RELIGION

Priest Vagram MELIKIAN, Egine MKRTCHIAN

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Priest Vagram Melikian, Director, Information Center of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin (Erevan, Armenia)

Egine Mkrtchian, Director, Press Center of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin (Erevan, Armenia)

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In 2006, six newly registered religious organizations increased the total number of religious organizations in Armenia to more than 60. There are unregistered religious structures and trends in the republic that are not in general banned. They represent 10 offshoots of the major confessions, mainly Protestant.

There are no exact figures about the total number of followers of all religious structures or about their territorial distribution. What we have are bits and pieces about religious organizations supplied by individual public institutions indicating that between 10 and 15 percent of the republic’s population (over 300,000 people) belong to a variety of traditional and non-traditional churches and religious trends. It is not easy to supply exact figures because this figure includes first, national minorities; second, people forced to join one of the non-traditional confessions because of financial hardship; third, those who live in distant villages where there are neither churches nor priests of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) and who are thus forced to join other religious organizations to satisfy their spiritual needs (they return to the bosom of the Mother-Church as soon as an opportunity presents itself); and fourth, dedicated supporters of sects and non-traditional religious trends. The absolute majority of………………

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