The Global Church Era · 1900-present · Ethiopia, Eritrea
Modern Ethiopian & Eritrean Christianity
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About This Movement
The Ethiopian Tawahedo church entered the twentieth century as an ancient national church under a Coptic hierarchy, and spent the century becoming self-governing under a series of shocks. The first Ethiopian bishops were consecrated in 1929; Italy occupied the country from 1936 to 1941, and massacred the monks of Debre Libanos in 1937; the church received its own patriarch in 1959. The Derg's revolution deposed Patriarch Tewophilos in 1976 and killed him in 1979, and the church's own martyrology from those years is its record of what followed. Alongside all this a Protestant evangelical movement, the P'ent'ay, grew fast — the Kale Heywet and Mekane Yesus churches among them, the latter publishing a much-quoted letter on holistic ministry in 1972 — and grew fastest underground under the Derg. Eritrea's church became autocephalous in 1993; its Patriarch Antonios was deposed and held under house arrest from 2006 until his death in 2022.
Sources
- Tawahedo institutional record: 1959 autocephaly (Abune Basilios); Italian occupation records (1936-41, Debre Libanos massacre 1937); Derg era - Tewophilos deposed 1976, killed 1979; the church's own Derg-era martyrology; post-1991 patriarchal disputes and 2018 reconciliation (primary) — Some of these records come from a hostile occupying power and from the state that later persecuted the church.
- P'ent'ay movement's own record: Kale Heywet and Mekane Yesus (EECMY) records, incl. the EECMY's 1972 letter on holistic ministry; underground growth under the Derg (primary) — A significant own-voice document from 1972, along with records from the persecution era.
- Eritrea: 1993 autocephaly; Patriarch Antonios deposed/house arrest 2006 (d. 2022); post-2002 evangelical persecution records (primary) — These records come through church factions and human-rights monitors, both of which bring their own advocacy angle.
- John Binns, The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia: A History (I.B. Tauris, 2017); Tibebe Eshete, The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia (Baylor, 2009) (secondary) — The current standard works on each of the two main strands.
- CHC vol. 9 (reference)