His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, visited the Southland for two days this week as part of a major trip to the U.S. Karekin II is the “pope” over 10 million Armenian Christians in the world.

I wasn’t invited to either of the two big events, in Pasadena and Burbank, but I would have loved to be there. Karekin consecrated the marble altar at St. Gregory the Illuminator in Pasadena, a brand-new $5 million church complete with limestone walls and historic dome, in the presence of 1,000 worshipers.

Today he presided at the ground-breaking for a $12 million cathedral being built on Glenoaks in Burbank for the [1] Western Diocese.

Twelve million dollars gets our attention. Not since the Roman Catholic Cathedral downtown has any church been so ambitious around here. Big churches have been closing their doors for lack of younger members. The fact that the Armenians are building a Cathedral for their western province signals their important presence in our community.

For those of us who don’t follow such stuff closely, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which dates back to the year a.d. 301 (!) predates many of the historical developments for which we use the word “Orthodox”.

The Armenian Church even pre-dates a written Armenian alphabet, which was developed to transcribe an oral language already infused with Christian thought. The first significant use of the written alphabet was to put the Scriptures into written Armenian in a.d. 433.

The Armenian church is called “monophysite” to distinguish it from other Christian churches in regard to another arcane and ancient dispute: whether Jesus had one or two natures, and whether or not his divine nature totally subsumes his human nature. Following from that is whether the Virgin Mary was, therefore, the Mother of Christ (Christotokos), or the Mother of God (Theotokos). The council of Chalecdon fought this out in a.d. 451. The Armenian church, along with numerous other national expressions of the Christian faith, never accepted its decisions.

Those ancient disputes were briefly interesting when I was in seminary. Now they just illustrate how old disagreements lose their meaning and become irrelevant. But sadly, they perpetuate a public stereotype that Christians can’t get along. We have enough contemporary evidence of that, without nursing ancient distinctions which few people understand any more.

[Among the many things over which Catholics and Lutherans split hairs in the 16^th century, for example, was “transubstantiation,” an explanation of how bread and wine become or convey (carry) the body and blood of Christ. The categories of reason used 500 years ago are no longer used—by anybody—because they were based on Aristotle’s view of physics, which is completely irrelevant.]

The Monophysite controversy (explained [2] here and [3] here), may be another ancient “ankle chain” holding back the witness of all Christians to a world which is suffering, lost and mired in violence, and threatening the very survival of the Christian faith.

Archbishop Aram Keshishian, the 45^th Catholicos of the Holy See of Cicilia, [4] speaking about the survival of the church, has said:

By survival I do not mean a mere continuity, a barren existence, an inward- looking estate, but a dynamic and creative existence for an effective witness. We are not concerned with our physical survival as such. Nor are we anxious only for the sheer perpetuation of the institutions that we have inherited. We are deeply concerned with the very survival of Christian faith that was transmitted to us as a sacred heritage, as the raison d’etre of our existence.   The secret of survival lies in renewal.

We may chuckle at the variety of quaint or strange cultural customs which have taken root in Christianity in these two millennia—like devotion to St. Mary, the kissing of rings and crosses, marble altars, elaborate and expensive vestments, swinging smoke in little brass pots until nobody in the room can breathe—it must all seem irrelevant in our culture.

But of course, to say that means that our culture affects Christian proclamation because the Church is always defending itself within its context. Our culture (U.S.A., 2007) seems to belittle anything which is not material, hip or cool, contemporary, momentary and sensual. Alas, this is why researchers like [5] The Barna Group believe that Christianity will just disappear in a few years if it doesn’t adapt to American ways.

Personally, I am more inclined to think that American culture will disappear first, since it is based on a foundation which is unsustainable: privilege, national hubris, materialism and ill-gotten wealth, conspicuous consumerism, cheap labor from abroad, waste, violence, instant gratification. Do we really expect Christian faith to conform to those measures of human experience?

I would rather be numbered among “the irrelevant” that trace their spiritual roots back two thousand years, and continue using quaint, ancient customs.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles