XIV. BEGINNINGS IN REFORM
I had occasion some years ago to visit a considerable part of Turkey, from Constantinople and Beirut to Mosul and Bagdad, and everywhere I paid particular attention to missionary conditions and the influence of mission work upon the people. This is a land assigned almost wholly to American Missionary Boards, and the influence is everywhere marked and excellent. The late Premier Stviloff told me in Sofia that but for young men educated by American teachers in Constantinople, Bulgaria when it became independent would have had to depend on Russians for administrative officers. He was himself, like so many other distinguished Bulgarians, a graduate of Robert College. In Syria a native physician, graduated at the Syrian Protestant College, said to me, “We say, ‘After God, van Dyke.’” In the interior cities, such as Marash, Aintab, Urfa, Mardin and Diarbekr, the American schools and the large self-supporting churches were evidences of the new evangelic spirit and culture which had put new heart into those ancient seats of intellectual decay. About Harpoot there were thousands who had learned English, and hundreds have come from there to this country believing it to be a very paradise. The contrast was sad enough when I came into the towns south from Mosul where American missionary influence had not reached, and scarce any signs of intellectual or material improvement were to be found. I am convinced that the work of devoted, intelligent, broad-minded missionaries is far more effective in lifting a people out of ignorance and social decay into enlightened civilization, than all the influences of commerce or mere governmental policy. Our missionaries bring the motive of faith as the example of unselfish service which nothing else can supply.
—William Hayes Ward, LL. D.,
Editor “New York Independent.”
During the first generation of missionary operations in Turkey there were few tangible results except among the Armenians. The Mohammedans were by no means entirely hostile and revealed much friendliness and often open sympathy. The Jews presented almost a solid wall of stolid opposition to the effort for reform among them, while the Syrians and Greeks, under the leadership of the Roman Catholics, were often violent in their open attacks and secret plottings to thwart every attempt of the missionaries to gain a foothold in the country. The people in all the empire who seemed to have been especially prepared to receive and profit by evangelical teaching were the Armenians, who were not distinctly in mind when mission work in Turkey was first contemplated. In fact, almost nothing was then known of these people in the world at large and among the Christians of the United States who were supporting the cause of foreign missions.
While the American Board contemplated extending its missions in the Levant to the shores of the Black Sea and especially into Armenia, no mention whatever seems to have been made of the Armenians in connection with the beginning of the first “mission to Palestine.”
Not long after Rev. Levi Parsons arrived at Jerusalem in 1821 and upon his first visit there, he came into contact with some Armenian pilgrims with whom he had conversation upon the subject of missions to their people and country. These expressed themselves as eager to have missionaries sent to them. Mr. Fisk at about the same time, writing to Boston from Smyrna, recommended the appointment of missionaries to Armenia. From this time the idea of work among the Armenians enlarged and deepened, although the “mission to the Jews” was kept persistently at the front.
There had been a vast deal of preparation of the Armenian people for a work of reform, emanating from sources quite outside of the Board and, in fact, considerably anterior to its organization. Somewhere about 1760, an Armenian priest, who was burning with the desire to reform the Armenian Church, appeared in Constantinople. He saw and deeply felt the gross errors of the Gregorian Church, and wrote a book exposing them. He was an educated man and seems to have been more or less familiar with the work of Martin Luther, of whose Reformation he heartily approved. He constantly referred to the Bible and to this high standard he mercilessly brought his Church and its clergy. The inconsistent life of the priests and bishops, and the gross superstitions of the people at large, greatly troubled him. He lacked, however, true spiritual enlightenment and power, and failed to see divine truth in its breadth and purity. His book was never printed, but copies were kept in various places which were brought to light and repeatedly referred to later. This effort had wide influence in revealing the errors of the Armenian Church, and did much to prepare the way for the genuine reformatory movement.
In 1813, six years before the American Board appointed its first missionary to Palestine, the British and Russian Bible Societies made strenuous efforts to provide for the Armenian people a Bible in their own tongue. An edition of an old fourth century Armenian version of the entire Bible was commenced in that year at St. Petersburg by the Russian Bible Society, and at about the same time another edition of the same Bible was put on the press by the Calcutta Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Russian edition of five thousand copies was out in 1815, and the British edition of two thousand copies appeared two years later. The Russian Society issued a separate edition of two thousand copies of the Ancient Armenian New Testament.
In their report of 1814 the British and Foreign Bible Society said that the printing of the Armenian Testament had aroused much interest among the Armenians, especially those in Russia. Emperor Alexander at that time took a keen interest in the work of the Russian Bible Society and therefore the cause itself became popular among all classes. The Armenian Catholicos, the spiritual head of that Church, with residence at Etchmiadzin, now in Russia, bordering upon Armenia, was elected one of the vice-presidents of the society. He wrote a letter to its president commending the work of the society, and approving of the plan to supply his own people with the Word of God. The Armenian archbishop of Tiflis contributed six hundred roubles for that purpose.
In 1818 the British and Foreign Bible Society purchased one thousand five hundred copies of the Armenian New Testament from the Armenian Catholic College located on the Island of St. Lazarus, Venice, for distribution among the Armenians. Later, a still larger number was purchased and distributed in the same way. In 1823 the same Bible Society published at Constantinople an edition of five thousand copies of the Armenian New Testament and three thousand copies of the four Gospels alone. These books were rapidly distributed by agents of the British and Foreign Bible Society and by Mr. Connor of the Church Missionary Society, at that time in Constantinople, among the Armenians of the Trans-Caucasian provinces in Russia and in Turkey.
These facts have an important bearing upon the preparation of the Armenians for a reform movement. Hitherto, while they had the Bible in its entirety, it was mostly in manuscript form, and inaccessible to the people. These valuable copies of the Holy Scriptures were kept in the monasteries or in the larger churches, carefully guarded by the priests or other custodians, who usually were themselves unable to read or understand the writing. All the Armenians everywhere accepted the Bible as the divine and inspired Word of God.
The name of the Bible is Astvadsashoonch, or “The breath of God.” With joy they welcomed the printed word that could be kept in their houses, handled with their own hands, and perused at their leisure. Hitherto they had been permitted only to kiss its silver adorned covers at the close of the formal services of their churches.
It was soon found, however, that the ancient Armenian, the language of all the manuscripts of the Bible and rituals of the Old Church and also of the Bibles and Testaments recently printed, was not understood by the common, uneducated people. As the educated were few, the number of intelligent readers was greatly limited. This number was confined practically to the higher clergy, a few priests and vartabeds, and the teachers in the schools. In order to reach the common people, the Russian Bible Society issued in 1822 and 1823 a New Testament translated into Turkish and printed with the Armenian character. As a large proportion of the Armenians understood Turkish this version brought to them the Word of God.
Hitherto the Armenian ecclesiastics had made little or no opposition to the circulation of the Bible among the people, while some of the most prominent seemed to favor the work. In 1823 the agents of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Constantinople endeavored to secure the sanction of the Armenian patriarch for the printing and circulation of the New Testament in the modern, spoken Armenian tongue, the home language of most of the Armenians in Turkey. They were met with the severest opposition, and with threats of prohibiting the reading of the book if it should be issued.
Without attempting to follow the course of Bible publication, upon which depended the plan of reform for both the Armenian and Greek churches as well as for all the other races dwelling in the empire, suffice it to say that the hostility of the Armenian clergy, called forth by the publication of the modern Armenian version of the Scriptures, started a conflict, which waged throughout the country for more than a generation, as to whether that version was the true Word of God. The ancient Armenian Scriptures were translated from the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate while the modern versions were made from the Hebrew and Greek. For this reason there were many discrepancies between the two versions which were discussed everywhere. This drove the people to a careful study of the Bible. If it could be once established that the modern version was also the “Word of God,” there could be no hesitation upon the part of the Armenians in accepting it as such. This phase of the controversy passed fully forty years ago, and throughout the country this version is now accepted as Astvadsashoonch or the veritable Word of God. It was, however, for many years a vital question which commanded the attention and energy of the strongest men of the race.
The work of Bible translation and publication has continued under the patronage of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society until the entire Bible is now available for all Turkish, Arabic, Syrian, Persian, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek speaking peoples, and parts of the same are available for the Koords and Albanians. Nothing in the line of reform in Turkey has been more potent than the Word of God in the spoken languages of its many-tongued people, put up in cheap form and in convenient sizes and widely distributed in all parts of the empire. The Bible is not only welcomed by nearly all classes, but it is eagerly sought by many who are remotely informed of its contents but who are eager to investigate for themselves. It is an interesting fact that wherever the Bible, and especially the New Testament, has been most widely read, there the people have been the more determined to have modern educational facilities for their children and better prepared to welcome the better forms of Western civilization.
XV. LEADERS, METHODS,
AND ANATHEMAS
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.