History & overview · every faith gets one
The first nation baptised, and the church that outlived the nation's states.
The church of Armenia, which dates its conversion to 301 and to Gregory the Illuminator, prays the Badarak in Classical Armenian with unleavened bread and unmixed wine, and carries 1915 inside its calendar of saints. Two catholicoi — Etchmiadzin and Cilicia — one communion, and a diaspora larger than the homeland.
The founding
Gregory, imprisoned for years in a pit at Khor Virap, healed and converted King Trdat III, and Armenia declared itself Christian — traditionally in 301, which some historians place nearer 314. In 405 Mesrop Mashtots invented an alphabet so the Bible could be read in Armenian, and the church has treated language and faith as one thing ever since.
Its founding is bound to Gregory the Illuminator — 301 CE.
What it holds
Reality. Made by God and marked by loss; the Armenian church reads history itself as the place faith is tested..
The divine. One God in three persons; Christ in one united nature, divine and human. The church rejects Chalcedon's formula and the label monophysite along with it..
Death and after. Resurrection and judgment; the dead are remembered on Merelots, the day after each of the five great feasts..