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Knarik O. Meneshian
Knarik O. Meneshian was born in Austria. Her father was Armenian and her mother was Austrian. She received her degree in literature and secondary education in Chicago, Ill. In 1988, she served on the Selection Committee of the McDougal, Littell “Young Writers” Collection—Grades 1–8, an anthology of exemplary writing by students across the country.” In 1991, Knarik taught English in the earthquake devastated village of Jrashen (Spitak Region), Armenia. In 2002–2003, she and her late husband (Murad A. Meneshian), lived and worked as volunteers in Armenia for a year teaching English and computer courses in Gyumri and Tsaghgadzor. Meneshian’s works have been published in "Teachers As Writers, American Poetry Anthology" and other American publications, as well as Armenian publications in the U.S. and Armenia. Knarik is the author of A Place Called Gyumri: Life in the Armenian Mountains. She has also authored a book of poems titled Reflections, and translated from Armenian to English Reverend D. Antreassian’s book titled "The Banishment of Zeitoun" and "Suedia’s Revolt" She began writing at the age of 12 and has contributed pieces to The Armenian Weekly since her early teens.
Latest posts by Knarik O. Meneshian (see all)
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Dear Knarik,
Thank you for the very informative article about the Armenian deaconeses. We have often argued about this subject. I think it would be great if more women joined because we have a shortage of priests and this would help the church in keeping more young children and adults involved. As usual you have done a great job. God Bless you.
Joyce Yeremian
Providence
The best and most informative article I ever had about the Armenian
deaconeses.
As a member of Hamazkayin western region board, I would like to congratulate you knarig for a great and informative article and I would like to thank and congratulate also our Hamazkayin brothers and sisters in Chicago for organizing such an important program.
Job well done.
This was a very interesting article. I don’t know that much about the Armenian Church’s history, so this was very informative.
Oh, wow. This is exactly the point at issue in the Western Churches at present. I had something to say about ordained deaconesses here: http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/fabio/book7.5.htm . But I had no idea of the existence of consecrated deaconesses in the ancient Armenian Church.
I love how you speak of the importance of knowing one’s historyband how we are forgotten and nothing without our past, yet you yourself lie a mislead people with your altered vision of what happened around 301 AD. You said “magnificant things happened” after Armenia adopted Christianity and that some churches were built over ruined pagan temples… that’s what I call a distortion of history. You mean Christianity sparked a civil war in which half our culture, people and most of our pagan temples were destroyed.
Dear Knarik,
I am so happy to see your article – live history well documented , pictures.
And thank you Decon Greg Kandra for your article on Deacon’s bench .
Thank you for a great piece!
Armenian women have been complicit, especially iN Armenia but in diaspora as well, in their own oppression. As Jimmy carter just noted, the (Christian) church, by not letting woman be priests, contributes to their abuse and subservience.
We Armenians like to consider ourselves a persecuted people. So let us start by showing by example: ordain women not just deacons but priests and begin to marry same-sex couples. Then you can croon about having a tolerant culture, not just being a bunch of massacred have-beens…
Very interesting article. There is certainly a need for more female participation in the leadership of our church and it seems that the precedence exists! Let’s all imagine what the church might be like if all those willing to commit to serve in pastoral, ministerial, diaconate or teaching positions could do so regardless of sex.
And Bravo Sako–not only did Christianity destroy the pagan religion (which may have been necessary to distinguish themselves form the Zaroastrian Persians–but surely wholsale destruction was not the only option) but it introduced all of the sexually and socially repressive practices that belong to the so-called great Judeo-Christian tradition, which need one remind anyone, spawned the wonderfully tolerant expressions of Islam which we are now witnessing globally. Abriss Yalla’ we would be better off without a church and without (this type of) religion. Period.
I appreciate that Christopher’s throw off line – “we would be better off without a Church” – might be engineered to provoke, but we would not be Armenian without the Churches. We would not exist at all.
We would have been assimilated into Islam or other forms of spiritual and physical death. This space would not be called “Highland Pagan Weekly.” It would not exist. It would not be read.
Thanks beyond measure to God, our Saints, Catholicoi, Bishops, Priests, Badvelis, Deacons, Martyrs, and faithful for giving us our lives and nation as much as our parents and families.
Sako and Christopher
It looks like you have no clue of the importance of the church in the existence of the Armenian nation.
Yes not everything was or is peachy but without Christianity and the church, Armenians would’ve not have an identity today, we would’ve been Muslims with no alphabet and no culture, take Turks and Persians for example, no one remembers the Seljuk Turks nor the great Persian empire.
We should be proud of who we are we kept our identity for thousands of years , thanks to Christianity .
“Deaconess Sasunian was invited to Lebanon in 1990 by His Holiness Catholicos Karekin I to found a new Sisterhood…”
It should be His Holiness Catholicos “Karekin II” (while serving in Antelias) & not “Karekin I” (while serving in Echmiadzin).
Sako and Christopher, I think you are missing the fine point. The problem may not be with the Christian faith but with its leadership. There is plenty of evidence that women once did and could once again play a larger role in the Armenian church, for the betterment of the church.
Christopher, how can you suggest that any Christian, Armenian or otherwise, perform marriages for same-sex couples to be “tolerant”? They would be insane and immoral to do so. Don’t you know what the Bible says about homosexuality? Read all about it in Genesis 19 (Sodom and Gommorah). And if you can’t figure out how horrible it is to God from that account, try reading I Corinthians 6:9-20 (all about the wicked who will not inherit the kingdom and sexual immorality). Or read Romans 1:18-32, where it describes the chronology of events that leads to homosexuality. Or I Timothy 1:10. The list goes on and on. Now, if you are not a Christian, that is fine: you are not held to this understanding. But if you call yourself a Christian, then you (as well as the Armenian priest/minister) are held to the standard that God sets out in the Bible.
Lauren:
Only a crazed zealot in this day and age quotes scripture from 3000 years ago. I cannot figure out if you are being serious or humorous. But everyone is allowed to their opinions, even Nazis. The bible also textually says Jews should stone other Jews who eats shrimp or pork ! Asking for tolerance and equality is to my mind, the most Christian of values.
As for Jacque: I think you should be careful of whom you accuse of not knowing their history. I not only speak and translate from Armenian but have read Movses Khorenatsi and all the histories of Armenia worth reading that I have found. It is true that Armenians 2500years ago converted in large part to avoid assimilation into the Zoroastrian Persian Empire on the ne hand–because we were so similar to the Persians culturally and because they were being persecuted by the Byzantine Greeks on the other. That doesn’t mena they treated agans well. And anyway, that was then and this is now. People used to do all sorts of things 3,000 years ago that they don’ do now including beating their wives, marrying ten year old girls off and burning down villages that they conquered after raping anyone they could find.
i find the lack of self-reflexive thought and the equation of nationalism and religion–which you are implicitly making to be worrisome. Today we have Catholic Armenians, Protestant and atheist Armenians, Jewish Armenians, black Armenians, openly gay Armenians. The world changes.
As for my religious beliefs they are actually not much of your business, but if you must know I was born Catholic, a particularly intolerant and repulsive branch of the Christian Church and am not a practicing Christian, no–I am agnostic.
I have read the article on Armenian Deaconesses. I wish to make a general point in this connection.It is the privilege of every generation to forget corpotatively part of their nations history and equally it is the privilege of our generation to rediscover what has been forgotten.But for God’s sake have the humility not to present yourself as a reformer.In a recent publication by D.MacCuuloch called Silence in the ancuient Church History presents such a case.Repeadedly churches have built up their identity be forgetting thing which it was no use remembering.To begin with an example from the frontiers of western christianity it is instructive to see the gradual and purposeful forgetting of an important element in the 11th century establishment of christianity in Iceland.Three Armenian bishops active in Iceland at the time of the first Catholic bishop,Isleifr.By the time that a later chronicler was writing,arround 1200 the Armenians had become a group of anonymous foreign bishops supported by local evil men,and in a chronicle of half a century later they had simply disappeared from sight.the reason is evident: the presence of armenians in the conversion years could only have been thanks to christian contacts with the Orthodox christianiy in the East, via Kievan rus and Novogorod.by the 13th century,Icelandic Christianity had become absorbed in the eposcopal system of the western Latin church,and Catholics and Orthodox Christians increasingly hostile to each other,to the point of warfare which the Western church dressed up as crusading.for safety Catholic Iceland,the Armenians were not remembered.
its wery interesting i wanth too no mor abauth Abel Oghlukian
Great article. I believe Deacon Hripsime Sasunian also visited St. Thomas Armenian Church in Tenafly, NJ, in 1986, as I served as an acolyte with her on the altar.
I never knew about such great support for woman to be part of church’s ministries in the Armenian communities…I always considered dedicating my life to God and this is something I will look forward to introduce this lifestyle into my prayer life,thank you for the insights very helpfull and inspiring.
I believe we do not have shortage of priests, we do have shortage of quality priests, ones that connect with people. We need more of Tskhagan Qahana”, the one that is with the community, understands and addresses the needs of the people in his/her community, talks in a language that is understandable to everyone, says things that are relevant to the day, really, really, really follows what he/she pritches…if anyone got offended, it means they are not a real priest. The real ones know what I mean
It was me Dr Mari Kristin Arat BA,LLM who whrote about the Armenian Deaconess
Die Diakonissen der armenischen Kirche in kanonischer Sicht. Wien :Mechitharitsten-Verlag, 1990 ( = Studien zur armenischen Geschichte 18) (Les diaconesses arméniennes en droit canonique) (Mémoire de maîtrise en théologie catholique 1988) and Father Abel and his Cow have copied the reason for waht I was invites at Paris by an Armenian Association for women and I also spoke about at the University Fribourg (CH) and was interviewed by F2 TV and nobody knows it????? Uncreadible!
Thank you for this informative article.
By God’s Grace, I am the very first Armenian woman minister ordained within the United Church of Canada. My father was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and I do know that our history is richer than we can imagine, and our present can be as well, if we only put away sexism. Unfortunately, a few priests still think being a priest is an exclusive men’s club.
Thank You Once again, this was very helpful to read.
Without our history we will never know which way to go.
Merci, continuez !