Of One Substance

There are more Azeris in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan, but there is also reserved Armenian representation in the Iranian Parliament. This one has all the makings. All the makings.

Although such rhetoric is rather more common on the Continent or in the United States than it is in Britain or in the Old Commonwealth, all those claims by Western Rightist politicians about "Christian civilisation", and what have you, are about to be put to the test.

If they mean a word of it, then they will side with Armenia, and thus with Russia, as well as possibly with Iran, although that is a very tricky situation indeed. They will do so against Turkey, which is a member of NATO, and against the Gulf monarchies. China, by the way, will probably side with Russia.

Of course, all of this was also true in Syria, and before that in Iraq. But they could pretend not to know about the ancient indigenous Christians there, some of whom were ethnically Armenian, as they pretend not to know about the ancient indigenous Christians of the Holy Land.

Armenia, on the other hand, was the first country ever to become Christian. Nor is the Armenian Apostolic Church in Christological heresy. The proposition condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 is heretical, but it is not clear that anyone ever held it in actual fact, and certainly nobody does today. 

The Armenians were unable to attend Chalcedon, since they were engaged in a war to remain Christian. Against the (pre-Islamic) Persians, as it went. But while the Persians won the war, they lost the peace. Stories involving bishops called Timothy the Cat are greatly to be encouraged, I find. That Alexandrian's work convinced the Armenians that the Chalcedonian Definition was Nestorian, and since they were anti-Persian, then they were anti-Nestorian. But they were not, and they are not, Monophysites properly so called. Probably, no one ever has been.

Anyway, although such rhetoric is rather more common on the Continent or in the United States than it is in Britain or in the Old Commonwealth, all those claims by Western Rightist politicians about "Christian civilisation", and what have you, are about to be put to the test. If they mean a word of it, then they will side with Armenia.