11 November 2025
@BrexitStewart
The gate of Saint Gregory, the main entrance to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the governing body of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Photo: Getty Images.
The gate of Saint Gregory, the main entrance to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the governing body of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Photo: Getty Images.
The decline of Christianity is nothing new. Some 150 years ago, Matthew Arnold, in his poem ‘Dover Beach’, mourned the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the ‘Sea of Faith’. And that was in the high noon of Victorian England.
Today, he would have far more to be concerned about. The last 20 years have witnessed an exodus of Christians from many parts of the world, especially the Middle East.
King Charles – still Prince back then – was among the first to highlight the persecution suffered by Christians from Islamist extremists more than a decade ago in the wake of the Arab Spring.
But it took our former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt to codify it. A report he commissioned by the bishop of Truro, Philip Mounstephen, found that the persecution of Christians in some parts of the world amounted to ‘genocide’ and that 80% of persecuted religious believers were Christians. Their numbers in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia had fallen from a historic level of 20% of the population to 4% in recent years.
Now, even avowedly Christian countries on the margins of the Middle East are coming under pressure. Palestine, for many years the scene of bitter conflict between Arabs and Jews, is the birthplace of Christianity. But it is not its homeland. That accolade belongs to Armenia, the first Christian country which dates its adoption of the faith to 301 AD. But even Armenia, just 3 million people, sandwiched between Muslim neighbours in Turkey and Azerbaijan, finds its spiritual life under threat.
A war of words – and worse – has broken out between its Prime Minister, the supposedly pro-Western Nikol Pashinyan, and the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church (AAHC).
One archbishop is serving two years in prison. Many other bishops and parishioners have been arrested. Pashinyan, deploying the most lurid language publicly, is seeking to overthrow the leader of the AAHC, Catholicos Karekin II:
Bishop, go back to doing what you were doing with your uncle’s wife. What’s your problem with me?
This outburst typifies Pashinyan’s towards the Church. The AAHC is Armenia’s national church, and it has been in continuous existence for over 1700 years. Over 90% of the country’s population belongs to the Church. Significantly, the AAHC has a constitutionally mandated ‘exclusive mission […] in the spiritual life of the Armenian people, in the development of their national culture and preservation of their national identity’.
The Church has fulfilled this exclusive mission by vigorously defending the rights of Armenians forced out of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the preservation of their religious and cultural heritage. This has put the AAHC on a collision course with the Prime Minister, who has been widely criticised at home and abroad for his role in failing to defend the embattled region.
Caught up in this campaign of persecution is Samvel Karapetyan, a prominent Armenian businessman, and member of the AAHC. Karapetyan has made many philanthropic contributions to the Church and the preservation of holy sites throughout Armenia. Pashinyan has overseen the arrest and detention of this popular business and family man – and the seizure of his assets – all for making a brief public statement in defence of his Church.
Western Christianity can ill afford to lose Armenia or see its venerable Church, which survived some 70 years of Communist oppression, become a puppet of an increasingly erratic and vengeful Prime Minister, fearful of losing an election scheduled for next summer.
Sadly, Jeremy Hunt is no longer at the Foreign Office, and no longer able to use British influence to deflect the threat to religious freedom in Armenia. One can only hope that his Labour successor Yvette Cooper comes to appreciate the perils facing the Christian homeland.
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough is Vice Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Columns are the author’s own opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of CapX.
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