armenian native faith believers' attitude towards christianity oscillates between two positions: the critique of the religion's role in armenian history, and the conditional acceptance of the armenian apostolic church as a national institution. christianity is criticised for having destroyed the rich and highly developed ancient armenian culture, replacing the values of courage, martial spirit and honour with those of humility, obedience and modesty, thus causing the collapse of armenian statehood and condemning the nation to centuries of subordination to foreign powers, migrations, persecutions and massacres. according to the strongest accusations, christianity is responsible for the "first genocide of the armenians", which coincided with its forceful introduction in the fourth century.