Thank You!

Besides the encouraging comments that we receive on the Emmanuel Chanitz blog, we receive encouraging comments by telephone, email, and face to face, from Lebanon and from abroad.
I want to mention and thank Rev. H. Svajian, Rev. N. Balabanian, Mrs. S. Balabanian, Rev. H. Tootikian, Rev. S. Terzian, Ms. S. Geocherian, Rev. N. Bakalian, Mrs. M. Bakalian, Mr. Agopian, Mr. A. Balian, Mrs. Geyikian, Mr. H. Jebejian Mrs. M. Haidostian, pastor S. Trashian, pastor D. Basmajian, and each and every member of the Emmanuel Chanitz members.

Your support and encouragement mean a lot...

Thank you!
Raffi

Օգոստոս 5, 2007

Ինչպէս որ գիտենք, Օգոստոս 5, 2007-ին Մէթն շրջանի ընտրութիւնները տեղի ունեցան: Նոյն գիշերը, շատեր կ՛սպասէին ընտրութիւններուն արդիւնքները: Մինչ գիշերը հեռատեսիլին վրայ կը հետեւէինք «Գէլէմ էլ-Նաս» (Peoples' Voice) յայտագրին, որուն հիւրերէն մէկն էր Հ.Յ. Դաշնակցութեան ներկայացուցիչ՝ երեսփոխան Յակոբ Բագրատունեան, երբ յանկարծ հեռաձայնեց Պրն. Կապրիէլ Մըր եւ վարկաբեկիչ ձեւով խօսեցաւ Լիբանանի հայութեան մասին: Ետքը, նոյն գիշերը երբ մօտաւոր արդիւնքները յայտնի սկսան ըլլալ, նախկին նախագահ Էմին Ժիմաէլ քննադատեց հայերուն որոշումը ու դիրքը: Սակայն, այս բոլոր իրարանցումին մէջ գնահատելի էր երեսփոխան Յակոբ Բագրատունեանի կեցուածքը:
Այսպէս այս հարցին հանդէպ հայերը քով քովի կեցան եւ Ապրիլ 24-էն զատ ուրիշ առիթ մըն ալ ունեցան զիրար դիկունք կանգնելու:
Յ. Կոճիկեան

Interview with Rev. Vahan H. Tootikian

There have been a lot of questions regarding the American Armenians in general, and the American Armenian Evangelicals and Churches in particular. We gathered our questions from our society and we went to Rev. Tootikian to help us in getting some of our questions answered.

We received his reply to our request and we posted his answers below...

But before that we would like to say that Rev. Tootikian was very encouraging. Here is some of what he said: "...sincerely I wish to congratulate you on your noble enterprise, the blog website. This is an excellent medium that will serve as the newsletter for your Christian Endeavor Union ("Chanitz"). A commendable venture indeed! Bravo. God bless you and your efforts."

Chanitz- The Armenian Apostolic Church stresses on "keeping the Armenian identity" more than evangelism and preaching about Christ. On the other hand, the Armenian Evangelical Church preaches about Christ without much mentioning of "keeping the Armenian identity". Do you think that this comparison is correct today? Do the Armenian Evangelical Churches balance these 2 aspects? Should they?

Rev. Tootikian- Regarding Armenian identity. It is true that generally speaking the Armenian Apostolic Church emphasizes the necessity and importance of keeping the Armenian identity more than evangelism and Armenian Evangelicals lay more emphasis on preaching the Gospel. But I do not agree with your description of “without much mentioning of keeping the Armenian identity.” It depends on the church and the minister of that church.

It is a fact that some Armenian American ministers are not very concerned about Armenian heritage and identity. And that itself is a great tragedy and deplorable thing. Others are true Armenian patriots and are determined to preserve and perpetuate their heritage. I strongly believe there should be a healthy balance of our ethnicity and faith. The Armenian Evangelical Church, being a member of the Body of Christ, is a divine institution and should not deny that reality. It is its indispensable calling to preach the Good News. It is also a human institution composed of Armenian men and women who cannot and should not escape their history. God created them as Armenians. They are formed and molded by the forces of Armenian culture. They should be proud of their Armenian identity and heritage. I believe there should definitely be a balance to these two aspects.

Chanitz- In preserving the Armenian language, Mr. Harout Sassounian says that in the coming 50 years, the Armenian language will be obsolete and that the Armenian newspapers and magazines will be published in English. Do you agree with Mr. Sassounian (Chief Editor of California Courrier)? What will the primary language of most of the Armenian Evangelical Churches be?

Rev. Tootikian- Keeping the Armenian language. Although it is extremely difficult to preserve the Armenian language in America, it’s a challenge but it is not an impossible thing to do. Today, as in the past, there are many pessimists like Mr. Harout Sassounian. In fact some eighty or ninety years ago, there were many Armenian community leaders, including some Armenian Evangelical ministers, who predicted that in one or two decades the Armenian language in America will be a dead language, but Armenian is still being used in our churches and in the Armenian organizations. It is true that there is a great erosion of our ethnic heritage and language due to many factors. We should continue to encourage and educate our new generation to learn the Armenian culture and language and inculcate in them the pride of being Armenian. We should not be prophets of doom! Therefore, I do not share Mr. Sassounian’s pessimism.

Chanitz- Why do we see Presbyterian, Congregational, Nazarene and other words in the names of the Armenian Evangelical Churches? Many Armenian Evangelicals in Lebanon think that these (for example, Armenian Presbyterian Church) are different sects and do not have any affiliation with the Armenian Evangelicals. Does this create a unity problem?

Rev. Tootikian- Concerning various denominational affiliations in the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America (AEUNA). AEUNA is the product of the merger of Armenian Evangelical Union of Eastern States and Canada and Armenian Evangelical Union of California. It was formed in 1971, in Detroit, Michigan. Historically these two Unions were comprised of churches, which were supported by Congregational and Presbyterian denominations thus they maintained denominational ties with Congregational (later United Church of Christ) and Presbyterian churches. From their inception in the early 1900s, our churches had denominational affiliations. What is new in recent years is that there are some churches, which joined AEUNA that have Nazarene and Brotherhood denominational affiliation. In the future there will be other churches, which will join AEUNA with other denominational affiliations. The important fact to remember is any church that joins AEUNA must abide by its Constitution, Bylaws, Statement of Faith and practices. I don’t believe that creates a unity problem.

Chanitz- Based on what we see, there is a rapid move of pastors from the middle east regions to USA. Is God guiding these moves, or is it more based on the pastors' decisions? If there is a guidance from God, why doesn't God guide to Iran, Syria, Georgia,...?

Rev. Tootikian- Immigration Issue of UAECNE ministers to USA. Some years ago, the policy of AEUNA was not to encourage the immigration of ministers from the Middle East. Exceptions were allowed provided that there was a mutual agreement between the two Unions. I do not know anything about the recent moves. Such pastoral calls are a matter of individual decisions. Only God and the immigrating minister know whether this decision is based on God’s call or on ulterior motives. You and I both know why they come to USA and not other countries you mentioned, supposedly because of the political stability.

Chanitz- Is there a union among the different Armenian Evangelical Churches and the different Armenian Evangelical Church Youth Groups? If there is, how strong is each union?

Rev. Tootikian- AEUNA and Affiliated Youth Organizations. AEUNA has 2 Youth Fellowships: Armenian Evangelical Youth Eastern Region, whose Youth minister is Rev. Ara Jizmejian and Armenian Evangelical Youth Fellowship, Western Region, whose Youth Director is Mr. Raffi Kaljian. These two youth leaders are members of AEUNA Board, and regularly report to the Board. They are active groups, they have regular conventions, retreats and seminars separately and joint. There are two youth camps, Camp Arev in the West Coast and Camp Arevelk in the East Coast. They are both very active and are very involved in mission work.

Chanitz- What would you like to say to the Armenian Evangelical Youth of Lebanon?

Rev. Tootikian- Armenian Evangelical Youth of Lebanon. Because my knowledge on Armenian Evangelical Youth of Lebanon is limited, it will not be fair to make any comments. However, I am very pleased to know about your group who started your website to connect with other Evangelical youth all over the world. It is a great idea and you are to be commended for doing so. We do need to strengthen the ties of our youth, and keep one another informed of our activities to the glory of God and advancement of His Kingdom.

I hope that I have answered your questions, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you the concerns of our Evangelical youth here and abroad.

Best wishes to you and your many endeavors on behalf of our Armenian Evangelical youth. God bless you.

Prayerfully,

Rev. Vahan H. Tootikian
August 8, 2007

"...Ohhhh, you don't have facebook?!!"

What really happened? It was only yesterday that Hi5 and Friendster were the latest trend on the internet used by Lebanese and worldwide internet users. (MySpace didn't get famous among the Lebanese internet users, for unknown reasons.)
Moreover, it was only yesterday that chatting was the most important feature on the internet, and it is still highly used by teenagers, specially MSN and Yahoo!Messenger. But hey! there's a new guy/girl in town... Facebook!

Now, what is this Facebook? Before I answer this question, some introduction. The latest trend on the internet has become the Social aspect called Social Networking. Hi5, MySpace and Facebook belong to this Social category. They are tools that help people socialize and meet people online. Just register, then write about yourself, add your hobbies, upload a picture, and voila! you have your own page/profile, that anyone using the social website (Hi5, MySpace, Facebook) can see.

Inspite of the negative sides that Facebook has, it is still getting more popular by the day. I even know people who have become attached to it so much, that they keep the webpage of Facebook open all the time!
You can read about Facebook online, and come across people/websites claiming that Facebook is accessed by FBI and that you are spotted and followed online. In fact, Facebook does make your real life completely visible online, and it has become really, really, very easy to use.
Some even use it to lurk and follow people whom they barely know in their real lives. This actually happened with me. A person I know a little had a Facebook. When I got my Facebook, I saw the person's profile and got to know more on-line than on real life.

But why Facebook? What does it have that the rest (Hi5, Friendster, MySpace...) do not have? Well, the best thing about it is that it's clean, simple, easy to use, and best of all it has applications that you can use without leaving Facebook. Now, this is something that the rest of its competitors lack. Facebook has many applications that you can add on your profile and they are growing by the day.

What about the Christians? How can it be used by Christians. Based on my own experience, the internet is still not taken seriously by the Lebanese. It is regarded as a game, a place to pass time, have fun, socialize and chat. It is not regarded as a tool to evangelize, to spread the good news, to work on a group project, or talk about and discuss serious issues. The ones who make use of the internet and benefit from it are very few in Lebanon. Most are online for fun.

Hi5, Friendster, and MySpace were once the trend on the internet. Today they are overtaken by Facebook. Would Facebook's fate be the same? Would it be overtaken by a newcomer?
My guess is that for the coming years, overtaking Facebook will not be an easy task.
Raffi

(Anyone who is interested in Facebook, will benefit from this after reading)

Interview with M. Ibitian about Addictions

Finally! The awaited broadcast is here.

Chanaghpouyr has launched its first program (Bottom of the Sea). You can now hear us by simply clicking the "play" button, just like you use youtube for videos, but this is for audio. You will find the player at the bottom of this post.

Note: If your connection is a dial-up or is slow, click the "pause" button, until the audio loads part of it, and then click "play".

Program Name: Ծովուն Յատակը (Bottom of the Sea)

Subject: Addiction

Interview With: M. Ibitian

The interview is conducted in Armenian.

During the interview, the following questions were answered:

  • What is addiction?
  • What are the kinds of addictions?
  • What is the difference between habit and addiction?
  • How can an addict person come out of his/her addiction problem?
  • How does the Bible guide us?
  • Does the Church and the believers accept addicts, even after an addict is cured?

*The audio is edited by M. Chilingirian.

"...No wonder the bloggers are winning."

Gutless Papers Explain why more
People are Googling than Reading
By Robert Fisk

The Independent

I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops. But here's a tale of two gutless newspapers which explains why more and more people are Googling rather than turning pages.
First the Los Angeles Times. Last year, reporter Mark Arax was assigned a routine story on the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. Arax's report focused on divisions within the local Jewish community over whether to call the genocide a genocide.
It's an old argument. The Turks insist - against all the facts and documents and eyewitness accounts, and against history - that the Armenians were victims of a civil war. The Israeli government and its new, Nobel prize-winning president, Shimon Peres - anxious to keep cosy relations with modern Turkey - have preferred to adopt Istanbul's mendacious version of events. However, many Jews, both inside and outside Israel, have bravely insisted that they do constitute a genocide, indeed the very precursor to the later Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews.
But Arax's genocide report was killed on the orders of managing editor Douglas Frantz because the reporter had a "position on the issue" and "a conflict of interest".
Readers will already have guessed that Arax is an Armenian-American. His sin, it seems, was that way back in 2005, he and five other writers wrote a formal memo to LA Times editors reminding them that the paper's style rules meant that the Armenian genocide was to be called just that - not "alleged genocide". Frantz, however, described the old memo as a "petition" and apparently accused Arax of landing the assignment by dealing with a Washington editor who was also an Armenian.
The story was reassigned to Washington reporter Rich Simon, who concentrated on Turkey's attempt to block Congress from recognising the Armenian slaughter -- and whose story ran under the headline "Genocide Resolution Still Far From Certain".
LA Times executives then went all coy, declining interviews, although Frantz admitted in a blog (of course) that he had "put a hold" on Arax's story because of concerns that the reporter "had expressed personal views about the topic in a public (sic) manner...". Ho ho.
Truth can be dangerous for the LA Times. Even more so, it seems, when the managing editor himself - Frantz, no less - once worked for The New York Times, where he referred to the Armenian massacres as, yes, an "alleged" genocide. Frantz, it turns out, joined the LA Times as its Istanbul correspondent.
Well, Arax has since left the LA Times after a settlement which forestalled a lawsuit against the paper for defamation and discrimination. His employers heaped praise upon his work while Frantz has just left the paper to become Middle East correspondent of the Wall Street Journal based in - of course, you guessed it - Istanbul.
But now let's go north of the border, to the Toronto Globe and Mail, which assigned columnist Jan Wong to investigate a college murder in Montreal last September. Wong is not a greatly loved reporter. A third-generation Canadian, she moved to China during Mao's "cultural revolution" and, in her own words, "snitched on class enemies and did my best to be a good little Maoist."
She later wrote a "Lunch With" series for the Globe in which she acted all sympathetic to interviewee guests to catch them out. "When they relax, that's when their guard is down," she told a college newspaper. "It's a trick, but it's legit." Yuk!
Wong's take on the Montreal Dawson College shooting, however, was more serious. She compared the killer to a half-Algerian Muslim who murdered 14 women in another Montreal college shooting in 1989 and to a Russian immigrant who killed four university colleagues in Montreal in 1992. "In all three cases," she wrote, "the perpetrator was not 'pure laine', the argot for a 'pure' francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial purity is repugnant. Not in Quebec."
Painfully true, I'm afraid. Parisians, who speak real French, would never use such an expression - pure laine translates literally as "pure wool" but means "authentic" - but some Montrealers do. Wong, however, had touched a red hot electric wire in "multicultural" Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper complained. "Grossly irresponsible, " said the man who enthusiastically continued the policy of sending Canadian troops on their suicidal mission to Afghanistan.
The French-Canadian newspaper Le Devoir - can you imagine a British paper selling a single copy if it called itself "Duty"? - published a cartoon of Wong with exaggerated Chinese slanted eyes. Definitely not pure laine for Le Devoir. The hate mail was even more to the point. Some contained excrement.
But then the Globe and Mail ran for cover. Its editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, wrote a cowardly column in which he claimed that the offending paragraphs "should have been removed" from her story. "We regret that we allowed these words to get into a reported (sic) article," he sniffled. There had been a breakdown in what he hilariously called "the editorial quality control process".
Now I happen to know a bit about the Globe's "quality control process". Some time ago, I discovered that the paper had reprinted an article of mine from The Independent about the Armenian genocide. But they had tampered with it, altering my word "genocide" to read "tragedy".
The Independent' s subscribers promise to make no changes to our reports. But when our syndication folk contacted the Globe, they discovered that the Canadian paper had simply stolen the article. They were made to pay a penalty fee. But as for the censorship of the word "genocide", a female executive explained to The Independent that nothing could be done because the editor responsible had "since left the Globe and Mail".
It's the same old story, isn't it? Censor then whinge, then cut and run. No wonder the bloggers are winning.

Badanegan Doun and Camp Armen (Պատանեկան Տուն) 3

Rakel [the future wife of Hrant Dink], I have brought her with a group of 20 from Silopi. Her father has arrived to take the boys to their place during their summer vacation. Rakel tells me:
- "Sir, can you give me a song book and a Bible, I will bring them back with me when I return."
- "What are you going to do with the song book and the Bible", I ask.
- "Sir, I will teach them to the kids in my country, I will lead worship there", she replies.
In one year, she has learnt to write, read and speak, as well as, many spiritual songs and Bible truths, and she wants to teach the things she learnt with those kids in her place, instead of playing house games with her friends.

Currently, from those (France) who visit Bolis, I know that she is conducting and leading meetings, where 30 people gather, and she also translates in the Gedik Pasha Evangelical Church. Rev. Jean Hagopian has told me with glee about these.

Badanegan Doun and Camp Armen, Hrant Guzelian

*Translation by R. Chil.

Kchag Cafe is Back :)

Depending solely on God, the kchag committee announced that the kchag cafe(s) will take place every Sunday at 6:00 pm, starting from July 15 till September 30.

Everyone: youngsters, elders, families, singles, chanitz, badaniatz, ladies and friends are invited to go up to kchag, where you will have a time of relaxation, fellowship, at the same time enjoying the cool weather and breeze during the night.

There will be food served and music played. There will also be special program that will be announced as planned.

Oh, and ping-pong fans, don't forget to come prepared :)