Libmonster ID: U.S.-1883
Author(s) of the publication: Yulia Antonyan
Educational Institution \ Organization: Yerevan State University (Armenia)

Based on a field study of the Gegharkunik region of Armenia, the research addresses the process of building new churches in the context of contemporary social and economic life of the Armenian village. The main characters of the research are initiators and sponsors of the church construction, represented by several social types and, in particular, the type of an affluent emigrant, who thus wants to be represented at their home village with a new status. Building a church usually becomes a social project, through which they construct a positive image of themselves, strengthen the personal and family influence among local authorities and business people, thus becoming a part of the local elites, while being outside physically. Each new church has a "legend" which clarifies motives of the donator referring to such values as his piety, mystical connection to the saints, deference to the memory of ancestors, and compassion to people's needs. The main places of cult in villages of the region have always been family shrines, usually constructed in a form of a small chapel and devoted to a saint-protector. Newly-constructed church, therefore, eventually takes on functions of such a family shrine, regardless its sizes.

Keywords: church, Armenian Apostolic Church, church construction, charity, gift exchange, cult of the saints, migrants, elite, power.

WHAT can the sharp increase in church construction mean from the point of view of anthropology and sociology? Is it only about the increased degree of religiosity among the population, or about the need for people to belong to the church not only nominally? Or is this not the case at all?

Antonyan Yu. Social semiotics of "migrant" churches in Armenia / / State, religion, Church in Russia and abroad. 2016. N2. pp. 156-175.

Antonyan, Yulia (2016) "The Social Semiotics of the 'Migrant' Churches in Armenia", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 34(2): 156-175.

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According to information announced in May 2015 by Mkrtich Minasyan, Chairman of the Union of Architects of Armenia, the number of churches built in Armenia since the early 1990s is approaching one hundred and 1, with most of them occurring in the last decade. Large-scale construction of new churches is a common phenomenon not only in Armenia. In the former Soviet republics, such as Russia, Georgia and others, this process has become not less, but even more extensive. In this regard, a number of works have been published in the last decade that discuss the social and cultural context of this phenomenon. Thus, T. Kellner, in his works on businessmen and church parishes in Russia, considered donations for the construction of churches as one of the options for exchanging gifts between the church and entrepreneurs, the economic component of which is interpreted in terms of religious moral2. In her study of the Russian parish community, D. Tosheva turned to the topic of collective restoration of the church as a mechanism for creating parish and community identity.3 Addressing the phenomenon of building new churches in Georgia, P. Manning, in particular, considered the perception of old and new in the context of the dichotomization of sacred and secular, spiritual and material, to some extent contrasting the functionality of old churches and sanctuaries with new churches built with the help of oligarchic capital.4
One of the issues of the French-language magazine Archives de sciences sociales des religions5 is entirely devoted to the problems of the foundation and construction of places of worship, where the latter are considered in the context of a wide variety of situations (ethno-confessional conflicts and wars, multiculturalism, diaspora and migration, economic crisis, political and nationalist movements, etc.).) about-

1. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any official statistics on this issue.

2. Kollner, T. (2011) "Built with God or Tears? Moral Discourses on Church Construction and the Role of the Entrepreneurial Donations", in J. Zigon J. (ed.) Multiple Moralities and Religions and Post-Soviet Russia, pp. 191-213. New York: Berghahn Books.

3. Tosheva D. From the restoration of the church to the creation of a community: self-limitation and material difficulties as sources of parish identity / / Parish and community in modern Orthodoxy: the root system of Russian religiosity / Ed. by A. Agadzhanyan, K. Russele. Moscow: Vse mir, 2011, pp. 277-297.

4. Manning, P. (2008) "Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred Sublime, and Secular Objects", Ethnos 73(3): 327-360.

5. Archives de sciences sociales des religions (2010), Juillet-Septembre, 151.

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the main aspects of the topic around which the other articles of the issue are united are indicated. The research on the basis of which they are written is limited to the so-called religions of the Book (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), in which, as S. Andezyan notes, there is an initial refusal to specifically territorialize the divine presence and the practice of erecting religious buildings that "transfer" this presence through time and space. These structures are markers of political entities and serve to support collective identities, as well as materialize religious doctrines and conflicts between them.6 In general, these and other studies of the problem of the foundation, construction and functioning of new places of worship, in particular churches and mosques, lead to the basic conclusion that the causes and factors that stimulate this process are mostly in the field of the secular and instrumentalize the sacred in a wide variety of cultural, social and political contexts.

I have already addressed the topic of church building in my publications, considering it, in particular, as part of the analysis of the debate about the sacredness of old and new churches, the relationship between personal motives and social reasons for funding churches, 7 as well as levers and mechanisms for legitimizing and maintaining the power of major economic and political figures.8 In this article, I will try to examine the process of building new churches in a specific social context - the context of migrations, in particular, focusing on migrants as initiators and sponsors of church construction-a phenomenon that is widespread in Armenia almost everywhere.

* * *

Based on the perspective of the works of the above-mentioned authors, church construction can be considered not just as a part of

6. Andesian, S. (2010) "Introduction: Proces de Foundation", Archives de sciences sociales des religions 151: 10.

7. Antonyan, Yu. (2014) "Church, God and Society: Toward the Anthropology of Church Construction in Armenia", in A. Agadjanian (ed.) Armenian Christianity today, pp. 35-56. Farnham, GB: Ashgate.

8. Antonyan, Yu. (2015) "Political Power and Church Construction in Armenia", in A. Agadjanian, A. Jodicke, E. van Der Zveerde (eds.) Religion, Nation and Democracy in South Caucasus, pp. 81-95. London & New-York: Routledge.

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In the context of modern de-secularization processes, it includes many aspects related to modern social, political and cultural processes, sometimes not directly related to religion.

Social aspect. Church building in this aspect is a social practice that is closely related, first, to the practices of power and prestige, and secondly, to the practices and processes of organizing and reorganizing the community. In this case, we are interested in the social origin of the" builder " (ekeghetsi karutsogh - church builder, or hovanavor-patron), that is, the initiator and sponsor of the construction, the transformation of his place, status and role in society, his social motivations, the role and place of the church he built (emphasis on the word "im") in the community, transformations in the social structure of the community 9 due to the construction of the church. In the context of this aspect, it is also important how much and how the community participates in the formation of the newly built church as a communal sacred place, what processes of organization, self-organization and reorganization of the community take place during the construction of a new church. In the social aspect, a church / chapel can be considered as an object of social and ritual exchange (for example, a church in exchange for privileges and status). It is in this context that we consider, for example, the contributions of Russian businessmen to support (including the construction of) churches at Tobias Kellner's 10.

Mythological aspect. Here we are talking about how the narratives surrounding the construction of a church or chapel fit into the local mytho-religious context. In this case, narratives about miracles, dreams, visions, miraculous healings, etc. that accompany the appearance of a new sacred place are important, which justify its legitimacy as part of the local sacred space, give it a "name", and determine its belonging to the local ethos and social structure (for example, in the case of a new sacred place).-

9. For the purposes of this article, a community is generally understood as the population of the territorial and administrative unit (city, village) where the church is being built, with the exception of the construction of a Pentecostal church in the village of Lchashen described below, where a Pentecostal community refers to a group of Pentecostals living in that village.

10. Kollner, T. (2011) "Built with God or Tears? Moral Discourses on Church Construction and the Role of the Entrepreneurial Donations".

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a church, family, or gens) that delineates the functional framework of a saint, especially in connection with the saint to whom it is dedicated.

Ritual and symbolic aspect. In this case, the focus is on the extent to which the church/chapel externally and procedurally corresponds to its function, what ritual practices accompany its construction and further use, who and what role plays in the process of legitimizing the church as a sacred place, what can hinder this process, the extent to which the "correctness" of the operation of the new sacred space is controlled. places and what are the practices of supervision and care, how well the new church fits into the local ritual calendar from the very beginning and later, what is its status in terms of ritual use (for example, how prestigious it is to get married or baptize children), what external details of the church can determine its further ritual fate. In this sense, the already mentioned work of P. Manning on Georgian churches is of interest, which compares (including retrospectively) the narratives that develop around the "old" and "new" churches, determining the presence or absence of special "spiritual" qualities of the church, depending on the degree of its antiquity.11
Ideological and representative aspects. This aspect of the analysis affects more global levels of perception of the process of building churches in the context of religious, ethnic and national identity, ethno-cultural or civilizational representation, as well as against the background of the scale of values (which is more valuable: to build a church or, for example, a business enterprise?). This aspect can also affect inter-confessional relations, when the construction of a church becomes an ideological tool for competition between religious groups or as such in the fight against religious dissent. This also includes exploiting the process of building churches in the political field, in order to form an appropriate political image of the" sponsor " of the church.

Most of these aspects, or even all of them at once, may be relevant in the anthropological study of a particular subject.

11. Manning, P. (2008) "Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred Sublime, and Secular Objects", Ethnos 73(3): 327-360. Here it is appropriate to quote Sylvia Serrano's oral comment that the situation in Georgia has changed somewhat since P. Manning wrote this article, and new churches are gradually gaining legitimacy in the eyes of the flock.

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Only their detailed research can answer, in particular, the following questions that are relevant specifically to the situation in Armenia.

Why is the number of newly built churches growing with the population decreasing due to migration?

Why is it that a significant part of those who invest in the construction of churches in Armenia are not its permanent residents, and therefore, with a high degree of probability, they will not participate in the ritual life of the church, or this participation will be episodic and purely symbolic?

Why is it that despite the seemingly high degree of religiosity and declared membership in a religious community among the population, the number of churches built with community funds and community forces is negligible?12

Why do the vast majority of newly built churches reproduce the same traditional forms and never attempt to modernize their architectural solutions?

Just looking at these questions in general terms, we can understand that the church in their context appears as a material object endowed with certain symbolic and symbolic characteristics that make it an instrument in a complex network of social relationships between people, as well as between people and gods. Having analyzed below some special cases of construction or reconstruction of churches in the villages of Gegharkunik region from the point of view of some of the mentioned aspects, I will try to give the most complete interpretation of the questions raised from the point of view of field material.

This article is mainly based on field data collected in 2014 in Gegharkunik marz (administrative region) Armenia, although data from other marzes will also be presented for comparison or more complete argumentation. This is one of the most affluent regions of Armenia in terms of various manifestations of religiosity. In addition, it is interesting for its social situation as a region with one of the highest levels of seasonal migration in Armenia. Another feature is the presence of numerous communities of other religious trends: charismatic Christianity (Pentecostals), Jehovah's Witnesses and physically disappearing, but still preserved-

12. Here I can refer not only to generalized sociological research, but also to my own surveys of people and observations in the field.

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traditional religious groups of Molokans and subbotniks that preserve the cultural memory of themselves. These three factors played a major role in the selection of the field for analysis.

Although there are different types of churches newly built in Gegharkunik in terms of initiative and sponsorship, the focus in this article will be on churches built (i.e. initiated and funded) by migrants, firstly, because there are most of them, and secondly, these cases raise the questions raised above. In addition, I would like to point out that, in addition to the cases of building a church from scratch, I also took into account the cases of repairing and reconstructing existing old churches, since in most of the angles studied, these two phenomena coincide in semantic and symbolic contexts.

Anthropologists and sociologists study migration as a separate topic, mainly focusing on the social and cultural practices of migrants in the country of residence, their strategies of adaptation, socialization, inculturation, etc. However, in cases where migration takes on serious dimensions, it turns from a private phenomenon into a background phenomenon for the country of origin, which should be taken into account in research. Thus, in some villages of the Gegharkunik region, up to two-thirds of the population is in a state of permanent or temporary (seasonal) migration. This means that the daily life of the community, its social and cultural transformations are so closely connected with migration that it is this phenomenon that determines the new socio-cultural appearance of the village. A. Tadevosyan's research on various aspects of the relationship between migration and everyday life, for example, clearly demonstrates how seasonal migration forms new hierarchies in rural areas associated with prestige practices, creates new types and practices of accumulating social and cultural capital, regroups the labor force, especially male, and leads to the transformation of gender roles and the traditional institution of the family 13. However, the prestige practices of seasonal and permanent migrants are different. One of the goals of seasonal migrants is to earn money abroad, often by sharply lowering their social status and severe material and physical restrictions, to increase their income.

13. Tadevosyan, A. (2014) Migration and Everyday Life: Movement Through Cultures and Practices, pp. 95-107. Yerevan: Gitutiun.

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personal status in the native village, usually within the family-generic and age groups by demonstrating the main signs of improved material well-being (buying a foreign car, gold jewelry, home repairs, updating furniture, clothing, appliances, etc.)14. As for migrants who permanently reside in the country of emigration and only occasionally visit their native village, their prestige practices are completely different. As a rule, those who have remained permanently in another country are more likely to demonstrate in some way their high social and material status (real or imaginary), which they managed to achieve "there". Since, when visiting relatives for a while, they are in the position of guests, therefore, the demonstration of repairs, cars, and equipment is most likely not relevant or insufficient for them.

Instead or in addition to this, they seek to somehow make their name in the village have a significant character, so that instead of the status of just a guest (a former villager with an emphasis on the word "former") they received the status of an honorary guest, who is remotely included in the local elite and even occupies an important position in its structure. This is usually achieved by positioning oneself as a benefactor, and sponsoring mainly public institutions that are associated with basic values, and therefore are beyond criticism, and which are able to create wider publicity for their name (or the name of their family) and thus dramatically change their place in the local social structure (even if they do not have the right to do so). by being physically present in it). These can most often be institutions in the field of education or religion, that is, schools and churches, as well as everything that is functionally similar to them-chapels, sanctuaries, etc. According to our observations, in Gegharkunik, the religious sphere has a clear priority over the educational one. So, many philanthropists start with the construction of a church and only then move on to other areas (see the example below). Sponsorship can have different levels: from building a church from scratch to restoring existing churches or sanctuaries and equipment/updating the interior by donating church utensils, interior items, icons, etc. And such a sequence-

14. Tadevosyan, A. (2014) Migration and Everyday Life: Movement Through Cultures and Practices, pp. 95-107.

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the attractiveness of actions is not always related only to religious motivations.

Motivation for building a church is one of the most important issues in the context of this study. As a rule, it should not only reflect the positive image and image of the sponsor, but also become the basis for the image of the church itself. Therefore, making the motif into a specific narrative that accompanies the" legend " of the church is an obligatory part of the process. In most cases, motivations are associated with an unexpected mystical revelation of the special mission of this person (through a dream or vision). Thus, the mission of the benefactor is expressed in his mystical connection with the saints, who require the construction of a church/sanctuary. This motivation is not just ennobling, it gives a person an aura of sanctity, exclusivity, and selectness, which ultimately dramatically affects their status and perception in the village. The motive for building a sanctuary / church can be a tribute to the memory of our ancestors, the fulfillment of their wishes or dreams. So, for example, the church in the village of Kokhb in Tavush marz, according to its architect, was built by a migrant, a former resident of the village in memory of his father, who dreamed of having a church in the village. V s. Sarukhan of Gegharkunik marz, an example of which is described below, there are also cases of restoration/construction of the ancestral shrine in memory of the ancestors. Another characteristic motivation can be a vow made to God or a saint in gratitude for a service that is expected or already rendered (ensuring success in business, recovery from illness, saving lives). The church of Grigor Lusavorich in the village of Karmir was built by a former resident of the village, a migrant, with the hope of healing. Cave Sanctuary of St. John the Baptist. Hovhannes near the town of Gavar was also reconstructed by migrants who survived the accident in a foreign land.

However, motivational narratives do not include the social goals and motives of this activity, which migrants could not help but think about, and this is evidenced by a number of details (a detailed ktitor inscription on the church, involvement of the spiritual and power elites of the village and marz in the process of construction and celebrations for the foundation and opening of the church, active attraction of Based on this, it can be assumed that the social motive for building new churches is often not just the desire to demonstrate their material wealth and new status in the country of emigration, but rather the desire to take advantage of those opportunities.

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opportunities created by building a church in the context of acquiring power and high status in the homeland.

Let's try to illustrate the above with the example of the reconstruction and construction of two large churches in the village of Sarukhan. Sarukhan village of Gegharkunik region is one of the largest and oldest villages in Armenia. The village currently has one functioning church, one under construction and one reconstructed chapel of St. Tukhmanuk, which is quite large and comparable in size to the church. The current church of St. Gevorg, built in 1830 by immigrants from Bayazet, was thoroughly restored in 2008 by a migrant from the village, Usyk Petrosyan, who lives in Ukraine. The new Church of the Virgin Mary in the center is being built by another migrant, Araik Avetisyan, who settled in Kazakhstan. Both of these migrants are successful businessmen who also coordinate most of the migrant flows from the village. Unfortunately, we did not manage to find either of them, although they come to their homeland from time to time, but not often. However, we talked to the workers building the church, some of the villagers, and had a detailed interview with the local priest, Father Nerses, who has the most complete information about the process and details of building churches.

Father Nerses is very closely following all events in the village, one way or another related to the veneration of shrines, including the appearance of new ones. Judging by the interview, he himself has a keen interest in any manifestations of the sacred, even those that are usually not welcomed by the official church. Father Nerses is originally from Etchmiadzin, but during several years of working as a priest in the village, he managed to study the local population well, especially in the religious sphere. According to him, the history of the two churches is as follows. One of the migrants allegedly as a child, working as a shepherd and seeing an abandoned, dilapidated church, vowed that if the Lord would send him success and money, he would definitely restore this church. And when he became rich, he decided to fulfill his vow. As for the second migrant, according to Father Nerses, he had a vision of the Mother of God, after which he decided to build a church of the Mother of God in his native village. The bishop with whom he shared his wish advised him to rebuild the destroyed existing church (this was before the migrant who took the vow showed up). However, he refused, arguing that the church is known under the name of St. John the Baptist.

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Gevorg, and the Mother of God appeared to him, and, therefore, the new church should be dedicated to her.

The most interesting part of this story is the sequence of events. The first migrant recalled that he vowed to reconstruct the church, just when the construction of a new church by his "rival" began. They can be roughly called rivals because of the entire cohort of migrants, they were the most successful and to some extent secretly compete, demonstrating their financial and social capabilities. Both of them do not physically live in the village, and their business (mainly construction and trade) is connected with the village only indirectly, through the labor force that it supplies 15.

Further actions of the benefactor indicate that the construction of the church is a personal social project. After U. Petrosyan restored the church and paved the area around it. He asked the mayor of the village to provide him with a list of the most important problems of the village for a period of ten years, which he can help solve. To which the mayor replied that how can he give a plan for ten years, when he himself was elected for only five. This is a very characteristic correlation, when a rich migrant considers himself a benefactor of the village, and local authorities-only their assistants, while the mayor, on the contrary, tends to look at him as his own personal fund, thanks to the money of which he can strengthen his authority and power. In the end, such cooperation, despite the difference in perceptions, can be mutually beneficial in social terms. The same situation was found, for example, in the village of Garni in the Kotayk marz, where a migrant businessman, also perceived by the local authorities as a future "fund" for the village, first of all builds a church directly next to his house, right behind the fortress walls of a famous pagan temple, which is the main attraction and source of income of this city. sat down. Thus, the church, despite personal and family motivations, becomes to some extent the business card of a migrant entrepreneur in that he makes an application for the possession of a certain property.-

15. According to my assumption, which still needs to be confirmed by additional research, the coordination of migration flows is also to some extent a manifestation of the power that wealthy migrants seek.

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By sharing it with local authorities, it claims its share of influence in the countryside.

The second migrant benefactor in Sarukhan village, whose efforts are building a new church of rather impressive size, has not yet made such requests, but after a while, when the construction is completed and he has free funds, it is quite possible that the competition for influence will escalate. Even now you can notice a number of characteristic features. Thus, the construction is nominally supervised by his cousin and his friends from the village, who keep a group like "bratva" (akhperutyun), and their behavior and manner of communicating with people indicates a desire to demonstrate their "importance"16. At the same time, the team hired for construction works has nothing to do with the village, it is a team from Gyumri, which has a certain reputation in the field of church construction, which, according to the priest, built a chapel for baptism (mkrtaran) in Etchmiadzin, which gives weight and prestige to the future church. The master who is at the head of the team, named Basalt Ashot , is a hereditary builder specializing in spiritual buildings:

They are honest, God-fearing people, Leninakans (Leninakan is the Soviet name for Gyumri) are born builders, they know how to "talk to stone", as they say. Basalt Anyut says to me: "Brother, Father Nerses Can, here I go to church, light candles and expect that I will be rewarded for the way I work on the house of God. And if I steal cement and ask God to send me health, will he send it? It won't send it. (From an interview with fr. By Nerses.)

Father Nerses, speaking about the motivations of wealthy church sponsors, expressed himself as follows: :

Usually, when churches were built in the old days, they were limited to writing on one cross-stone "Remember Prince so-and-so". Now they write the first name, last name, and entire history. History is good for history, of course, but many people now build churches out of vanity. Let what I said not be addressed to Araik and Usyk, the church is valuable to them, since one made a vow, and the other had a vision. But many people build, just to say later: "Well done for being able to build a church!". One builds in memory of his father, the other builds for his brother, so that he can learn from them.-

16. This was noticeable in communication, in particular, with us, the researchers.

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they thought and repeated, well done, they say... But the church is still a blessing, it will remain standing and people will come there to pray.

Nevertheless, "noble" motivations help not only the sponsor, but also the church itself to establish itself as a sacred place. So, it is interesting that in the unfinished Church of Our Lady, which Arayik Avetisyan is building, according to his mystical vision, candles are already actively lit, although it is not only not consecrated, but also the main construction work on the construction of walls and roofs is not completed. As Father Nerses explains, the candles were allegedly lit by the workers themselves, and the villagers followed their example. The workers refer to the villagers who come and light candles.

So, two full-fledged churches will soon be functioning in the village, where two-thirds of the population is almost constantly located outside its borders, region and country. Who are these churches designed for? How intense is the competition for the flock expected to be? The answer to this question is closely related to the peculiarities of the perception of the functionality of the church in the socio-cultural environment under study.

To understand the whole gamut of attitudes to the church in an Armenian village, it is worth explaining that religious life in the village for many Soviet decades was focused on family and ancestral shrines, which continue to dominate as sacred places even today. For the most part, these are small in size (often no more than 2 m high, and an area of 1.5 - 2 sq.m) stone or concrete chapels located on the territory of the infield or directly adjacent to the house. The center of such a shrine (Surb or matur in Armenian) is a sacred object that embodies a saint: a fragment of a cross-stone, a handwritten book or part of it, the origin of which is connected with a miraculous story (salvation during a massacre, discovery in the ground due to a vision or dream). Veneration of such shrines, however, is not limited to the family or clan alone; neighbors and even pilgrims from other villages go there, especially if the shrine is famous for its miracle-working or healing of certain diseases.17 Suffice it to say that there are

17. There are the following publications on ancestral and domestic sanctuaries: Marutyan Kh . [The phenomenon of "domestic saints": history and modern manifestations] //

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There can be anywhere from 5-6 to several dozen shrines per village. Moreover, recently they have been actively continuing to occur, which again contributes to the phenomenon of migration. Many migrants, unable to invest a lot of money in construction, limit themselves to repairing, rebuilding family shrines or building new ones. Of the shrines we examined, almost every second one was built or reconstructed by a permanent or seasonal migrant.

Religious practices that have developed in connection with the veneration of domestic or ancestral shrines - lighting candles and offering gifts to the shrine (including sacrifices) Regardless of its status in the official church hierarchy, it is also easily transferred to new and old churches that are being opened. In fact, the extent to which the church is completed, whether it is ritually ready to perform its functions, does not matter, since in the perception of the villagers, it is not the building that is important, but the place itself, where the connection is found, for example, with the Mother of God, which functionally connects it with ancestral and domestic sanctuaries. And this "kinship" is manifested at various levels.

For example, despite the public and official status of the church reconstructed by Usyk Petrosyan, he and his family members also seem to perceive it in a family context. So, Usyk's brother once saw a church in a dream due to some personal experience, and upon awakening, he immediately got into a car and drove for several days from Ukraine to Armenia, so that, even without going to his relatives, he could come to "his" church. In the village of Atsarat, the family of a deceased migrant benefactor who repaired the roof of a local church, although they no longer live in the village for a long time, but constantly come in the summer and continue to invest in it in the form of gifts, interior details, paintings, perceiving the church as "their", "family" shrine. What is important is that the benefactor began to invest in this church after he was elected its pastor, i.e. godfather-a function usually assigned annually to respected, respected authors.-

[Armenian saints and sanctuaries / Edited by S. Harutyunyan, A. Kalantaryan. Yerevan: Khayastan], 2001. 337"347.; Stepanyan G. [On the border of reality and unreality: ways of opening "home saints" to residents] [Tradition and modernity in Armenian culture / Edited by S. Harutyunyan, A. Marutyan, S. Khobosyan, T. Hayrapetyan, and L. Abrahamyan], XVI, 2014. 249-257.

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It consists in the fact that during the feast of water consecration, celebrated on January 6 along with Christmas, kavor, or, more precisely, khachkavor ("godfather of the cross"), accepts a cross from the hands of a priest, which is taken out of the water, which means that he is expected to patronize the church for the current year. In fact, the family of the former khachkavor nevertheless continues to patronize the church, thereby maintaining the memory of their father and the authority of their family. However, the very fact that a person has been elected a khachkavor of the church speaks about his influence in the local social and political space, this is a very prestigious function that secures the high status of the candidate. The election takes place with a "long-range view", in return for certain financial and social obligations (financial support for the church and priest, public sacrifices, etc.).

Stories of migrants building or restoring churches can be found in almost every village. However, recently they have been actively "argued" with by representatives of local authorities and businesses (often united in one person). Sometimes members of the community actively participate in the construction work as paid labor, and sometimes, very rarely and for free, as a contribution, as, for example, in the reconstruction of the church in the village of Karmir (although even there the main amount of work and building materials were paid for by one person who initiated the reconstruction). But we have not seen any cases of restoring the church through community efforts, with money raised by the people or provided by at least a group of sponsors representing the community. However, in this context, it is worth considering the example of the village of Lchashen, where the construction of the Armenian Apostolic Church was considered by the mayor of the village, who initiated it, as a community initiative, since the main funds were taken by the mayor from the village budget. However, in reality, the construction itself is again closely related to the mayor's personality, since, according to him and his fellow villagers, building a church in the village was his long-standing dream, but he was not so lucky when he was a migrant and did not accumulate significant funds, but instead, having made a career as a mayor and Having gained access to community money, I saw this as an opportunity to fulfill my dream. He personally runs the construction project that he hired a construction company to do.

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However, before discussing the validity of the term "community initiative" in this case, it is absolutely necessary to mention the fact that in the same village there is already a precedent for the construction of a Protestant (Pentecostal) church, in which the entire Pentecostal community physically participated, contributing their best work to this event. And it is in the context of this event that the realization of the mayor's" dream "was more likely a reaction to the emergence of the Pentecostal church, and the reference to" community desire and means "was probably also a" response " to the organization of Protestant community participation. At the same time, there are two completely different understandings of the term "community". If the Pentecostal community refers to a group of fellow believers, then in the understanding of other villagers and the mayor, this is a purely administrative unit. In the first case, the community contribution was considered the physical labor of each member, and in the second - the official community budget, which is actually managed by the mayor of the village.

* * *

The above materials suggest that the ideas about the close connection of the shrine with family and ancestral roots, the perception of the church or shrine as an object of individual or family "exchange" with God and the saints are still relevant and make the construction of a church a purely individual enterprise and a means of achieving prestige and high personal status, which later extends to the family and

From the point of view of the manifestation of everyday religiosity, a community with a large number of family and ancestral shrines, by and large, does not particularly need a church as a place of worship. In fact, most of the time all reconstructed and newly built churches function in the same way as other local sanctuaries. Only three out of several dozen rural churches in the Gegharkunik diocese have their own permanent priest (there are only 20 of them in the diocese, including 18 bishops), and therefore they rarely perform church rituals in them. For example, the liturgy is served at best once a month, and in most cases - once every few months or less, and the rites of the church are performed only once a month. weddings, baptisms and funerals are free of charge-

18. The region is poor, sparsely populated, and it is extremely unprofitable to be a priest there in purely material terms.

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they are added as needed. If someone wants to order a baptism or wedding in a particular church, call one of the priests and agree on a specific day and hour. In other cases, the church is visited by those who live nearby, considering it as one of the local shrines, and worship is limited to lighting candles and offering gifts, as is customary in the case of other shrines. Accordingly, the saint after whom the church is named takes its place among the other saints to whom the local shrines of the village are dedicated. Moreover, the power and popularity of a saint does not depend on the size, high cost, or ritual legitimacy of the building associated with it.

Therefore, the fact that in a village where up to two-thirds of the population is absent most of the year, several churches and chapels have been built or are being built at once, does not contain anything surprising, since there are not enough family, ancestral, and local sanctuaries. Their appearance depends not on how much they are needed by people in the ritual sense, but on how much they are needed by saints, with whom people enter into individual mutually beneficial relations, especially if their social position in society and material well-being depend on these relations, and for migrants they mean the possibility of virtual return to their native village with a much higher than before, by social status.

* * *

Thus, when we study modern church construction, we encounter a whole range of social and cultural factors that allow us to view and interpret this phenomenon in a different way. Our material allows us to draw the following conclusions.

First, the mass construction of churches does not mean a qualitative change in everyday religiosity, since the functioning of new churches, due to the lack of a permanent clergyman and integration into the institutional network of the Armenian Apostolic Church, in many cases differs little or practically nothing from the local ones (vernacular) places of worship. The motivations for their construction are particularly similar, and the difference is often in what the builder had enough money for: a small chapel for a home or ancestral saint.-

page 172
either that or the church. In the mentioned village of Sarukhan, for example, you can find a cult building the size of an ordinary chapel (i.e. about two meters by two and a half), in which an altar was built and consecrated. This means that the building has the status of a church and theoretically it is possible to perform basic rites in it. However, few visitors have any idea about this, and the chapel functions exclusively as a family and ancestral sanctuary. Much larger churches, both newly built and old, have a similar function for the most part.

Secondly, the construction of a church in most cases (with very few exceptions) is perceived as an individual enterprise initiated for personal reasons. In his study of the cult of saints, Peter Brown just writes about how the Christian landscape emerged through the veneration of the dead, through the construction of sanctuaries on the burial sites of saints, many of which had family and ancestral significance.19 The communal aspect of building a church as a place of communal consolidation, joint worship, and maintenance of communal spirit is practically absent in the region we studied, while the nature of Orthodox or Protestant religiosity assigns a much greater place to community participation in the construction of a church, both in physical and material aspects. In Armenia, it is not only about the prevalence of individual charity, but also about the purposeful desire to connect the church with the name of a particular person or his family. This shows how significant the construction of a church can be in the context of its social status. It becomes particularly significant in the case of migrants or natives of the diaspora, for whom it is a real way to take root in a former or symbolic homeland with a much higher personal or family status than the one they previously possessed or have in the country of residence.

And finally, third, the construction of a church is least of all conditioned by the real needs of the community's religiosity. When building a church, no one pays attention to how many believers there really are in the village/city, how much the church will be in demand by people, especially if there is already another church available. For the Armenian Apostolic Church, each new building of the church means its symbolic presence, symbolic role in the development of the Armenian Orthodox Church.

19. Brown, P. (1981) The Cult of the Saints, pp. 1-22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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the expansion of its influence, regardless of how actively this new church will function. The collaboration between the" builders " of churches and the Armenian Apostolic Church clearly shows a successful combination of ideological and individual motivations, the link between which is the peculiarities of the religious identity of Armenians, for whom (as it has been repeatedly noted in various studies on the Armenian ethno-confessional identity) religion in many cases practically merges with ethnicity and becomes the main tool for maintaining identity. For migrants and natives of the diaspora, this confluence is much stronger and more pronounced. Often (but certainly not in all cases) this factor - the maintenance and demonstration of "correct" identity - is associated with the tendency to reproduce the same forms and structures recognized as "traditional"21.

Bibliography / References

Tosheva D. From the restoration of the church to the creation of a community: self-restraint and material difficulties as sources of parish identity / / Parish and community in modern Orthodoxy: the root system of Russian religiosity / Edited by A. Aghajanyan and K. Russele, Moscow: Vse mir Publ., 2011, pp. 277-297.

Marutyan A. [The phenomenon of "domestic saints": history and modern manifestations] //

20. См., например, Abrahamyan, L. (2006) Armenian Identity in a Changing World, p. 112. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda; Siekierski, K. (2010) "Religious and National Identitites in Post-Soviet Armenia", in I. Borowik, M. Zawila (eds.) Religions and Identities in Transition, pp. 155-157. Krakow: Nomos.

21. The question of why the architectural solutions of newly built churches are dominated by forms that are considered traditional is not properly addressed in the text, since the answer to it requires the use of broader material than the one on which this article is based. In particular, in April 2013, a three-day forum dedicated to this very topic was organized in Yerevan, which was attended by all the leading architects who are involved in the design of new churches. A large number of opinions, including contradictory ones, were expressed on this issue, but the question of modernizing the forms remained open. One of the widely voiced opinions about the need to reproduce traditional structures lay in the plane of functionality and symbolism of the church, the other-in the plane of identity, that is, more specifically, it was about preserving the" recognition " of the Armenian church against the background of others, its external uniqueness, compliance with common stereotypes of its perception. At the same time, no attempt has been made to understand which historical stage in the evolution of the architectural forms of the Armenian Church is "traditional" and why.

page 174
Armenian saints and sanctuaries / Edited by S. Harutyunyan, A. Kalantaryan. Yerevan: Khayastan], 2001. 337-347.

Stepanyan G. [On the border of reality and unreality: ways of opening "home saints" to residents] / / [Tradition and modernity in Armenian culture / Edited by S. Harutyunyan, A. Marutyan, S. Khobosyan, T. Hayrapetyan, and L. Abrahamyan], XVI, 249-257.

Abrahamyan, L. (2006) Armenian Identity in a Changing World. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda.

Andesian, S. (2010) "Introduction: Proces de foundation", Archives de sciences sociales des religions 151: 10.

Antonyan, Yu. (2014) "Church, God and Society: Toward the Anthropology of Church Construction in Armenia", in A. Agadjanian (ed.) Armenian Christianity Today, pp. 35-56. Farnham, GB: Ashgate.

Antonyan, Yu. (2015) "Political Power and Church Construction in Armenia", in A. Agadjanian, A. Jodicke, E. van Der Zveerde (eds.) Religion, Nation and Democracy in South Caucasus, pp. 81-95. London & New-York: Routledge.

Archives de sciences sociales des religions (2010), Juillet-Septembre, 151.

Brown, P. (1981) The Cult of the Saints. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kollner, Т. (2011) "Built with God or Tears? Moral Discourses on Church Construction and the Role of the Entrepreneurial Donations", in J. Zigon (ed.) Multiple Moralities and Religions and Post-Soviet Russia, pp. 191-213. New York: Berghahn Books.

Manning, P. (2008) "Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred Sublime, and Secular Objects", Ethnos 73(3): 327-360.

Marutian, Kh. (2001) "'Dan so'wrp' er&o'wh't'y. Ago'wnqneri harcy & merorh'a trs&o'ro'wmnery" [The phenomenon of the "home saint": origins and contemporary manifestations], in S. Arutiunian, A. Kalantarian (eds) Hah'o'c srpery & srpavah'rery [Armenian saints and sanctuaries], pp. 337-347. Yerevan: Hayastan.

Siekierski, K. (2010) "Religious and National Identitites in Post-Soviet Armenia", in I. Borowik, M. Zawila (eds.) Religions and Identities in Transition, pp. 155-157. Krakow: Nomos.

Stepanian, G. (2014) "Sdep'anh'an K. Iragani & aniragani sahmanakdzin. "Dan srperi" hah'dvelo'w tz&ery dnecinerin" [On the borderline of the real and irreal: ways the "home saints" reveal themselves to the houshold members], in S. Atuiunian, A. Marutian, S. Hobosian, T. Ayrapetian, L. Abrahamian (eds) Avantagany & artiagany Hah'o'c mshago'wh't'o'wm [Tradition and modernity in Armenian culture]. Vol. XVI, pp. 249-257. Yerevan: Gitutiun.

Tadevosyan, A. (2014) Migration and Everyday Life: Movement through Cultures and Practices. Yerevan: Gitutiun.

Tosheva, D. (2011) "Ot vosstanovleniia khrama k sozdaniiu obshchiny: samoogranichenie i material'nye trudnosti kak istochniki prikhodskoi identichnosti," [From church rebuilding to the creation of a community: material shortage as a source of parish identity], in A. Agadzhanian, K. Russele (eds.) Prikhod i obshchina v sovremennom pravoslavii: kornevaia sistema rossiiskoi religioznosti, pp. 277-297. Moscow: Ves' mir.

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