21.08.2025


On August 5, participants of the Theological Summer Academy “Historical Narratives and Contemporary Challenges: Culture, Religion, and Society in Armenia”—representing Armenia, Münster, Tbilisi (Georgia), Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin—visited the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.

As part of the visit, Dr. Shushan Khachatryan, Head of the AGMI Department for the Documentation and Research of Armenian Genocide Victims and Survivors, theologian, Ph.D., delivered a lecture titled “Theology and the Armenian Genocide.” In her presentation, she outlined key theological perspectives on genocide, focusing on the following themes:

• Theodicy and Anthropodicy in the Context of Genocide – the challenge of reconciling faith in a Loving, Merciful, and Almighty God with the reality of evil, suffering, and atrocity, along with the conceptual difficulties surrounding the notion of “human.”
• The “Cain Syndrome” – interpretations of sacrificial thought, in which the sacrifice or destruction of the “other” becomes a mechanism for affirming or restoring the identity of “us.”
• Genocidal Dehumanization as a Challenge for Theological Anthropology – theological and religious perspectives on labeling Christians as “gavur” (infidels), and reflections on dehumanization, superhumanization, subhumanization, and post-humanization.

Following the lecture, the participants toured both the permanent and temporary exhibitions of the museum.