An estimated 90 percent of citizens belong to the Armenian Church, an independent Eastern Christian denomination with its spiritual center at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral and monastery.
Groups that constitute less than 5 percent of the population include Yazidis, an ethnic Kurd cultural group whose religion includes elements derived from Zoroastrianism, Islam, and animism; unspecified "charismatic" Christians; the Armenian Evangelical Church; Molokans, an ethnic Russian pacifist Christian group that split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th-century; Baptists; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons); Orthodox Christians; Seventh-day Adventists; Pentecostals; Jews; and Baha'is.
Armenian Catholics live mainly in the northern region, while most Jews, Mormons, Baha'is, and Orthodox Christians reside in Yerevan.
The Constitution as amended in 2005 provides for freedom of religion and the right to practice, choose, or change religious belief.
Only registered groups may publish newspapers or magazines, rent meeting places, broadcast programs on television or radio, or officially sponsor the visas of visitors, although there is no prohibition on individual members doing so.
To qualify for registration, religious organizations must "be free from materialism and of a purely spiritual nature," and must subscribe to a doctrine based on "historically recognized holy scriptures."
By the end of the reporting period, the Government had registered 63 religious organizations, including individual congregations within the same denomination.
Although it was not registered as a religious facility, Yerevan's sole mosque was open for regular Friday prayers, and the Government did not restrict Muslims from praying there.
A customs issue pertaining to the Jehovah's Witnesses ability to obtain shipments of religious literature was not resolved at the end of the reporting period.
At the end of the reporting period, the Jehovah's Witnesses reported that following complaints to high-ranking officials, the military commissariat had issued certificates of registration (necessary for obtaining passports) to the majority of a group of Witnesses who had completed prison sentences for conscientious objection to military service.
According the Foreign Policy Centre, "The church's problems mirror that of the wider elite: the lack of transparency and atmosphere of corruption which will undermine public trust over the longer term.
Jehovah's Witnesses complained that the courts handed down tougher sentences for evasion of alternative labor service during the reporting period.
Nineteen Jehovah's Witnesses who had begun and then abandoned alternative military service were acquitted, and criminal proceedings against them were terminated by a decision of the Prosecutor General on September 12, 2006.
A gesture of respect and national empathy, the memorial was erected with the cooperation of international donors, the Jewish community, Armenian Diaspora organizations, and the Government.
According to some observers, the general population expressed negative attitudes about Jehovah's Witnesses because the latter refused to serve in the military, engaged in little-understood proselytizing practices, and because of an inaccurate but widespread belief that they pay the desperately poor to convert.
Jehovah's Witnesses continued to be targets of hostile sermons by some Armenian Church clerics and experienced occasional societal discrimination.
On June 1, 2007, in the village of Lusarat, a passing Armenian Apostolic priest verbally harassed and assaulted two Jehovah's Witnesses having a Bible discussion with a woman in the central square.
Two Jehovah's Witnesses filed a complaint with local police after they were allegedly threatened by a man with a pistol while they engaged in public ministry on April 15, 2007.
Police refused to initiate an investigation, in part because the priest expressed remorse, and the women were unable to appeal the decision.
On February 14, 2007, online news source Panorama published an article based on an e-mail from a reader that accused several famous Armenian singers and a television commentator of being "followers of religious sects."
On February 13, 2007, online news source A1+ published an article warning readers about "false Bibles" distributed by "sectarian organizations."
In the summer and fall of 2006, a number of spray-painted swastikas of unknown origin, accompanied by the words "No Arabs," "Sieg Heil," and "Russians out of our country," were observed on kiosks and construction site walls in downtown Yerevan; the symbols appeared to express general xenophobia.