Many of us remember what a wonderful experience it was growing up in an Armenian 
family during the earlier years of this century.  Immigrant Armenian families who spoke 
broken English were looked down on in those days.   And perhaps it was because of the 
rejection and discrimination we suffered during those years that made the bonds within 
our old Armenian families much stronger and more fruitful.   


Today, there are laws against racial discrimination.  No one dares to call us "foreigners" 
or "starving Armenians" anymore.  And because we have, for the most part, become a 
part of the accepted mainstream, we’re having the most difficult time passing on those 
old family bonds to our younger generations.


To be sure, we’ve had many Armenians migrating to America since WWII.  Most of them 
came with our language, heritage, and culture intact, but without those early years of 
discrimination to bond them, they are oftentimes finding their children becoming totally 
Americanized before they finish grammar school.  


Contrarily speaking, does this mean that we Armenians have to continue suffering in 
order to hold on to our identity?


The new enemy we face here in America is called, "assimilation."  Someone once coined 
it "The White Massacre."  It is faceless and painless--it doesn’t maim or slaughter as the 
Turks did to our people, nor does it deprive us of the sense of belonging that America’s 
racial discrimination deprived us of during those early years.  But even with all of these 
newly acquired advantages, assimilation has become the most formidable enemy we’ve 
ever had to face.  


No doubt, keeping our Armenian identity and culture alive in this great democracy is 
important, but with what we know now, it’s going to take all of the strength and ingenuity 
we can muster to bring assimilation under control.  We can have all of the political and 
philosophical differences in the world, but if we truly want to hold on to our Armenian 
future in America, we must start learning how to develop a united front.  In short, we 
must find common ground.  But unfortunately, the closest thing we have to common 
ground here in North America at present, is our "religiously one" but "administratively 
divided" Armenian Apostolic churches.   


Speaking from a religious perspective, our Armenian Apostolic Church was originally 
ordained to be a Christian sanctuary.  It was not ordained to harbor divisive political 
influences.  Nor were such political influences ordained to select church leaders or to 
control church policy.  And for those who, through ignorance or by design, try to justify 
that politics is indeed a part of the Armenian Church because it was originally founded by 
King Trdat III as a state religion, I would question: Which part of the Holy Bible 
sanctifies politically controlled churches?  Wasn’t it Jesus Christ who said, "Give unto 
Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s?"  


A Christian church, whether founded by state or otherwise, is a house of God where all 
people of good faith may come together to pray and worship.  In our case, however, since 
Armenia was in large part dominated by foreign incursions either through war or 
betrayals, our Armenian Apostolic Church was forced to also become the only remaining 
bastion for our captive identity and culture.   And today, though we number no more than 
six to eight million throughout the entire world, I believe it’s safe to say that the last thing 
we need here in North America is two Armenian Sees competing against each other for 
800,000 fragmented Armenians.


If our religious leaders truly care about the future of our North American Armenian 
future, they must find the Christian courage to reunite our divided Armenian Apostolic 
churches under the ordained leadership of our Mother See of Etchmiadzin.  If they can do 
this by allowing their Christian faith, instead of political influences, to lead the way, we 
in turn, may find the intellectual and material resources to rediscover and to revitalize 
ourselves and our youngsters with the same unconquerable spirit that our genocide 
survivors brought with them during the early years of this century.


If, on the other hand, the See of Cilicia refuses to honor the old traditional jurisdictions 
and today’s duality continues, we may have to wind up placing some of our empty 
divided churches up for rent in order to cover costs.


Joseph Vosbikian