I have been personally involved in advocacy for Armenians and Assyrians in particular for just about 30 years, as I began to become interested in their stories in my sophomore year of high school. There are several things that sparked this interest, and I want to begin by talking about some of those. First, there is my love of true history, which goes back to when I was very young. Remember - as do many of my old classmates I went to elementary school! - I was the kid who read a whole set of World Book Encyclopedias through several times (not to mention the old 1960's set of Grollier's my grandmother had at her house), and I developed a deeper sense of appreciation for history. It was my best subject all the way through school, and I still enjoy reading various aspects of it today. A second factor to mention is the Judeo-Christian mindset which was fostered by the environment I was raised in - although I didn't officially become a Christian myself until I was 16 years of age, I was exposed to faith and had read the entire Old Testament through by the time I was 12. It is a worldview that is very much a part of my personal identity, and still governs how I perceive things today, which is something I will not regret nor apologize for. That worldview also made me more appreciative of the Jewish people as well as quite interested in and empathetic to persecuted Christian minorities. As a result, I have always had a very dim view of Islam, and the more I learn the more Islam repulses me personally as a person of Christian faith. I also have a low opinion of secularization, although I am slightly more tolerant of it. A third factor of note in shaping my perspective on all this is my own roots. Although I didn't really discover all the riches of my family tree until much later (around the year 2004 to be exact) what I did know is that something about me was unique, but unfortunately I could never put my finger on what exactly that was nor could I substantiate myself in a conversation about it until very recently until I was able to chart a traceable and verifiable pedigree of my heritage which confirmed some things about myself I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams. Therefore, this combination of a love of historical research, a deeply-ingrained Judeo-Christian worldview and convictions, and a feeling of special purpose I had since I was quite young began to manifest itself in many facets of my own life, some progressively and some profoundly. And, that is where my work over the years with Armenians and Assyrians comes into the picture.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school in 1987, our class had a very gifted (although politically liberal!) teacher by the name of Ann Robb who, unbeknownst even to her, introduced me to something that would change my life. The class was a World Cultures high school course, and Miss Robb had a way of really drawing out people's interests in things, and she really got my attention for some reason when we were discussing in the class about Byzantium. When the Western Roman Empire just sort of disintegrated in the 6th century, Rome itself did not, but rather lived on in the East - due to its location though, the Empire became far less Roman and increasingly more Greek, and it was also a very Christian empire that fostered and preserved a very rich spiritual heritage that we see reflected in the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches today. That incarnation of the Roman legacy lived on for almost another thousand years, until the Ottoman Turks shattered it in the year 1453. When I began learning more about the legacy of Byzantium, I fell in love with it - to me, it was the ideal Christian state. Ironically, at that time I was a Southern Baptist, but since an early age I was also drawn to sacramental/liturgical expressions of faith, and the Orthodox Church embodied something about that which I could not escape - the beauty of the liturgy, its richness, and the story of perseverance in the face of great adversity and persecution (first by Islam and later by Communism) attracted me, and in time it would lead to my own growth into a Catholic Christian identity. However, as I studied about Byzantium, I also learned of other very important Christian ethnic groups in the region which had suffered great oppression under Islamic domination, yet they survived, and that impressed me more. One of those groups was the Armenians, and I now want to talk about them briefly.
Until 1987, I had very little knowledge of who or what an Armenian was. The only two references I had came from a bad political cartoon and a popular Rosemary Clooney hit record from the early 1950's. The cartoon I recall seeing in an old Newsweek back around 1980-81, and it depicted an Armenian character trying to commit suicide with an electric razor. Looking back on it, I am stunned at the fact that a "mainstream" news publication like that would publish something so racist and nasty, and although I wanted to share it here for reference, I was kind of relieved I didn't find it in a Google search - that thing needed to be destroyed. The song in question by Rosemary Clooney on the other hand was her immensely big hit recording of a song called "Come on a-My House," which was actually composed by two Armenian-Americans, cartoonist legend Ross Bagdasarian (who created the character of David Seville of the Chipmunks) and his cousin, beloved author William Saroyan. The story behind Rosemary Clooney's recording of that song, which was the idea of Mitch Miller, who was the A & R man at Columbia Records at the time and threatened to can Clooney if she refused, was that when she recorded the song, it was supposed to be in an Armenian accent as inspired by its composers. Since Clooney had no clue as to what an Armenian was, she recorded the song singing with an Italian accent instead, and it made recording history. It is a cute song, featuring famed harpsichordist Johnny Guarneri's talent (Guarneri, over a decade earlier, was also featured with Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five, and their recording of "Summit Ridge Drive" is a big band classic), but it is the product of two very iconic Armenian-American composers. I knew of that also due to the fact I was collecting vintage music since I was 12. Those two references were the only thing to that point that I knew about Armenians, and that was scant at best. However, thanks to a gifted high school history teacher who stimulated my interest in the Byzantine legacy, I was about to learn a lot about them. But, I wanted to go back to that offensive cartoon for a bit, as I have my own axe to grind with that.
The fact that a major publication like Newsweek ever allowed such an offensive cartoon to be published revealed two things for me. First, although that was around 1980, it showed how much the US was manipulated by a powerful Turkish lobby (and this was even before Turkish concubines like Steve Cohen were elected to our Congress!), Second, it reveals that even back then, those who call themselves "liberals" or "progressives" are some of the biggest hypocrites when it comes to the whole issue of racism. Some of the crazy things they have been labeling as "racist" recently (peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate brownies, marble statues, and now even clean streets - for that I refer you to this article about a mentally-unbalanced Seattle councilman who had problems with cleaning disease-causing excrement and urine stains off public sidewalks; it can be found at http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/07/13/seattle-councilman-criticizes-plan-to-hose-excrement-off-sidewalks-because-its-racially-insensitive/?utm_content=bufferb6fde&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer) are so ridiculous that a sane person would not be able to keep a straight face hearing them drone on about it, but then they allow crap like an anti-Armenian cartoon to be published in a major "mainstream" news rag because Armenians are not as important as their powerful Turkish Islamic friends. It makes me think this world is getting either stupider, scarier, or both. I have also seen these same "progressives" wail and flail about perceived "anti-Islamism" in the US, but the same people totally ignore the slaughter of thousands of Assyrian Christians by the demonic hordes of ISIS. Women are degraded, treated as mere property, and depersonalized in the grossest way in Islamic lands, yet our self-professed "feminists" in this country are more obsessed with killing babies and the right of some hairy lesbians to cross-dress and inappropriately use men's rooms in public places. Really people? It is also ironic that these same "progressives" are hell-bent on condemning Israel for being in a land that their ancestors possessed for about 3900 years, yet they say nothing about the fact that Turks invaded and displaced Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and others who have been in Asia Minor for thousands of years. I guess barbaric Turkish Muslims are more important than persecuted Jews in their eyes - oh well! I have already done a study on my theological blog about why I believe Turkey is what Ezekiel 38-39 is talking about, but since writing that and seeing the erratic and unpredictable actions of Erdogan recently, I am more convinced than ever that Turkey fits that description of Gog/Magog in the passage. At some point, I will be revisiting that in my theological blogs, so check back on that one. Ironically, it is not just "progressive liberals" who act like this either - some self-professed conservatives are unfortunately equally as ignorant, and are willing to give Erdogan a free hand while having Cold War flashbacks at the very mention of Vladimir Putin's name - that makes even less sense to me. As Americans, we have one of the most ill-informed populations when it comes to current events and world issues, and both liberals and conservatives are guilty of that sin. That is why, thankfully, there are some of us who can see beyond certain manifestations of "group-think" and can see a fuller picture, and I thank my Armenian and Assyrian friends for helping me see it too. Now, back to the story.
As I mentioned, it was through reading about the Byzantine legacy that I learned about Armenians, and I decided to contact the Eastern Diocese of their Church in New York to get more information. Shortly after writing and sending the letter, I received a huge package of material, chock-full of booklets, pamphlets, and other material, from the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church. Within that material was a small booklet about the Armenian Genocide, and I read that first. Mind you, I was 17 years old at this point and had never heard about any of this, so I was learning about the Genocide for the first time in my life. As I read this material, I was horrified - the atrocities committed against Armenians by the Turks for simply being Armenians was on a horrifying scale that would not be seen again until Hitler initiated the "Final Solution" some 24 years later in Nazi Germany (and, come to find out, what the Turks did to Armenians and others inspired Hitler's own atrocities against the Jews too). I had never been particularly fond of the Turks anyway, but what I was starting to learn really caused me to have indignation against them - I had always seen them as somewhat barbaric, too Muslim, and even untrustworthy (before any butt-hurt "political correct" police nail me for that statement, let me also say that I know good Turks too who are decent human beings, and this in no way should be construed to be reflected upon them as a race, but rather condemns an official act of their empire against groups of people they hated). Then, as I continued reading, I came across some other references to these "Assyrians" of the Hakkari Mountains of Eastern Turkey who were also slaughtered by the thousands, and that really got my attention. This now leads to the next part of the story.
In reading both the Old Testament and my various history textbooks I had been assigned to read up to that point, I knew of the ancient Assyrian Empire of antiquity. This is the empire of a ruthlessly-efficient warrior people who at one time conquered most of the civilized Near East, led by great kings such as Shalmanezer, Ashurbanipal, Tiglath-Pileser III, and Sargon II. These were also the people noted for the famous "winged bull" statues like the one below:
I also knew the Assyrians were the people the Prophet Jonah preached to in their capital city of Nineveh, causing one of the greatest spiritual renewal movements of all time. But, outside of that, I knew little if anything. If you read most history books on the subject (even religious ones), the Assyrian Empire was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 612 BC, and for some reason most historians had the Assyrians as a people just sort of going "poof!" and disappearing off the face of the earth. For one thing, that makes no sense whatsoever, because no nation, even a conquered one, just simply vanishes - logic dictates that the Assyrians had to have survived and gone somewhere. As it turns out, they actually did - in subsequent centuries after the fall of the classical Assyrian Empire, the remnants of the Assyrians eventually formed several small kingdoms, of note being the Kingdom of Oeshroene, which was centered around the city of Edessa, and a little further east the Kingdom of Adiabene. These two little states would later become significant, as they would be the first people to accept the message of the Gospel en masse, and there is a whole legend even behind that - legend has it that one of their kings, Abgar Ukomo (meaning "the Black," possibly due to a skin discoloration from a debilitating disease), was said to have heard about Jesus from traveling merchants, and that Jesus was facing a lot of flak from the Jewish religious leaders. Somewhat touched by the story, Abgar offers to let Jesus come to his kingdom, as His message would be welcomed, and he sent a letter to Jesus communicating this information. Jesus was obviously touched by the gesture of this sincere king, but had to decline due to the nature of the Kerygma, but He supposedly sent to Abgar a cloth with the likeness of His face on it, and when Abgar received that cloth, it healed him. After that, the king and his whole nation accepted the Christian message, hence why Assyrians are predominantly Christian even to this day. Many people dismiss the Abgar story as semi-fiction or even all fiction, but there seems to be a Gospel passage that collaborates the story in John 12:20. The passage records that a certain number of "Greeks" (which may refer to any Gentile people and not merely ethnic Greeks) who came up for a Jewish religious festival in Jerusalem, and they approached St. Philip the Deacon and Apostle about it. When Jesus heard, His response was that His mission of salvation needed to be fulfilled, as He predicted His own death in the passage. This being the case, could those "Greeks" have been in reality Abgar's emissaries? That is definitely worth a theological discussion, and I mention it here because it could give some relevance to the Abgar narrative too. The Assyrians today point to that moment as being when they as a people became Christian, and it definitely may have some substance. Anyway, those were some things that convinced me that Assyrians still existed, and as the story progresses, I would get to know many of them in the coming years.
Two icons depicting King Abgar receiving the cloth Jesus sent him that would heal his ailment.
In addition to reading about these Assyrians in the literature I received from the Armenian Church, I also caught a passing reference to them in a Southern Baptist missions brochure about reaching out to Middle Eastern Americans, and in it there was a reference to Assyrians as a "non-Arabic people," which was actually very accurate. I desired at that point to learn more about these Assyrians, so I started digging. At that time, I had in my small library then a book compiled by Frank Mead entitled Handbook of Denominations in the US, and lo and behold, there was an entry in it for the Assyrian Church of the East! Now, this was the mid-1980's, and although Mead's book was a good reference, it was also grossly out of date. I discovered that when attempting to write to find out more about this Assyrian Church. Mead's book listed its headquarters as being on Remsin Street in San Francisco, and also that Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII was the Patriarch-Catholicos of the Church. In the early 1970's, at around the time Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq, the Assyrian Patriarch was Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, and he was exiled to the US, where the Assyrian Patriarch would reside for over 20 years. However, when I was receiving this information, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII was long dead, having actually been assassinated some years earlier. The actual Patriarch-Catholicos of the Church then was Mar Khananiah Dinkha IV, and although he was in the US then, he was actually in Chicago and not San Francisco. When the letter I sent was returned as undeliverable, I found that out by contacting the offices of the National Council of Churches in New York, and they gladly provided me with the correct information. Since I was supplied with a phone number, I decided to call in order to expedite things, and on the other end of the phone was a verbose but genial priest by the name of Fr. Charles Klutz (Fr. Klutz was the Bishop's secretary, and a non-Assyrian; like myself, his forebears were Sephardic Anusim Jews from Portugal). A couple of weeks after talking with Fr. Klutz, I received a package in the mail containing several issues of the Church magazine, Voice of the East, as well as a small informative booklet summarizing the history of the Assyrian Church. However, I would have much more to learn, and that I would once I got into college - I found out that there were also Assyrian political organizations, and in the fall of 1989 (my freshman year of college) I was able to contact a gentleman named Dr. Sargon Dadesho, and he happened to have two books which gave me a lot more information on the Assyrians - I was able to get those, as well as a number of copies of his Bet Nahrain magazine, and in the process I also made a dear friend. I would actually meet Dr. Dadesho in California six years later, and he was a nice gentleman to meet in person. Over the years I have also maintained a warm friendship with Fr. Klutz, who has long since retired and still lives in Chicago. Those contacts were my first with the Assyrian community, the first of many.
In the early 1990's I was very passionate about working with Assyrians, and for a long time I even thought I had a call to minister to their communities. I learned all I could about them, including their liturgies, their music, etc. However, sometime around the beginning of 1996, a series of events caused a lot of personal chaos in my life, and for many years my passion laid dormant in regard to the Assyrians and Armenians. Sure, I still believed in their national convictions, and I advocated for them where I could, but the earlier passion just was not there. However, thanks to many things in recent months, it has been rekindled, and now it has taken on a more personal dimension for me which is why I write this now.
I mentioned before about how I am a fan of Star Trek, and my favorite series of the whole franchise is without a doubt Deep Space Nine. DS9 centers its plot on the character of Captain Benjamin Sisko, who arrives at an old abandoned space station built by an oppressive race of people called Cardassians around a planet they occupied for many years called Bajor. The Bajorans are a recently-liberated but also emotionally-scarred people who now have to rediscover who they are after years of persecution and discrimination at the hands of their Cardassian conquerors, and coincidentally Sisko is also a bit scarred too - he had lost his wife sometime earlier in a battle with a nasty race of transhuman cyborgs called the Borg, and he was a broken man. Then, a "wormhole" opens near the station, and when he explores it, he enters a transdimensional realm of incorporal beings that the Bajorans call their "Prophets." The Bajoran religious texts foretell of an "Emissary" who would enter the "Celestial Temple" and communicate with their "Prophets," and when the Bajoran people hear what has happened, they proclaim Sisko as this "Emissary." It is a role he is reluctant to take on, but then something happens - he comes to forge a very close bond with Bajor and its people, and in due time he comes to discover that his own mother was sort of "possessed" by one of these "Prophets" and that he is indeed chosen by them to be their "Emissary." The whole series of DS9 is about the concept of destiny, a word I understand with a meaning I appreciate, but that I personally do not like to use. In the final season of the series, as the "Prophets" have more frequent communication with Sisko, one of the things they tell him is "You are of Bajor." As I watched that, something in the core of my being resonated with the message that fictional program was communicating, and all of a sudden I am finding myself thinking for the first time in years about Armenians and Assyrians! At around the time I was re-watching the whole DS9 series with Barbara, The Promise was opening in theatres. Events come together for a reason, and I was about to find out even more about that very soon.
One of the things I like to do is I work a lot on my own genealogy. I decided recently to take up doing a little of that again since I needed to divert myself from some stressful situations, and again, the timing could not have been more perfect. Back in 2004, when I did some very extensive work on my family tree, I found out that my paternal grandmother's family was descended from nobility - we have a lineage on that side of the tree that goes back well over one thousand years, and I am a blood descendant of not only Charlemagne, but also William the Conqueror, St. Vladimir, and even the notorious Eleanor of Aquitaine. Another section of that family tree I researched recently uncovered something of great personal significance to me, and it was just the thing I needed to rekindle my own passion of helping Armenians and Assyrians. A branch of the family tree entails the lineage of the de Percy family, the Counts of Leicester. As I began to research back into that branch of the tree, I discovered that they were descended first from the family of a Basque-Navarrese king named Alphonso VII of Leon (1105-1157). Alphonso VII was married to a Polish princess of the Piast Dynasty by the name of Richeza of Poland (1140-1185). Richeza's 4th great-grandmother was Matilda of Germany (d. 1045) who was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto (955-983) and his wife Theophano Skerina (956-991), who was the daughter of a Byzantine nobleman Konstantine Skleros (930-989). And, this is where it gets very interesting! Konstantine Skleros was a cousin of Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes (925-976), who was of Armenian heritage, as well as the grandson of Bardas Mamikonian, the scion of an Armenian noble family. Although I am still researching the details of all this, if it all can be confirmed, then I have Armenian blood in my veins, and what a blessing that is! The rest of this legacy is also fascinating as Theophano's mother was of another royal Byzantine family, the Phokas, but that is for another story. However, not only does that give me Armenian heritage, but it also connects me to my beloved Byzantium by blood!
Statue of the Empress Theophano.
This is where it ties into Sisko's story - as Sisko had a great heritage by blood tying him to the Bajoran "Prophets," thus making him truly "of Bajor," my connection to the Armenians is now a blood one as well, making me "of Armenia." It solidifies a long-standing connection I have had with both the Armenians and Assyrians for many years now, and it gives me a renewed sense of purpose knowing that I have a connection to these people in a more familial way. That resolve has awakened in me a renewed sense and appreciation of destiny (although I still dislike that word), and with that, a lot of answers have been provided for me as to what I now need to do and the direction I need to go. Now, it just entails waiting for more specific direction as to what move to take next, and that is totally up to God Himself, who orchestrated all this to come together in the first place.
There are probably some among you reading this today who may be wondering "do I have a special calling, a destiny?" Having faced that question myself, my only real advice to you is to do two things. First, look within yourself, as you may already have the answer in front of you or even within you. Secondly, I would encourage serious reflection on your part - it is important to know what makes you "tick," as certain passions for something beyond yourself may reveal a lot about what your vocation in life should be. This is where maybe knowing your roots, keeping journals, and other practices can be valuable assets. A destiny or a legacy (a rule of thumb to remember also - legacy is destiny in retrospect) is something that is probably the most valuable thing you have been given, so it is important to learn what it is and find out what is making it possible. Things about you - your likes, dislikes, passions, dreams, etc. - are not there by accident; God gave you those things for a reason. For years, they may drive you nuts, as you will feel the frustration of knowing you have to do something, but have no clue as to what or how to go about doing it. Prayer and seeking direction is obviously a good place to start, but there is more to it than that - know what really captures your interest, learn about it, and much may be revealed. I don't have all my answers yet either, and many of us may not until just before we draw our last breath in this life, but the goal is to learn more than what you knew before as your life progresses. Doing that, one day you will have one of those Aha moments where everything will clear and make sense. That is quite a feeling when that happens, and it may happen many times, but don't be dismissive of it. If this encourages you today, then perhaps telling you about my situation will help yours. I will see you again soon.
