MEDIA RELEASE
“The use of the coercive powers of the state to interfere in the internal affairs of churches and other faith communities is abhorrent to the American tradition of religious freedom,” Dr. John Eibner, the president of Christian Solidarity International (CSI), told a well-attended briefing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
“CSI asks the Trump administration to show strength and conviction by defending the Armenian Apostolic Church against this persecution,” Eibner said.
The briefing, which was held in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC, featured presentations from Eibner, Ambassador Alberto Fernandez of MEMRI, and Jan Figel, the former EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief. A livestream of the event is available online.
Since May 2025, the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has been demanding the removal of the head of the worldwide Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II. Over the past nine months, Eibner noted, “more than a dozen prominent clerics…have been placed behind bars, consigned to house arrest, or indicted on a slew of unsubstantiated charges including terrorism, coup plotting, obstructing justice and planting drugs.”
According to Eibner, the persecution of the Armenian church is part of a bigger project to weaken Armenia’s Christian identity and subject it to the hegemony of its powerful Muslim neighbors, Turkey and Azerbaijan – the latter laying claim to Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan.”
If this project continues unchecked, Eibner said, “It is not only conceivable but is very likely that within a generation Armenian Christians will be a minority in Armenia, without political agency, living mainly in a diminishing Armenian quarter in Yerevan, much like one finds today in Aleppo or in Jerusalem.”
Eibner told the briefing attendees that he had been able to visit Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan in prison in Yerevan in early February, thanks to “the great team of dedicated pro bono lawyers at the Armenian Center for Political Rights.”
Eibner said that he was able to bring a letter from the imprisoned archbishop to Vice President JD Vance, ahead of Vance’s visit to Armenia in February.
Unfortunately, Eibner said, Vance used his visit to endorse Pashinyan’s re-election campaign. Within days, Armenian authorities brought criminal charges against the Catholicos himself.
“Wittingly or unwittingly,” Eibner said, “Vance’s visit has effectively given the greenlight for the continuation of the persecution of the Armenian Apostolic Church.”
Ambassador Fernandez likened the Armenian government’s attack on the Armenian Apostolic Church to a (possibly apocryphal) statement from a U.S. commander during the Vietnam War: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Fernandez, who had a long career in the U.S. diplomatic corps and currently serves as the vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, pointed out that Prime Minister Pashinyan’s attempt to seize control of the church resembles how authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan deal with religious institutions.
Although Pashinyan is eager to portray his government as pro-Western, “they can’t have it both ways,” Fernandez said. “They want to be part of the liberal West, and imitate the religious standards of the Erdogan regime and Assad.”
“States that use the coercive power of government to bend one outside organization to their will, inevitably will also use the same coercive power against others,” Fernadez warned. “I don’t know any situation where a regime that persecutes religious bodies is open and accepting of criticism. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech and conscience go together.”
Figel, who hails from Slovakia, told the audience that he lived “half of his life under communism.” “What we see today in Armenia against the Armenian Apostolic Church is exactly what we saw in Czechoslovak communist oppression against free people and free churches,” he said, drawing a number of parallels between the tactics used in both cases.
“Armenia is the world’s oldest Christian nation,” Figel reminded his audience. “The role of the Armenian Apostolic Church was crucial for the survival of this nation. If they lose it, they will lose everything.”
But Figel recalled that in communist Czechoslovakia, “The victory belonged to faithful leaders and the faithful church.”
“The church, Christianity, and faith represented the most decisive opposition to the regime,” Figel said. “It takes time, but it will win.”
The full text of Dr. Eibner’s presentation follows:
Persecution is Not Peace: US Policy and the War Against the Armenian Apostolic Church
John Eibner
President, Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
Protecting Armenia’s Sovereignty, Identity, and Heritage
2075 Rayburn HOB
February 26, 2026
I was in Yerevan with my CSI colleague Dr. Joel Veldkamp earlier this month. It was just a few days before the visit of Vice President Vance to Armenia and Azerbaijan. At the top of our agenda was a visit to Yerevan’s high security “Kentron Prison.” Why a prison visit?
Here’s the back story: We had been in Yerevan last November for what was billed as the “inaugural Republic of Armenia Prayer Breakfast,” with the “support and participation of the Hon. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.” The Prime Minister was indeed the star of the show and thrilled a good many of the Christian foreign visitors who marveled at his recitation of Bible verses.
We had hoped at that time to visit one of the incarcerated Armenian Apostolic hierarchs, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan. The Bible-citing Prime Minister had him arrested and imprisoned last June on trumped up charges of “terrorism” and “conspiracy to overthrow the government.” But we were not then able to get the necessary permission.
However, three months later the necessary arrangements had been made by the great team of dedicated pro bono lawyers at the Armenian Center for Political Rights. They had already documented the prosecution’s falsification of evidence. So, off we went again to Yerevan.
In a small, plain prison meeting room, the grey-bearded, lively-eyed and cassocked Archbishop cut a larger-than-life figure.
He assured us it was a great privilege to be incarcerated because of his efforts to be faithful to Christ, to his Church and to his nation, especially at a time when his Christian nation and its civilization face an existential threat.
Archbishop Bagrat believes it providential that he should now be an inmate in Kentron Prison, where the Armenian KGB executed his episcopal namesake and role model during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937. That was Archbishop Bagrat Vardazarian. This martyr of the Church had also been falsely charged with plotting to overthrow the government.
Only two years before our prison visit, the charismatic Archbishop Bagrat was leading tens of thousands on a 90-mile peaceful march from his see in Tavush to the Armenian capital. It was his Palm Sunday moment. He became the focal point for the so-called “Holy Struggle” movement which challenges what Prime Minister Pashinyan calls today his “Ideology of the Real Armenia.”
Pashinyan’s new ideology calls for radical policies that weaken the fabric of the historic Armenian nation: 1) acceptance of Azerbaijan’s ethno-religious cleansing of Armenian Christians from Nagorno Karabakh and the political and legal closure of all issues related to this mass atrocity crime; 2) the arbitrary handing over of Armenian borderland territory to Azerbaijan; 3) alteration of the Armenian Constitution in accordance with the Real Armenia ideology; 4) the winding down of the Armenian government’s support for international recognition of the Armenian Genocide; and 5) seizing control of the Armenian Apostolic Church and transforming it into a servant of the state.
Archbishop Bagrat has long seen the “Ideology of Real Armenia” as nothing more than appeasement in the hope of satisfying Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s harsh conditions for accepting Pashinyan’s submission to their authority.
Azerbaijan, backed by Islamist Turkey and Syrian jihadists, defeated Armenia in the 2020 War for Nagorno Karabakh. Three years later came the unchallenged ethno-religious cleansing of Armenian Christians from Nagorno Karabakh.
Now, this constellation of Islamic powers, which has recently been joined by Pakistan, has its sights set on the destruction of the Republic of Armenia itself. That is to say, as a secure homeland for victims and the descendants of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and subsequent anti-Armenian Christian mass atrocity crimes.
Azerbaijan’s dictator, Ilham Aliyev has been most clear in public about the end game. He has openly and repeatedly called Armenia “Western Azerbaijan.” He has furthermore boasted that this territory will be “reclaimed” by Azerbaijan and resettled by Azeri-Turkish Muslims, preferably by peaceful means, but by war if necessary.
Should the “Real Armenia” project continue unchecked, it is not only conceivable but is very likely that within a generation Armenian Christians will be a minority in Armenia, without political agency, living mainly in a diminishing Armenian quarter in Yerevan, much like one finds today in Aleppo or in Jerusalem.
Pashinyan’s “Real Armenia,” that is to say, Aliyev’s “Western Azerbaijan,” is the Turkish-Azerbaijani solution for the historic “Armenian Question” that the Great Armenian Genocide of 1915 failed to settle.
In this struggle, the fewer than three million Armenian Christians are faced by a “one nation, two state” Turkish-Azerbaijani condominium with a total population of nearly 100 million. Turkey’s colony, the jihadist-led Syria, and Pakistan are now also in the mix, adding their weight to Turkey and Azerbaijan’s.
Pashinyan’s greatest challenge in coming to terms with Turkey and Azerbaijan lies in seizing control of the Armenian Apostolic Church. It’s difficult for most Americans to begin to appreciate the crucial role played by the Armenian Apostolic Church in the survival of the Christian Armenian nation.
This Church has served for centuries as the most solid institutional bastion of Armenian nationhood and of Christian witness among Armenians. It is designed to exclude external interference in its internal affairs. As such it has withstood centuries of severe persecution by the Ottoman Caliphate, including the Great Armenian Genocide, which was conducted in the context of an openly declared “jihad” which extended into the Caucasus.
Armenia’s national church also survived the violent efforts of the atheistic communist Soviet authorities to eradicate it. It has also survived the ethno-religious cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh, maintaining in exile, the region’s persecuted Archdiocese.
Because of the spiritual and institutional strength of the Armenian Apostolic Church, it has not been enough for Pashinyan to imprison only Archbishop Bagrat. He was just the first of more than a dozen prominent clerics who have been placed behind bars, consigned to house arrest, or indicted on a slew of unsubstantiated charges including terrorism, coup plotting, obstructing justice and planting drugs.
Pashinyan has also imprisoned the wealthiest lay patron of the Church, Samvel Karapetyan, and has had his businesses nationalized after the fashion of the Soviets.
Among those now indicted for obstructing justice is the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II. Pashinyan’s success depends on achieving the overthrow of the Catholicos. This is crucial for the Prime Minister’s political survival.
It should not be overlooked that the persecuted Armenian Apostolic Church is also an American church, with two Archdioceses and over half a million adherents in the United States. The Catholicos is the legitimate spiritual leader of these Armenian American Christians too.
Azerbaijan and Turkey have identified the Catholicos and the Church he leads as “an obstacle to peace.” Pashinyan has therefore publicly declared his ouster as an unconditional goal. In doing so, he accuses the Catholicos of being a “national security threat,” of reporting daily to a foreign agent, and so on.
Pashinyan has gone a step further by donning garb that appears to be a counterfeit cassock and placing himself at the head of an uncanonical committee to direct a “reform” of the church.
The Bolsheviks did something of the sort in the 1920s. They then raised up, financed and otherwise promoted an uncanonical, so-called, “Free Church” movement, to challenge the authority of the Catholicos and other legitimate church leaders.
That effort failed to produce the promised reform and spiritual revival. It was instead a prelude to the violent purge that produced the execution of not only Archbishop Bagrat’s namesake, but also the murder of the Catholicos Khoren I one year later.
It must be noted here that the bloody religious persecution of the communist era was often committed by Armenians who served the interests of Moscow. Today, as Armenia is moving out of the Russian sphere of influence into that of the Turkish-Azerbaijani condominium, there are likewise Armenians who will gravitate towards political power and serve the anti-Armenian and anti-Christian interests of Ankara and Baku.
Before saying farewell to us, Archbishop Bagrat asked us to deliver a letter to Vice President Vance. He found some common ground with the vice president, whose professed Catholicism is widely known. The archbishop wrote:
“You, Mr. Vice President, have rightly warned that the EU has been committing civilizational suicide by giving up Europe’s Christian identity and opening its borders to those who do not share the values rooted in Europe’s Judeo-Christian tradition.” But he also wanted the Vice President to know: “This is precisely what the Armenian Prime Minister is engineering in Armenia.”
The archbishop might have added Vance’s criticism of Europe for restricting free speech and other forms of democratic backsliding.
Archbishop Bagrat found further common ground with Vance. He wished the Vice President well as he works to facilitate peace between Armenia, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan and Turkey on the other, and to create conditions for the fulfilment of the administration’s principal strategic goal in the Caucasus: the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
“But such a peace,” the archbishop warned, “must not be based on the demise of the Armenian national state.”
The Archbishop, proposed that a genuine and lasting peace could be achieved if the Trump administration were to secure the following: 1) the release of the Armenian Christian prisoners held in Baku, as already called for by President Trump; 2) the release of the church-related prisoners held in Yerevan; and 3) guarantees for the safe return, with fundamental human rights intact, of the 150,000 Armenian Christians who were forced out of their homes in Nagorno Karabakh.
Unfortunately, while in Yerevan and Baku, the Vice President failed to acknowledge Archbishop Bagrat’s concerns about Armenia’s civilizational suicide. Nor did he address publicly or secure any of the conditions the archbishop identified as essential for sustainable peace.
What the Vice President did, however, was endorse the reelection bid of the persecutor of the Armenian Apostolic Church and delete a Tweet referencing the Armenian Genocide in deference to the genocide-denying Turkish-Azerbaijani condominium.
It would seem this power is able to censor the Vice President of the United States.
Within days of the Vice President’s visit, the Armenian Prime Minister escalated his war against the Armenian Apostolic Church by having criminal charges pressed against the Catholicos and placing a travel ban on him and six other bishops to prevent them from attending an assembly of bishops in Austria.
Wittingly or unwittingly, Vance’s visit has effectively given the greenlight for the continuation of the persecution of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
When one hears the US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, promoting – without correction from the White House – the doctrine that “peace is submission,” submission of the weak to the strong, and that the Middle Eastern states formed in the aftermath of World War I, like Armenia and Israel, are no more than tribes with flags, with artificial borders, and were never meant to be nation-states, it’s reasonable to question the administration’s commitment to Armenian national statehood.
An administration that markets itself as the “most Christian” administration in American history and as an unprecedented “protector of persecuted Christians” must help defend religious liberty and those struggling to uphold civilization based on the Judeo-Christian tradition.
This is the expectation of most Americans. The use of the coercive powers of the state to interfere in the internal affairs of churches and other faith communities is abhorrent to the American tradition of religious freedom. American Christians would not accept such interference in their own churches.
Today, CSI asks the Trump administration to show strength and conviction by defending the Armenian Apostolic Church against this persecution and thereby guarantee the survival of the Christian civilization of what is the world’s first Christian nation.
As the world shows respect for President Trump’s strength of leadership, the question arises: Why not Turkey’s Islamist Erdogan and Azerbaijan’s potentate Aliyev?
CSI believes strong American leadership can be a catalyst for peace in the Caucasus without sacrificing the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian nation which is grounded in it.
We hope and pray the Trump administration will meet this challenge head on, as it is mindful of the apposite words of the Prophet Jeremiah: “They have treated lightly the injury to my people: Peace, peace! They say, though there is no peace”. (Jeremiah 6:14)
