Today Levon Filyan, the CEO of the Armenian Evangelical Association, stated that the Armenian Evangelical Association aimed at being useful to all Armenians, “We have schools, universities, nursing homes, kindergartens in 24 countries around the world. We use 50% of our budget, every element for the work that is done in Armenia. A big school equipped with the latest technology is being built at the moment.”
Reverend Mkrtich Melkonyan, the newly-appointed chief pastor of the Evangelical Church of Armenia, said that they differed from the Armenian Apostolic Church in rites, “However, learning the Gospel underlies it, therefore, we are not considered a sect, we accept the Armenian Apostolic Church as the mother church. We are not engaged in a hunt for souls, because our aim is to serve the people.” Levon Filyan added that the Evangelical Church cooperated with the Armenian Apostolic Church. In response to a journalist’s question who financed the Evangelical Church of Armenia, the newly-appointed pastor said, “The people.” www.aravot.am connected with Alexander Amaryan, the head of the Center for Help and Rehabilitation to Victims of Destructive Cults, who said in response to the above-mentioned question, “The Evangelical Church is financed mainly by people from the US. As for the people, members of the organization pay 10 percent of their salaries every month. The Evangelical Church carries out sect-like activities, engaging in a hunt for souls.”
We talked also with Father Shmavon Ghevondyan, a priest of the St. Hovhannes Church, who said, “The Armenian Apostolic Church doesn’t consider the Evangelical Church a sect, since the latter also has a contribution to our people’s history. However, the Armenian Evangelical Church often operates like a sect and is not recognized by the Armenian Apostolic Church as a sister church. They say so based on the words of late Garegin the First that the Evangelical Church is our sister church. However, it was a statement of a person, not the official position of the church.” The clergyman added that the Apostolic Church didn’t cooperate with the Evangelical Church in any project.
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Father Shmavon also stated that there had always been cases of a hunt for souls organized by the Evangelists, “A few years ago, they handed out gift boxes, in which there was their literature, which is forbidden. The teachers told children to necessarily pass the booklets to their mothers.”
Louise SUKIASYAN
