By Aram Hamparian, the Executive Director of the ANCA

Even as Pashinyan relentlessly persecutes the Armenian Apostolic Church – mocking our faith, demeaning our faithful – he continues cynically marching out clerical leaders as stage props for his carefully choreographed photo ops, self-promotion, and social media posts.

Every new arrest of a spiritual leader – each new seizure of ecclesiastical property – has been matched by yet another shameless attempt to show that he is somehow acting with the blessing of the Church. A government that jails bishops by night and poses beside them by day calls to mind exactly what Christ warned against: whited sepulchres, beautiful without, while full of corruption within. (Matthew 23:27)

Pashinyan’s attempts to enlist Armenian Church leaders in his debasement of our ancient faith must be met with strength and solidarity – clergy united with laity in defense of our sacred legacy of Apostolic succession – standing together for the spiritual sovereignty of the Church of the world’s first Christian nation.

Just as Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount: “No man can serve two masters. . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon” – so too Armenian spiritual leaders cannot serve both Christ and Armenia’s increasingly anti-Church authorities. They must answer to their higher calling.

Drawing upon the strength of our fathers – from Gregory the Illuminator and Mesrob Mashtots to Khrimian Hyrig and Gomidas – each of our faithful, from archbishops to altar boys, must rise together, as one, as every generation before us has done when our faith was under siege. We have seen models of this courage, even today, in the resilience of Church leaders persecuted, prosecuted, and imprisoned by Pashinyan. These brave souls have willingly sacrificed for their fidelity to Christ – at the cost of their own freedom.

As Paul warned the Galatians: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)

Today – in practice – that means not serving as props in Pashinyan’s staged productions. Never posing for photo ops that cynically seek to normalize the desecration of all we hold holy.

No innocent meet-and-greets. No friendly grip-and-grins. No smiling social media posts. All aimed at dividing, at demeaning, at destroying. At mocking the very faith that has sustained us through the millennia.

We need not render unto Caesar that which is God’s (Matthew 22:21) – need never subordinate the spiritual to the profane. We must never sacrifice what is God’s at the altar of Caesar.

For the Armenian faithful, this must be a bright red line. A clear moral boundary. One we will not cross.

For, after all: If we do not respect ourselves – our Church, our sacred faith – who will respect us?