Analyst decries Pashinyan's church proposals

An Armenian political analyst has strongly criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent proposal to play Armenia’s national anthem and display the national flag in churches before liturgies, arguing that the initiative could erode the supranational character of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

In a social media post on Monday, Stepan Danielyan stated such practices are absent from traditional Christian denominations, including the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, which avoid national symbols during a liturgy to preserve institutional unity across countries.

Danielyan noted that while national flags and anthems are sometimes used in U.S. Protestant churches, such as Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations, the practice is not part of historic liturgical traditions.

He warned that adopting national symbols inside Armenian churches worldwide could create pressure for dioceses in other countries to display local flags and play local anthems during services. According to him, this would weaken the Armenian Apostolic Church’s role as a unifying institution for the global Armenian diaspora.

Danielyan also linked the prime minister’s remarks to what he described as broader efforts to reshape the church, referring to Pashinyan’s earlier suggestion that the Catholicos should be elected by the public and that an interim leader could be a married priest, proposals that fall outside the church’s established rules.

“These proposals appear to reinforce the view that the madman is actively pursuing the goal of converting Armenians,” he wrote.