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.