Armenia, the world’s first Christian nation, is preparing to raise the world’s tallest statue of Christ.
Its initiator, businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, introduced the idea in 2022 as a way to “open a new page of hope and success” for Armenia in the aftermath of the tragic loss of Artsakh. But the planned statue on Mount Hatis—33 meters of Christ raised upon a 44-meter pedestal—reveals something far more than just patriotic pride. It signals a broader national struggle with faith: the fear that without a visible sign of the divine, Armenia will lose the last thing it still believes makes it exceptional.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan welcomed the initiative, anticipating it would draw more tourists and the economic benefits that might follow. What was far more striking, however, was the objection of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
It did not question whether the desire to “impress the world” has anything to do with the humility and asceticism of Christian teaching. Instead, the Supreme Spiritual Council, meeting in Etchmiadzin, confined its criticism to a matter of form. The statue, they said, “is not appropriate to the centuries-old iconographic and liturgical tradition of the Armenian Church.”
Neither reaction touches the actual problem, one perhaps too delicate to name. Yet there are several signs that speak to it more clearly than these responses themselves.
Tsarukyan called the statue a “guardian of our people,” a phrase that echoes a common expression heard in Armenian daily life: Asttsu pahats, or God kept.
Poor families with nine children will say God will keep them, leaving the burden of raising them to providence. Others refuse medical care because they are “God-kept.” The expression signals less a level of faith than a habit of leaving responsibility to the divine.
Religions have long grown from the experience of human insecurity in the world, and Armenians hiding their own insecurity behind the notion of “chosenness” are no exception.
Driven by the idea of historical greatness, Tsarukyan declared it would be the “most beautiful and impressive” in the world, as if superiority in size were proof of superiority in faith. In essence, the project resembles idolatry—a sacrifice to gain God’s favor, differing only in scale from the iron crosses that ordinary people place on hillsides, roadside cliffs and even their rooftops.
This unconscious desire to draw closer to God can be traced across broader society.
One need only to watch a small but persistent ritual that has played out on Yerevan’s public transport for the past decade to understand the complex that has taken root. Each time a bus, taxi or car passes a church, passengers cross themselves.
One may argue that Armenians’ faith survived Soviet repression in name but not in meaning. People invoke God’s name in almost every sentence, yet the more often they pronounce it, the farther they seem from Him. Crossing themselves in a passing bus has come to replace the “harder” demands of faith: prayer, ritual and presence.
At the institutional level, this weight is visible in the tensions between the government and the church. It is enough to recall Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s public confrontation with the clergy—language that crossed boundaries of privacy and decency—to see the corrosion: “Your Holiness, go, continue to fuck your uncle’s wife. What business do you have with me?”
The release of an alleged sex tape involving an Armenian priest, along with other “unmasking” efforts by the prime minister, deepened the crisis. The church, for its part, responded mostly with silence. It was as if each side were exposing the other’s loss of moral ground.
Christianity, which once ordered the inner life of Armenians and shaped Armenian statehood with conscience and responsibility, has transformed into a national excuse, invoked precisely when thought fails or when action becomes too difficult.
Back in 301 A.D., Armenia’s turn to Christianity came not so much from sudden illumination as from political necessity, dictated by the risk of division and assimilation between Rome and the Sasanian empire. Armenians were divided: elites tempted by Zoroastrianism, cities alive with Judaism and Hellenistic cults, villagers loyal to their pagan traditions. The unity achieved through Christianity was strategic. Yet, now it has become a cliché repeated without meaning.
If Armenia were united around a vision of its own development, investing in its schools, its economy, its energy systems, the illusion of protection through religious exceptionalism would automatically close. The estrangement of Armenia from the world would also dissolve. It would become clear that Christian civilization has its origin in history itself and, instead of being just an Armenian affair, came to full form in Armenia first.
Tsarukyan’s decision matters not because it is unique but because it is exemplary. The statue symbolizes Armenians’ fear of the possibility of not being an “exception.”
The statue on Mount Hatis will almost certainly rise, and it may impress visitors for a time. But its height will not solve the problem of insecurity and salvation when stone is asked to speak for a people uncertain of their own voice.
Views expressed in opinion pieces represent those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of AUA or the MAMJ program.