I must frankly confess that when I first went to Turkey I
was somewhat prejudiced against the missionaries there and
missionary work, to this extent: As what, I suppose, you
might call a high Anglican, I looked with a certain esteem
and regard upon the old churches of the East and it seemed
to me theoretically that the proper method of missionary
enterprise was to try to cooperate with those churches,
helping them to educate and evangelize themselves.
As a result of contact first with the Congregational
missionaries of the A. B. C. F. M., this prejudice very
speedily vanished. I found those men not only most earnest
and devout Christians, but, so to speak, thoroughly
Catholic and non-partisan, and I found that they had
profoundly influenced for good the ancient Christian
churches where they had come in contact with them and, in
fact, regenerated (I think the term is not too strong)
the Armenian Church. They themselves were men not only of
culture and refinement and earnest religious devotion, but
of broad, statesmanlike views, an unusual group.
At Constantinople I was also brought into close contact
with the men and women conducting the two great colleges,
Robert College at Roumelia Hissar and the Woman’s College
at Scutari, and had some opportunity to estimate the
value of that work and its profound influence as a
civilizing agent on the community at large. Later I was
brought into contact with the Syrian Protestant College
at Beirut, and with the Congregational and Presbyterian
missionaries through Syria, and the favorable impressions
made at Constantinople were confirmed and strengthened.
My travels into regions touched by American missionaries,
and beyond the confines of those regions, enabled me to
form an estimate of the real influence of the missionaries
on the country at large. It has been enormous. One thing,
especially, the missionaries have given honor everywhere
to the American name, so that to be known as an American
almost anywhere in Turkey, is to ensure the confidence
of the people. That name is the synonym of honest and
disinterested service of one’s fellow men. I wish that the
name American carried in every country the meaning which
American missionaries have caused it to bear in Turkey,
and I may add in Bulgaria.
But I must not be too lengthy. I am apt to wax
enthusiastic when I speak on this subject, and am
sometimes afraid my language may seem extravagant. It
is difficult to comprehend how such a relatively small
body of men, with such a relatively small expenditure of
money, has made so profound an impression on the life of
the people of the empire as has been made by the American
missionaries and the American schools and colleges. They
have been the great means of uplift, both directly and
also indirectly, in causing the establishment by other
nations and by the Turks themselves, of schools and the
like, thus diffusing still further education.
I wish I had time and space to speak further of the
great needs of the people of Turkey which must be met,
if at all, through missionary agencies and of the great
opportunities which the field presents in spite of all
hindrances and difficulties.
—PROF. JOHN P. PETERS, D. D., SCD., Explorer.
It should be stated at the outset that the purpose of the American
Board in its efforts for the Armenians was not to weaken the old
Gregorian Church or to proselyte from it. There was no desire to form
among the Armenians an evangelical or Protestant Church. There was no
purpose to form any organization among them, but simply to introduce
the New Testament in the spoken tongue of the people and to assist them
in working out reforms in their old Church and under their own leaders.
The first missionary sent to Constantinople by the Board was the
Rev. William Goodell, transferred from Beirut by way of Malta to
open a mission at the capital of the empire with a view to reaching
the Armenians there. In his work of translating the Bible into
Armeno-Turkish at Beirut he had been ably assisted by two prominent
Armenians, one a bishop and one a learned vartabed, who had fully
accepted the modern Bible and were firm believers in the necessity
of reform for the Armenian Church. Dr. Goodell may be called the
father of the Armenian mission and the shaper of its policy. He was
a man of great intellectual ability, clear spiritual insight and
practical wisdom. After familiarizing himself with the situation at
Constantinople he wrote:
“In almost every place individuals are found who are so
far enlightened as to see and feel that their churches are
abominably corrupt, and who do sincerely desire a reform.
We ourselves at this place have nothing to do with the
Church, its dogmas, ceremonies and superstitions, nor do
we ever think of meddling with the convents, the priests,
the celibacy of the clergy, etc. In fact, we stand nearly
as far aloof from ecclesiastical matters as we do from
political matters. We find no occasion to touch them. We
direct men to their own hearts and to the Bible. Nor do we
make any attempt to establish a new Church or raise up a
new party. We disdain everything of the kind. We tell them
frankly, ‘You have sects enough among you already, and
we have no design of setting up a new one, or of pulling
down your churches, or drawing away members from them in
order to build up our own.’ No, let him who is a Greek be
a Greek still, and him who is an Armenian be an Armenian
still.”
In another place he wrote, “The less that is said and known about our
operations so much the better. A great deal can be done in a silent,
harmless, inoffensive way in these countries, but nothing in a storm.”
Again he said, “Our kingdom is not of this world, we are building up
no Church here, nor forming any ecclesiastical organization whatever.”
These utterances of Dr. Goodell, which might be greatly multiplied,
are enough to show the plan he had worked out for mission operations
among the Oriental churches. The attitude of the officers of the Board
in Boston was in full accord with this purpose and method. In a word,
the aim of missions to the Oriental churches was not to organize a
separate Church but to give them the Word of God in their own spoken
tongue, help them to understand its teachings, and then to cooperate
with them in organizing and carrying out such measures of reform as
might seem wise and practicable to their own leaders. In carrying out
this plan no separate meetings were begun. The only distinct religious
services carried on in Constantinople by the missionaries in all these
years of beginnings were private worship in English for themselves,
their children, and other English speaking people in the city who
chose to join them. Apart from this, their time was given to personal
conversation with individuals, dwelling largely upon the interpretation
of the Scriptures. Men who felt they must separate from the old Church
were persuaded to remain within the Church and to work there for
gradual reforms. These purposes and plans were talked over freely with
the patriarch, with the priests, bishops, and leaders of the Church,
and met with their hearty approval. The missionaries attended the
services of the old Church upon the Sabbath and on special occasions
at other times, and frequently took part, as they were invited so to
do. The contemplated reforms had nothing to do with the ecclesiastical
systems or ritual then dominating. There was no desire to change these.
The one aim was as declared in the expression frequently used, “_To
build up truth_.” When truth prevails error will depart.
It was plain to all, and to none more than to the Armenian leaders,
that no permanent reforms could be wrought out within the Church
without schools for the education of priests. It was apparent that, so
long as the ministers in the churches were for the most part untaught,
ignorant, and often coarse, the Church could never be lifted from its
low intellectual, moral, and spiritual plane. Because of the general
ignorance of so many of the clergy, the cause of education among the
Armenians had everywhere gone into decadence. Fully recognizing these
conditions and needs, and at the same time aware that the situation was
delicate, Dr. Goodell and his associates, instead of starting mission
schools, persuaded the Greeks and the Armenians to establish schools of
their own, proffering missionary assistance as it might be called for.
At about the time mission work began in Turkey, the system of schools
organized by Joseph Lancaster of England was attracting much attention,
not only in that country but in the United States. This was a monitor
system requiring few trained teachers, no text-books, and seemed to
command popular interest wherever tried, and undoubtedly afforded a
quick and superficial exhibit of progress in the pupils. Lancasterian
schools were having a period of great popularity in Greece. They spread
to Constantinople and were at once adopted by Greeks, Armenians, and
Turks. These had the effect of arousing the popular mind, and awaking
a desire for an education. These schools were, for the most part,
religious, but not sectarian. They were not long continued by either
the Turks or the Greeks, but the seed of learning fell into especially
fruitful soil among the Armenians.
Another influence had been operating at the capital leading towards
this same end. When Jonas King left Syria he wrote a farewell letter
dwelling at length upon the needs of reform in the Oriental churches,
with many Scriptural references to prove his position. An Armenian
bishop, Dionysius, translated this letter into Armenian, and in 1827
a manuscript copy was sent by him to some of the more influential
Armenians in Constantinople. The effect of it was remarkable. A meeting
was called in the Armenian Patriarchal Church at which the letter was
read and the Scriptures referred to examined. By common consent it was
there agreed that the Church needed reforming. The well known school of
Pashtimaljian was the direct outgrowth of that meeting. It was there
decided that no Armenian priest should be ordained in Constantinople
who had not completed a regular course of study in that school.
This school exerted a strong influence in preparing the minds of a
large body of young men to receive the truth and later to become
leaders in the movement towards reform. Pashtimaljian himself was an
Armenian of remarkable ability and strength. He was an accurate scholar
and a critical student of the Armenian language and literature, and,
although a layman, was well versed in Eastern theology and Church
history. He was equally accurate and thorough in his study of the
Bible. His leadership was recognized by the Armenians. He was a friend
of the missionaries, but for fear of exciting the suspicions of his
race carried on his work independently of them. While evangelical in
his beliefs and thoughts he did not, to the day of his death, in 1837,
openly declare himself to be an evangelical. But up to that time there
had been no break with the old Church and no persecution of those who
were studying the Word of God.
In all cases where the word “Evangelical” is used in connection with
the Armenians, Greeks or Syrians it refers to those who are recognized
as regular readers of the New Testament in the vernacular. The
“Evangelicals” among the Armenians were those who persisted in adhering
to their right to read the New Testament and to follow its manifest
teachings even in the face of the disapproval of their ecclesiastics.
Under the fire of anathemas and persecution the word came to be applied
to those who were cast out of the Gregorian Church because they would
not discontinue the practise. In Turkey the word has only its original
meaning, derived from the “Evangel” of Christ.
In 1833 the missionaries at Constantinople were invited to be present
in the Patriarchal Church at the ordination of fifteen Armenian
priests, trained in Pashtimaljian’s school. These men were largely
emancipated from the superstitions of the old Church and alert to
the needs of radical reform. When the break between the Gregorians
and the Evangelicals actually took place, several years later, the
leaders of the Protestants were for the most part men who had received
their training under Pashtimaljian, who was always independent of
missionary supervision and who was highly esteemed and honored by the
ecclesiastics of the Gregorian Church.
With all these forces at work upon this able and alert people, advanced
ideas rapidly spread among all classes at the capital, and through
constant intercourse with the chief cities in the interior, aroused
there also the spirit of inquiry. The patriarch at Constantinople and
some of the bishops in interior towns seemed in hearty accord with
the revival of Biblical study and of true learning. The missionaries
endeavored to have the Armenians themselves open and conduct all the
schools, and ventured themselves to do anything of the kind only when
they failed to get the people to act.
The steady progress of the reform movement was hindered by great fires
in the city, by cholera and plague, and by civil war. Even to the
present these distracting and disintegrating forces have always been
present in some parts of the Turkish fields, presenting many obstacles
to continuous advance.
The Roman Catholics were openly opposed to the circulation of the
Bible among the people, and used their influence to check the movement
for a revival of righteousness and learning. By constant effort, even
in the days of Pashtimaljian, they cast suspicion upon the movement
into the minds of some of the leaders among the old Church people.
An anti-reform party was gradually formed, led largely by uneducated
ecclesiastics, who saw that if only educated men were to be ordained to
the priesthood and were to exercise a leading influence in the Church,
their power would soon be destroyed. They succeeded in exalting to
patriarchal power in 1839 an astute and bigoted man from the interior
of the country. He began at once to arrest and throw into prison some
of the leading men in the evangelical movement. Some even were banished
into the interior for the sole crime of reading the Bible.
The Armenian Evangelical Union, a secret organization, had in 1839
some twenty-two members. It was an organized company of intelligent,
advanced thinkers, who came together to plan and pray for the
reformation of their Church and of the country, and for Bible study.
They carried on secret correspondence with men of enlightenment
throughout the empire. None of them were separated from the Church nor
did they contemplate such a step nor encourage it in others. They were
planning solely for the salvation of the Gregorian Church. These unions
were continued and multiplied in the country, but not as a secret
society after the organization of the Protestant churches.
On the third of March, 1839, a patriarchal bull was issued by Hagopos,
adjunct patriarch, forbidding the reading of all books printed or
circulated by the missionaries, and all who possessed such books were
ordered to deliver them up. A few days later the sympathetic and
gentle patriarch Stepan was deposed and Hagopos was installed in his
place. Spurred on by the same Romanists, the Greek patriarch issued a
similar bull to all Greeks against the books of the missionaries. The
reign of terror thus begun raged in the capital and throughout the
interior of the country for many years. April 28th, 1839, the Armenian
patriarch issued a new bull threatening terrible anathemas, in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, against all who should be found
communicating with the missionaries or reading their books. Arrests and
imprisonments were of constant occurrence. The native evangelicals were
at their wits’ end and the missionaries could see no way of deliverance.
Most fortunately for them, at that time the sultan was at war with
Mohammed Ali of Egypt, and he called upon all the patriarchs to provide
him with recruits for his broken army. The defeat of the sultan, his
death, and the succession of his son, Abdul Medjid, with the loss of
the Turkish fleet, threw all into consternation and made the most
violent bigots forget for the moment to persecute. A fire in Pera which
destroyed between three thousand and four thousand Armenian houses
tended to produce a softening of heart against the persecuted.
While this condition of affairs prevailed at the capital the mission
was pushing its advanced posts into the interior of the country where
considerable numbers were found eager to procure copies of the Bible.
Ecclesiastical warnings sent from Constantinople to the Armenians
remote from the capital were given little heed. Violence had so
subsided at Constantinople that the evangelical movement again began to
accumulate momentum and force. A boarding-school for boys was opened
in November, 1840, at Bebek upon the Bosporus, some five miles above
Constantinople. This was under the superintendence of Cyrus Hamlin,
against whom and his school all the fury of the papists and the Greek
patriarch was directed, the Armenian patriarch refusing to join them.
The demand for books increased. By 1841 it was evident that a great
reform movement was in progress which was destined to spread over the
empire. Some of the leading persecutors were astute enough to see that
an invisible but irresistible force was moving the Armenian nation. The
spirit of reform swept over the country, awakening intellects, arousing
consciences, and demanding intellectual freedom.
This continued for five or six years, during which time there was
no separation of the “Evangelicals,” as they were called, from the
old Church. The missionaries always urged them to remain, exerting
their influence not against the Church but against its abuses and
superstitions. For the most part they attended public services in
the old Church, and were recognized as members in good standing. The
missionaries had no thought of changing these conditions, had they
imagined it was in their power to do so. Hitherto the movement had
been one towards reform within the Armenian Church and largely led by
Armenians who were themselves loyal members. In persecuting, the Church
was doing violence to its own.
In the beginning of 1846 the patriarch, alarmed at the extent as
well as the power of the reform movement, inaugurated more coercive
measures. On Sunday morning, January 25, at the close of the regular
service in the Patriarchal Church, darkening the house and drawing a
great veil in front of the main altar, a bull of excision was read
against Priest Vartanes, an evangelical, and all of the followers
of the “modern sectaries.” Heaping every conceivable epithet of
condemnation upon him he was expelled from the Church and forbidden
as “a devil and the child of the devil to enter into the company of
believers.” All the faithful were forbidden to admit him into their
dwellings or to receive his salutation or to look upon his face.
A wild spirit of fanaticism reigned. This most thorough and fanatical
persecution began to search out the evangelicals, who were ordered
to repair to the patriarchate and recant, or be forever cast out
from society, from every social privilege, and from the Church. On
the following Sabbath, with passions still more inflamed, a second
anathema was read in all the churches, accompanied by the most violent
denunciations by the patriarch, the bishop and the vartabeds. All of
the evangelicals were pronounced “accursed, and excommunicated, and
anathematized by God, and by all his saints, and by Matteos Patriarch.”
The patriarch not only cursed those who were readers of the Bible and
believers in its teachings, but grave malediction was hurled against
all who should harbor them or communicate with them. Printed copies of
the last two anathemas were sent to every part of Turkey to be read in
all the churches. Even to this point the evangelical Armenians had made
no move to form a community separate from the old Church.
On the 21st of June, 1846, a day of solemn festival in the Church, the
patriarch issued a new bull of excommunication and anathema against all
who remained firm to their evangelical principles, decreeing that it
should be publicly read at each annual return of this festival in all
the Armenian churches throughout the Ottoman empire. By this act the
Protestant or evangelical Armenians were completely cut off from any
lot or part in the Gregorian Church. There was no hope of their being
received back again except by their repudiating every principle of
reform. This, of course, they could not do.
These excommunicated brethren immediately requested help from the
missionaries. A meeting was held in Constantinople, made up of
delegates from the different mission stations in Turkey, at which
Dr. Pomeroy, later one of the secretaries of the American Board, was
present. At that meeting, plans were drawn up for an organization among
the evangelical Armenians of Constantinople. Consequently, on the first
day of July, 1846, they came together and were organized into the
First Evangelical Armenian Church. The church numbered forty members,
of which thirty-seven were men. One week later an Armenian pastor, a
former student in the school of Pashtimaljian, was ordained over the
church. A pamphlet in Armenian was issued, containing their confession
of faith and setting forth the reasons why, through the compulsory
measures of the patriarch, they had been compelled to organize
themselves into a separate body.
During the same summer, similar Armenian churches were formed in
Nicomedia, Adabazar and Trebizond. The Mohammedans showed themselves
sympathetic. A Moslem judge before whom some of the evangelicals
had been hauled, said, “We cannot interfere to protect you from
excommunication, but so long as you abide by the declaration you have
made we will protect you civilly. Your goods shall be as our goods;
your houses as our houses; and your persons as our persons. Go in
peace.”
All subjects of the Turkish empire were registered as members of some
recognized religious community. Each various Christian community like
the Armenian, the Greek, and the Roman Catholic, had its recognized
head at the Porte and through this head individual rights were
protected. Every non-Moslem was compelled to claim his rights at the
hand of his religious political head. If his claim were there denied,
he had no redress. The Armenian patriarch was the recognized political
superior of the Armenians. He had violently excluded all evangelicals
from the Church and from all their inherited rights as Armenians. He
no longer recognized such as members of his race, and not only refused
to protect them and secure for them justice but he devised methods
to direct a bitter persecution against them. These excommunicated
“Protestants,” as they were sometimes called, were the legal possessors
of no rights or privileges in the empire that any one was bound to
respect.
Conditions became intolerable, when through the intervention of the
British legation the grand vizier issued in November, 1847, a firman
recognizing the separate Protestant community with all the rights
and privileges belonging to others in the empire, and declaring that
“no interference whatever shall be permitted in their temporal and
spiritual concerns on the part of the patriarch, monks, or priests of
other sects.” This firman protected the evangelical Greeks and Jews
as well as the Armenians. As this charter was only ministerial in its
scope and authority, in 1850 a new charter was granted the Protestants
by Sultan Abdul Medjid, “completing and confirming their distinct
organization as a civil community, etc.”
This phase of mission work in Turkey has been dwelt upon at length in
order to correct the impression which prevails in many quarters that
the missionaries in Turkey aimed to divide the old Churches there and
to separate out therefrom a body of Protestants. History makes it clear
that every effort was made to prevent separation, and only after this
had taken place, by the repeated and official action of the highest
ecclesiastical authority, were any steps taken to organize a separate
community, and even then this was done primarily to secure protection
for the excommunicated Christians.