.” One potential convert
became disillusioned with his own church after a local priest with
whom he had entrusted some money for temporary safekeeping informed
him he had spent the funds on the construction of a new church. And
both Khutsishvili and Tsimintia condemn the Orthodox church-sanctioned
anti-gay violence last year as an example of church hypocrisy. The
Bible, they say, condemns aggression. “Even if [people] are doing
something we see as against the Bible,” Khutsishvili says, “we must
never talk of violence.”
Yet here, too, converts struggle with reconciling their cultural and
religious identities. “You are not Christian. You are not Orthodox.
You are not Georgian. I must have heard that 10 times a day,” says
Tsimintia.
Still, as with the Mormons in Armenia, Tsimintia and Khutsishvili
choose to appeal to history to defend the essential Georgianness of
their choice. “Once our ancestors were pagans,” Khutsishvili says.
“Then they found the truth and became Orthodox. Now we’re finding
truth again — and converting. We are following our ancestors.”
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