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Peace
Research
Facility
RELIGION IN
CONTEMPORARY
ETHIOPIA
HISTORY, POLITICS AND INTER-RELIGIOUS REL ATIONS
Jörg Haustein, Abduletif Kedir Idris and Diego Malara
Peace
Research
Facility
RELIGION IN
CONTEMPORARY
ETHIOPIA
HISTORY, POLITICS AND INTER-RELIGIOUS REL ATIONS
Jörg Haustein, Abduletif Kedir Idris and Diego Malara
RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY ETHIOPIA: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND
INTER-RELIGIOUS RELATIONS
THE ETHIOPIA PEACE RESEARCH FACILITY
This literature review was written for the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF). The PRF is an
independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian experts
with support for conflict sensitive programming in the country. It is managed by the Rift Valley
Institute and funded by the UK government.
THE AUTHORS
Dr Jörg Haustein is Associate Professor of World Christianities at the University of Cambridge
and a Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is an expert on Pentecostal and Charismatic
Christianity worldwide, with a special focus on Ethiopia. Among his publications are a detailed
history of Pentecostals in Ethiopia (Harrassowitz 2011) as well as several leading articles on
religion and politics in the country.
Abduletif Kedir Idris is a student of interdisciplinary human rights studies as well as
comparative constitutional and public law. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Max Planck
Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany and a Lecturer at the Center for Human
Rights of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Dr Diego Maria Malara is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of
Glasgow and the Coordinator of the Ethiopian Studies in the UK Network. His research to date
has explored religion and politics in Ethiopia, with a focus on Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
Beyond authoring several peer-reviewed publications, he has been interviewed by leading news
outlets and has acted as a consultant for international cultural institutions, non-profit organiza-
tions and global media.
THE RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE
The Rift Valley Institute works in Eastern and Central Africa to bring local knowledge to bear on
social, political and economic development. Copyright © Rift Valley Institute 2023. This work is
published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives License (CC
BY-NC-ND 4.0)
COVER DESIGN: Designed by Maggie Dougherty.
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CONTENTS
Contents 4
Acronyms and initialisms 5
Introduction 6
Religion and state in Ethiopia: Historical overview 7
Modern nation-building and religious Plurality: The imperial record 8
‘The Revolution above all!’: Religion and the Derg 13
Liberation and control: Religion and ethnic federalism 18
Empire resurgent? Abiy Ahmed’s God talk and Ethiopian nationalism 22
Contemporar y situation 26
Orthodox Christianity 26
Protestantism 35
Traditional religions 38
Inter-religious relations 41
Muslim–Orthodox relations 41
Protestant–Muslim relations 44
Orthodox–Protestant relations 46
Inter-religious organizations and initiatives 49
Conclusion and avenues for further research 53
Bibliography 55
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CSO civil society organization
DHS Demographic and Health Survey
ECFE Evangelical Churches’ Fellowship of Ethiopia
ECGBC Ethiopian Council of Gospel Believers’ Churches
EECMY Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus
EIASC Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council
EOTC Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
EPRDF Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
IAP Islam in Africa Project
IPI Interfaith Peace-Building Initiative
IRCE Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia
ISIS Islamic State
KHC Kale Heywet Church
LPI Life and Peace Institute
NCA Norwegian Church Aid
PM Prime minister
TPLF Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front
ACRONYMS AND INITIALISMS
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INTRODUCTION
Religious affiliation is almost universal in Ethiopia, which means that religions amass significant
political capital but may also act as potential catalysts for conflict. After five decades of
ostensibly secular politics—first under a socialist dictatorship and then driven by the Ethiopian
People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)’s strict insistence that religion and state be
separated—religion has made a political comeback under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Religion
is once again part of political discourse, whether it be in defining political constituencies,
demarcating differences, or articulating visions of Ethiopian unity.
This, however, increases political complexity, as religious affiliation in Ethiopia is part of a
multi-layered nexus incorporating ethnicity and other, secondary, social characteristics, such
as occupation or class. This often makes religious politics difficult to decipher, especially when
it comes to anticipating, preventing and resolving conflict. For a long time, an increasingly
contested narrative of peaceful coexistence has obscured simmering tensions. When these
flare up, typically in localized clashes, they quickly assume national importance, for example in
generating new dialogue initiatives or anticipating conflict in other locations.
This review offers a comprehensive introduction to this landscape, drawing on the most
relevant academic publications on religion in Ethiopia. Section 1 provides an overview of the
politics of religion since the making of the modern Ethiopian nation state in the nineteenth
century. Section 2 then surveys the four most important faith groups in contemporary Ethiopia
(Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Protestantism/Pentecostalism, and so-called ‘traditional
religions’), with a particular focus on how current political debates have led to tensions and
divergences within these groups. Section 3 explores inter-religious relations, before the review
closes with some suggested avenues for future research.
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RELIGION AND STATE IN ETHIOPIA:
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Modern Ethiopia is no stranger to religious plurality and its political consequences—in fact,
many contemporary issues can be traced back for centuries. Tensions between the Orthodox
Christian emperors and neighbouring Muslim states came to a head in the Abyssinian–Adal War
of 1529–1543. Christian Ethiopia was saved from collapse by Portuguese intervention, and this
conflict would come to define the country’s Christian-Muslim relations for centuries to come.
The continued Portuguese presence led to Susenyos’s (r. 1606–1632) conversion to Catholicism,
only for this alliance with Western Christendom to end in disaster when Jesuit priests attempted
to impose European rites.1 During the subsequent restoration of the Orthodox state in the
Gondar era (1632–1706), Catholics were reconverted or expelled, while the country’s emperors
moved to end Christological conflict within the Ethiopian church.2 Muslims and Jews were
segregated from Christians,3 while substantial efforts were made to integrate incurrent Oromo
groups, who had migrated into central Ethiopia, through a mix of assimilation and conversion.
Protestant missions commenced toward the end of the subsequent ‘era of the princes’ (1755–
1855), which was marked by a collapse of central authority, but the missionaries immediately
ran into political difficulties when Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855–1868) sought to harness their
technological abilities for military purposes in restoring the empire. When Tewodros finally
held them hostage to press for military support from the UK, he was met with a British military
expedition that ended his life.4
Various historiographical narratives have arisen from this history that continue to define
inter-religious relations in modern Ethiopia. Orthodox Christianity has the oldest presence
in the region, extending back to the conversion of Ethiopian kings in the fourth century and
the subsequent consolidation of Christian monasticism and theology in the late fifth century.5
Ethiopian Orthodox mythology, however, claims an even more ancient history. According to
the thirteenth-century myth of the Kəbrä Nägäśt, the Ethiopian emperors are descendants
of Solomon, with the Ark of the Covenant located in Axum.6 Muslims, in turn, tell their own
1 Harold G. Ma rcus, A History of Ethiopia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 199 4, 39–40.
2 Paul Henze, Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia, London: Hurst and Co., 2001, 10 0–107; Marcus, A
History, 43 –44 .
3 Abdussamad H. Ahmad, ‘Muslims of Gondar 18 64–1 941’, Annales d’Éthiopie 16 (2000).
4 Gustav A rén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, Stockholm:
EF S Förlaget, 19 78, 4 5–104 .
5 Henze, Layers of Time, 38 .
6 Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia: 1270–1527, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972 , 249 –50 .
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narrative of ancient origin, with Ethiopia proclaimed the country of the first hijra. This relates
how, prior to the Prophet’s exodus to Medina, Mohammed’s companions found refuge under
an Ethiopian king who had converted to Islam.7 Protestants, despite being relative newcomers,
have also produced their own narratives of indigeneity, from Krapf’s mid-nineteenth century
ethno-nationalist musings on the Oromo as the ‘Germans of Africa’ to more recent Pentecostal
histories of longstanding missionary independence.8
These historical and historiographical claims have shaped religion in contemporary Ethiopia,
forcing successive regimes to grapple with the country’s religious plurality and the modernizing
demand for a secular—or at least religiously neutral—state.
MODERN NATION-BUILDING AND RELIGIOUS PLUR ALITY: THE IMPERIAL RECORD
Ethiopian historiography has largely subscribed to the notion that modernizing forces in
Ethiopia had a secularizing impact. Such sentiments are reflected in the words, ‘Religion is
private, the country is collective’ (haymanot yägəll näw, agär yägara näw), an oft-used phrase
variously attributed to either Menelik II (r. 1889–1913) or Haile Selassie I (r. 1930–1974)—the
two emperors most often commemorated as founders of the modern Ethiopian nation state.9
While these sentiments may well have been held by the era’s intellectual reformers,10 they
should not be mistaken for actual state policy.11 What emerged instead was a politicization of
religion in order to secure imperial power.
Yohannes IV’s (r. 1871–1889) project of imperial restoration after Tewodros’ demise was
7 Dereje Feyissa, ‘Muslims Renegotiating Margina lity in Contemporary Ethiopia’, The Muslim World 104
(201 4) : 29 8–3 00 .
8 Johann Ludw ig Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Mi ssionary Labours in Easter n Africa, London: Trübner and
Co., 18 60, 1 22; Jörg Haustein, Writing Religiou s History: The Hi storiography of Ethiopian Pentecostalis m,
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011, 3 7–89; Jörg Haustein, ‘Historical Epistemology a nd Pentecostal
Origins: Histor y and Historiography in Ethiopian Pentecostalism’, Pneuma 35 (2013).
9 Archbishop Yesehaq, The Ethiopian Tewahedo Church: An Integrally African Church, Nashville: Winston-
Derek Publishers, 2 005 , 81; Fouad Makki, ‘Empire and Modernity: Dynastic Centralization and Official
Nationalism in Late Imperial Ethiopia’, Cambridge Review of Inte rnational Affairs 2 4 (201 1): 278; Jon
Abbink, ‘Religion in public spaces: emerging Muslim-Christian polemics in Ethiopia’, African Affairs 110
(201 1): 25 9. The earliest written source of this statement quoted in academic research is a 1965 booklet
by the Ministry of Information attributing the saying to a 1945 speech by Haile Selassie (Ministry
of Information, Relig ious Freedom in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, 19 65, 1 6; see Jürgen K lein, Christlich-
Muslimische Beziehungen in Äthiopian: Interreligiöse Situation – Konflikträume – Verstehenszugänge,
Münster: Lit, 20 21, 81).
10 Bahru Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twe ntieth Century,
Oxford: Ja mes Currey, 20 02. 136 f.
11 Tibebe Eshete, The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia: Resistance and Resilience, Waco: Baylor Universit y
Press, 2 009 , 410n40.
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premised on enforcing Christian uniformity. Re-emerging Christological conflicts in the
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) were settled through political pressure
and violence, with Christianity imposed as the universal religion for all citizens. Aside from
Yohannes’s own piety, two political reasons underlay this. Firstly, Yohannes’ reign was marked
by conflict with his Muslim neighbours, from the encroachment of Egypt in the 1870s to his
battles with the Mahdists in the 1880s, which would cost him his life. The claim that he was
defending the Christian faith helped rally large armies.12 Muslims, meanwhile, were forced to
convert.13 Secondly, the enforcement of Christian Orthodoxy strengthened Yohannes’ political
base, which lay in the Orthodox highlands of Tigray, Gondar and Gojjam, while weakening his
foremost rival and ultimate successor, Menelik II (r. 1889–1913), who drew his strength from
expanding into the Muslim and ‘pagan’ areas of the east and south.14
Following Yohannes’ death, Menelik inherited the empire and continued Ethiopia’s expansion
into the south, east and west. At the same time, the former core areas of the north were weakened
by warfare, disease and famine. This shift in the country’s geographic orientation necessitated
the integration of religious diversity,15 even as the subsequent installation of settler-landlords
reinforced notions of Amhara-Orthodox dominance, the effects of which persist to this day in
the south’s political economy.16 Hence, Menelik enabled a certain level of religious autonomy, for
example in the Muslim-ruled ‘province’ of Jimma. Foreign policy also pointed to the integration
of Islam, with Menelik’s main enemies no longer Egypt or Sudan, but encroaching European
colonialism, in particular Italy’s fraudulent claim to an Ethiopian protectorate. It was now the
Christian nation of Italy that, in Menelik’s words, sought to ‘ruin the country and to change our
religion’,17 until it was repulsed for a generation in the 1896 battle of Adwa. Seeking to balance
out French and British interests in the Sudan, Menelik even established cordial relations with
the Mahdist caliphate.18
12 Harold G. Marcus, The Life and Times of Me nelik II: Ethiopia 184 4–1913, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975,
40.
13 Marcus, The Life and Times, 5 8.
14 Marcus, The Life and Times, 27, 28 .
15 See also Hussein Ahmed, Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform, and Reaction,
Leiden: Brill, 2001, 185 .
16 Marcus, The Life and Times, 193 f; Haggai Erlich, ‘Ethiopia and the Middle East: Rethinking History’, in
New Trends in Ethiopian Studies. Papers of the 1 2th International Conference of Ethiopian Stud ies.
Michigan State University 5–10 September 19 94. Volume I: Humanities and Huma n Resources, eds.
Grover Hudson and Harold G. Ma rcus, Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press, 199 4. 74–82 ; Terje Østebø et al.,
‘Religion, Ethnicity, and Cha rges of Extremism: The Dynamics of Inter-Commu nal Violence in Ethiopia’,
Europea n Institute of Peace, 2 021, 29 –31, w ww.eip.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ostebo-et-al-
2021-Religion-ethnicity-and-charges-of-Extremism-in-Ethiopia-final.pdf.
17 Marcus, The Life and Times, 16 0.
18 Marcus, The Life and Times, 175 .
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This tactical embrace of Islam had its limits, however, as Menelik’s never-crowned heir—his
grandson Lij Iyasu—was to discover. Iyasu’s father, originally a Muslim leader and close ally
of Menelik in Wollo, had demonstrated how religion was interwoven with political power
in Imperial Ethiopia when he converted to Christianity under Yohannes’ edict of religious
uniformity. Iyasu was only 13 years old when he was named heir to the throne and, in trying
to emerge from his appointed regents’ shadow during Menelik’s dying years, made numerous
enemies thanks to his inexperience and impulsiveness. Iyasu sought to counterbalance these
failings by building up his popular appeal among a variety of constituents, which included
propagating a vision of religious and ethnic equality.19 Driven by a mixture of domestic and
foreign political calculations, Iyasu began integrating Muslim politicians into Ethiopian rule.
His most prominent regal rival was Tafari Makonnen, who would go on to become Emperor
Haile Selassie I but was then governor of Harar. Iyasu’s embrace of Islam thus ensured the
Orthodox Tafari could not build a power base in the east. Internationally, Iyasu’s approach
to Islam aligned Ethiopia with Germany and the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, in
the hope that the ambitions of France and England in the Horn of Africa could be contained.20
Though it remains disputed whether Iyasu actually converted to Islam,21 the mere accusation
that he had done so ultimately led to his downfall, with the Orthodox patriarch releasing
Ethiopian rulers from their vows to the emperor. Menelik’s daughter Zewditu (r. 1916–1930)
was installed as empress, and Tafari appointed her regent and heir apparent.
During his early regency, Tafari was seen as ‘the natural ally of the progressives’ because
he struggled against the conservative establishment and their figurehead, the devout and
traditionally minded Zewditu.22 Following his ascent to the throne in 1930, however, it
became clear that the primary drive behind Haile Selassie’s modernist reforms in education,
administration and the military was imperial absolutism. One of Haile Selassie’s first acts as
emperor was to task the reformist intellectual Tekle-Hawariat Tekle-Mariyam with drafting an
Ethiopian constitution. This constitution, promulgated in 1931, was modelled on the Japanese
Meiji-era constitution, which in turn was based on the Prussian model of imperial monarchy.23
The Ethiopian constitution even exceeded the absolutist tendencies of its templates, foregoing
an independent parliament and eliding civil rights, including freedom of religion. The Ethiopian
state rested solely on the ‘imperial dignity’ of Haile Selassie (Arts. 3, 5), who sovereignly
‘instituted’ legislative chambers (Art. 7) and ‘recognized’ a very basic set of individual rights and
duties (Arts. 18–27).
19 Marcus, The Life and Times, 2 52, 2 58.
20 Marcus, The Life and Times, 166–68 .
21 Marcus, The Life and Times, 267 –76; Erlich, ‘Ethiopia and the Middle East’, 8 4–90; Zewde, A History,
124–28.
22 Zewde, A History, 110.
23 Zewde, A History, 62 ; Calvitt J. Clarke, ‘Seeking a Model for Moder nization: Ethiopia’s Japanizers’,
Selected Annual Proceedings of the Flor ida Conference of Historians 11 (20 04).
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Remarkably, the 1931 constitution made no reference to the EOTC, which had crowned and
legitimated Ethiopian monarchs for centuries. The national myth of the thirteenth-century
Kəbrä Nägäśt was instead condensed into the constitutional persona of the emperor, ‘whose line
descends without interruption to … King Solomon of Jerusalem and … the Queen of Sheba’ (Art.
3). From this constitutional position, Haile Selassie asserted governing power over the EOTC,
beginning with a series of laws on the church’s land ownership and finances instituted before
the Italian invasion of 1936.24 Following the invasion, Haile Selassie was driven into exile, with
Fascist Italy employing a divide-and-rule strategy that sought to dilute Ethiopian resistance by
securing the loyalty of Muslims. The occupiers recognized Islamic courts, supported Muslim
education, subsidized the
ḥ
ajj pilgrimage, and funded the construction of over 50 mosques,
including the al-Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa.25
With Italy ousted and Haile Selassie returning from exile in 1941, the Orthodox Church once
again assumed its place at the centre of Ethiopian politics. Muslims, meanwhile, were accused of
having collaborated with Ethiopia’s enemy and faced harsh measures. The emperor continued
his programme of aligning Ethiopian Orthodoxy with the state via the extensive ‘Regulations
for the Administration of the Church’ of 1942,26 which subjected ecclesial rights, institutions
and finances to state supervision.27 Through constant interference, Haile Selassie prevented
the patriarchate from becoming an independent authority,28 further reinforcing the Orthodox
Church’s subservience to his throne by securing its autocephaly from the Coptic Church in 1959.
In cementing his post-war Western alliances, the emperor also worked towards better
integration of foreign missions in the ‘Regulations Governing the Activities of Missions’ of
1944.29 The regulations set up the state as arbiter of religious plurality, with areas of the country
open or closed to missionary proselytization based on whether the EOTC had a strong historical
presence and hence would be resistant to Protestant competition. (In closed areas, missionaries
were still welcome to work in aid and development.) While this gave missions a legal footing
beyond imperial toleration, in practice the decree granted the Orthodox opposition a powerful
lever against foreign missions in cases where they could be construed as having violated the
24 See Calv in E. Shenk, ‘The Development of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Its Relationship with
the Ethiopian Gover nment from 1930 to 197 0’, PhD dissertation, New York University, New York, 1972 ,
71–79.
25 Hussein Ah med, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation? Towards a Reappraisal of Christian-Muslim
Encounter in Contemporar y Ethiopia,’ Journal of Religion in Afr ica 36/1 (200 6): 8f; Terje Østebø,
Localising Salafism: Religious Change Among Oromo Muslim s in Bale, Ethiopia, Leiden: Brill, 2 012 , 125–31 .
26 Shenk, ‘The Development of the Ethiopian’, 221–27.
27 Christopher Clapham, Haile-Selassie’s Government. London: Longmans, 196 9, 82 .
28 Haile Mariam Larebo, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Politics in the Twentieth Century: Part II’,
Northeast African Studies 10 (1988): 10.
29 For a copy of the decree, see Aymro Wondmagegnehu and Joachim Motovu, The Ethiopian Orthodox
Church, Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Orthodox Mission, 19 70, 170 –74.
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decree’s religious or linguistic stipulations.30
The relationship between nation and faith was further recalibrated in the 1955 revision of the
constitution promulgated at Haile Selassie’s silver jubilee, with the Orthodox Church now
legally enshrined as the Ethiopian Empire’s established faith (Arts. 10, 16, 20, 21 and 126). The
constitution also, however, contained acknowledgement of the country’s religious plurality,
guaranteeing non-interference in the exercise of ‘any religion or creed’, albeit governed by
broadly defined political constraints.31 This was in part due to the fact that the 1955 constitution
sought to integrate the 1952 federation with Eritrea, where these basic rights were already
guaranteed. In addition, the new constitution was strongly influenced by Haile Selassie’s
American adviser John Spencer, who drafted the original English text on the basis of the US
Constitution.32 Yet, as subsequent developments show, religious liberty remained a right in
theory alone, as neither the political system nor the courts upheld it in practice.
The civil code of 1960 likewise ruled out discrimination on the basis of religion, while at the same
time recognizing the EOTC as the only religious institution formally established by law. Under
regulations published in 1966, other religious groups could apply to register as associations with
the Ministry of the Interior.33 For Ethiopian Muslims, consistently treated by Haile Selassie in
the mode of a ‘patronizing Christian king’,34 the civil code and registration procedure were a
retrograde step. Despite having been enshrined into law during the Italian occupation,35 Islamic
jurisdiction and institutions were excluded from the emperor’s modernizing legal framework.
A draft chapter of the civil code making special provisions for Muslims was omitted from the
final version, and qāḍī courts were not even mentioned in Ethiopian procedural law.36 Thus,
while Muslim courts and some Islamic institutions, such as schools, continued to be recognized
in practice, they were offered no legal footing other than those pertaining to the registration of
associations.
30 Nathan B. Hege, Beyond Our Prayers: Anabaptist Church Growth in Ethiopia, 1 948–199 8, Scottsdale:
Herald Press, 19 98, 1 28–31; Etana Habte Dinka, ‘Resistance and Integration in the Ethiopian Empire:
The Case of the Macca Oromo of Qellem (188 0s–19 74)’, PhD dissertation, SOAS, London, 2018, 29f.
31 Haustein, Writing Religious History, 5.
32 John H. Spencer, Ethiopia at Bay: A Pe rsonal Account of the Haile Sellassie Years, Algonac: Reference
Publications, 19 84, 258.
33 Tsahafe Taezaz Aklilu Habte Wold, ‘Legal Notice No: 3 21 of 196 6. Regulations Issued Pursuant to the
Control of Associations Provision of the Civil Code of 1960’, Negarit Gazeta 2 6 (1966 ).
34 Erlich, ‘Ethiopia and the Middle East’, 55 .
35 Terje Østebø, ‘Christian–Muslim Relations in Ethiopia’, in Striving in Faith: Christians and Muslims in
Africa, eds. Anne N. Kubai and Tarakegn Adebo, Uppsala: Life & Peace Institute, 2 008 , 77; Østebø,
Localising Salafism, 125 –29.
36 Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation’, 9 –10.
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Protestant mission churches continued to operate under the 1944 missions’ decree, with
national churches not formed until the end of the Haile Selassie era. This meant the first test
of the registration provisions would fall to a small but ambitious religious fringe: Ethiopian
Pentecostals. Foreign Pentecostal missions had come to Ethiopia in the late 1950s, following
which an independent group—consisting mostly of university students—broke away and
formed the first national Pentecostal assembly: the Ethiopian Full Gospel Believers’ Church.37
Their attempt to register this new organization betrayed the students’ modernizing aspirations
and elite mobility, prompting the authorities to decline their application and setting the young
Pentecostals on a path to conflict with the state.38 Having failed to secure their ambitions
through political negotiation, the courts or international support, they regrouped underground,
laying the foundations for a narrative of religious persecution and a spiritual defiance of political
power.
‘THE RE VOLUTION ABOVE ALL!’: RELIGION AND THE DERG
The Ethiopian Revolution was the culmination of several popular demands, one of which
was equal rights for all religions. Widescale protests and strikes erupted from February 1974,
beginning with taxi drivers, students and teachers, as well as mutiny within the army.39 In April
1974, Muslims held a large demonstration in Addis Ababa, with about 100,000 participants
forwarding 13 demands, including the separation of religion from politics, as well as the right
to form a national organization of Ethiopian Muslims.40 This led to counter-protests by the
Orthodox establishment,41 though the Muslim demonstration received some Christians support
as well.
A new constitution was drafted to accommodate the various grievances and relieve political
tensions.42 Regarding matters of faith, the draft now contained a constitutional right to form
religious associations for the propagation of any faith, as long as it was ‘not used for political
purposes or its presence prejudicial to public order or morality’ (Art. 24). The wide remit of
this safeguarding clause meant little would have changed in practice, as it gave the state almost
boundless power to intervene and regulate. On the whole, the constitution fell far short of
separating church and state, mandating that the emperor belong to ‘the Monophysite Ethiopian
Orthodox Church’ and that prayers for him were offered in all religious services (Art. 9). Even
so, Patriarch Theophilos condemned the constitution for failing to define a special legal persona
37 Haustein, Writing Religiou s History, 37 –136.
38 Haustein, Writing Religious History, 137–8 7.
39 Heinrich Scholler and Paul Brietzke, Ethiopia: Re volution, Law and Politics, München: Weltforum Verlag,
1976, 4f.
40 Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation’, 10; Østebø, Localising Salafism, 198.
41 Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation’, 11.
42 Scholler and Brietzke, Ethiopia: Revolution, 154 –83 .
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for the EOTC, which he (rightly) feared was a first step towards disestablishment of church and
state.43
Such discussions were rendered moot, however, when the ‘coordinating committee’ (Derg) of
the armed forces established its hold on the revolution. As the Derg stepped up attacks on the
emperor, even the patriarch fell into line. In his traditional broadcast on Ethiopian New Year (11
September 1974), Patriarch Theophilos omitted the constitutionally demanded prayer for the
emperor and his family, blessing the revolutionaries instead and casting their cause as a ‘holy
movement’.44 Haile Selassie was deposed and arrested by the Derg the very next day, never to
be seen in public again.45
The revolution soon took a violent turn, with a deadly shoot-out between different factions of
the Derg and the murder of political prisoners. As Mengistu Hailemariam began his rise to the
top, the Derg declared socialism as its governing philosophy. This was presented as a special
Ethiopian variant of communalism arising from the country’s cultural and religious traditions:
The political philosophy which emanates from our great religions which teach the equality of
man, and from our tradition of living and sharing together, as well as from our history so
replete with national sacrifice is Hibrettesebsawinet (Ethiopian Socialism).46
At the same time, Ethiopia’s unity and egalitarian values were presented as ‘the sacred faith of
all our people’.47 This double identification of socialism with religion initially found support
among various faith constituencies. Some Orthodox clergy pointed to the similarity between
Jesus’ teachings and the ideals of socialism,48 while Muslims for the first time enjoyed national
recognition of three Islamic holidays.49 Among Protestants, the general secretary of the Ethiopian
Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY), Gudina Tumsa, issued a pastoral letter in support
of socialism, promising to hand over the church’s charitable institutions to the state now that
43 Calvin E . Shenk, ‘Church and State in Ethiopia: From Monarchy to Marxism’, Mission Studies 1 1 (19 94 ):
208.
44 Haile Larebo, ‘The Orthodox Church and the State in the Ethiopian Revolution, 1974– 84’, Religion in
Communist Lands 1 4 (1 98 6): 150 .
45 He was kept under house arrest a nd murdered by the Derg in August 1 975 (Haggai Erlich, Haile Selassie:
His Rise, His Fall, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019 , 182 –85).
46 Provisional Military Government of Et hiopia, ‘Declaration of the Provisional Militar y Government of
Ethiopia’, Addis Ababa, 20 December 1974
47 Provisional Military Government of Ethiopia, ‘Declaration’, 7.
48 Teferra Haile-Selassie, The Ethiopian Revolution 1 974–19 91: From a Monarchical Autocrac y to a Military
Oligarchy, London: Kegan Paul International, 199 7, 154 .
49 Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation’, 11 .
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the government had committed to taking care of the people’s needs.50 Likewise, members of the
Derg and official newspapers emphasized the common ground between religions and Ethiopian
socialism.51
It is important to note this alignment, as subsequent repressive measures against various
religions have led opponents and supporters of the revolution alike to contend that the
regime pursued plans for the destruction of Ethiopian religions from the start.52 Such a simple
juxtaposition of socialism and religion obfuscates the more complicated relationship between
religion and politics under the Derg. The revolutionary regime had inherited from Haile Selassie
a highly centralist state ruling over an ethnically and religiously fractured country. As such, the
government continued to consolidate power through integrating and subjugating religions even
as it abolished Orthodox privileges. As with Haile Selassie, this entailed a mix of co-optation,
regulation and repression.
The EOTC was the first to become aligned, with the land reform of 1975 depriving the church
of its economic foundation in land revenues and rendering it dependent on state subsidies.53
Further restructuring efforts were supported by some within the church but strongly opposed
by Patriarch Abunä Theophilos—now a fervent critic of the Derg—and his allies, leading to his
deposition in 1976.54 He was imprisoned for three years and murdered in 1979. Under the eyes
of the Derg, the church elected a replacement in the apolitical monk Abunä Takla Haymanot,
who would not contest the authority of the state. When he died in 1988, the synod elected an
50 Jörg Haustein, ‘Navigating Political Revolutions: Ethiopia’s Churches During and After the Mengistu
Regime’, in Falling Walls: The Year 198 9/90 a s a Turning Point in the Histor y of World Chr istianity =
Einstürzende Mauern. Das Jahr 1989/9 0 Als Epochenjahr in Der Geschichte Des Weltchristentums, ed. Klaus
Koschorke, Wiesbaden: Har rassowitz, 2 009 , 126 .
51 Eshete, The Evangelical Movement, 20 12f.
52 Haile-Selassie, The Ethiopian Revolution, 154 ; Peter Schwab, Ethiopia: Politics, Economics and Society,
London: Frances Pinter, 198 5, 92 f; Giulia Bonacci, ‘Ethiopia 1974–1991: Relig ious Policy of the State
and Its Consequences on the Orthodox Church’, in Ethiopian Studies at the End of the Second Millenium:
Proceedings of the X IVth Inte rnational Confere nce of Ethiopian Studies No vember 6–11, 2 000 , Addis Ababa,
eds. Baye Yimam, Richard Pankhurst, David Chapple, Yonas Admassu, Alula Pankhurst and Teferra
Birhanu, Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, 2000 , 593 –605. In
particular, in 198 1 an alleged secret Derg memorandum was published in various outlets appearing to
show a detailed plan for erad icating religion in Ethiopia. Its authenticity was denied by the government
and later scholarship has concluded that the document was likely forged (Larebo, ‘The Orthodox
Church, 1 56; Øy vind M. Eide, Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia: Growth and Persecution of the Mekane
Yesus Church, 1974–8 5, Oxford: James Currey, 20 00, 163; Wudu Tafete Kassu, ‘The Ethiopian Or thodox
Church, the Ethiopian State, and the Alexa ndrian See: Indigenizing the Episcopacy and Forging National
Identity, 19 26–1991’, PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, 2 006, 351–52).
53 Haustein, ‘Navigating Politica l Revolutions‘, 152.
54 Kassu, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’, 310–2 3.
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acclaimed ‘man of the revolution’ in Patriarch Merkorios.55 Both patriarchs regularly appeared
with Mengistu Hailemariam at public functions, and both were members of the national
parliament during the Derg’s rule. While this political alignment did not mean Orthodox practice
was entirely free from socialist attacks and repression, the Church nevertheless continued to
operate, retained its social prestige, and managed to grow significantly.56 Donham, for instance,
suggests that the instalment of an acquiescent patriarch meant the EOTC ‘had become virtually
an arm of the revolutionary state’.57 Repression of religious institutions thus went hand in hand
with co-optation, with the Derg successfully using the EOTC’s ramified network to ‘spread
its ideology and control over rural localities’,58 in part through the new patriarch promoting
seminars on the compatibility of socialism with Orthodoxy.
Islam was also co-opted by the state, serving as a counterweight to the continuation of
Orthodox privileges, with Muslim clergy appearing alongside the Orthodox patriarch at state
occasions.59 In 1976, the Derg agreed to the formation of the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme
Council (EIASC). While this appeared to fulfil a longstanding Muslim demand, it also gave
the government a central handle by which to co-opt Islam. Moreover, Muslims continued to
face adverse conditions. The EIASC was never granted full legal recognition and the family of
its first chairman suffered a brutal government attack in 1977, with one of his sons arrested,
tortured, and murdered, and another son imprisoned.60 The ḥajj and the importation of
religious literature remained restricted, as were Sufi practices and prayers in official settings.
A marked increase in government schools also led the state to attempt to replace traditional
Islamic institutions of learning, inadvertently fuelling Islamic reform movements through the
promotion of educational modernism.61
On the Protestant side, the Derg’s record was incongruent.62 Larger churches were forcibly
aligned, beginning in 1979 with the arrest and clandestine murder of Gudina Tumsa. His
sustained attempts to engage constructively with socialism while shoring up the churches
against revolutionary excesses were seen as a political threat. Moreover, Gudina’s brother, Baro
Tumsa, had become a leading Oromo nationalist and guerrilla fighter against the Derg. With
55 Kassu, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’, 360 .
56 Kassu, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’, 29 6–3 05.
57 Donald L. Donham, Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution, Berkely :
University of California Press, 1999, 14 2.
58 Donham, Marxist Modern, 142 .
59 Jon Abbink, ‘An historical-anthropological approach to Islam in Ethiopia: issues of Identity and politics’,
Journal of African Cultural Studies 11 (1998): 117.
60 Østebø, Localising Salafism, 19 9–200 .
61 Østebø, Localising Salafism, 2 26–35 .
62 See Eshete, The Evangelical Movement, 2 09–72 .
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the abduction of Gudina, the government began confiscating assets and closing scores of local
parishes in various mainline denominations. Despite these oppressive measures, most mainline
denominations had managed to attain official recognition by the mid-1980s. Alongside the
EOTC and the EIASC, Protestants were consulted in the drafting of the 1984 constitution, and
they subsequently secured the reopening of some churches, and obtained a seat in parliament.63
Marginal churches, like Mennonites and Pentecostals, on the other hand, were not enticing
targets for co-optation and from 1978 onwards suffered near universal closures. Pentecostals
in particular were regarded as a disruptive presence64—while not politically oriented, their
prioritization of faith over the requirements of the state meant they clashed with authorities.
Abstention from alcohol, effervescent religious practices and a proselytizing zeal also exposed
them in local communities. In order to avoid closures themselves, mainline Protestant pastors
sometimes even collaborated with the Derg to oust Charismatic groups.65 Pentecostals and
Charismatics quickly re-established resilient underground networks, further setting them
up as the epitome of ‘illegal’ religion and arguably increasing their attractiveness to ordinary
Ethiopians as the Derg’s failures and brutality mounted. In its campaigns against these groups,
the Derg vernacularized the derogatory epithet ‘Pente’, which came to be applied to mainline
Protestants as well, some of whom had never even heard of the term or Pentecostalism (Donham
1999, 144–45).
The Derg’s co-optative management of the major Ethiopian religions led to the country’s
first inter-religious forum, which was convened in 1978 during the Ogaden War as a means of
shoring up popular support and ascertaining the loyalty of Muslim elites. The forum’s motto
was ‘religion shall not divide us’, with religious authorities warning against disturbing national
unity through politicizing faith.66 Nevertheless, representatives of the EOTC and the EIASC
used the opportunity to draft a non-public, joint letter to the Derg complaining of restrictions
in the exercise of religious freedom.67
Socialist Ethiopia was, therefore, no simple ideological onslaught against religion. Rather, it
represented a radical continuation of Haile Selassie’s nation-building project where a centralist
state co-opted religious majorities. Though undoubtedly there were Marxist ideologues who
63 Eide, Revolution and Religion; Johannes Launhardt, Evangelicals in Addis Ababa (1919–19 91): With Special
Reference to the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Addis Ababa Synod, Münster: Lit, 20 04;
Haustein, ‘Navigating Political Revolutions’, 12 4–30.
64 See Haustein, Writing Relig ious Histor y, 1 88–2 47.
65 Haustein, Writing Religious History, 23 9–47. The term Charismatic is typically used for people within
mainline denominations who adopt Pentecostal beliefs and practices.
66 Eide, Revolution and Religion, 164–66; Eshete, The Evangelical Movement, 213–14.
67 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 20 9–10 .
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advanced ‘scientific socialism’ in opposition to religion,68 the Derg’s political energy was
primarily directed at making religions subservient to the state. This was done by aligning
hierarchies, suppressing ‘insurgent’ religions, and disturbing religious practice where it clashed
with collective requirements or emerged as a political force powerful enough to unite different
regions, ethnicities or other segments of society. Constitutionally secular and ideologically
atheist, the socialist state thus maintained—perhaps even increased—the political significance
of religions through the centralizing controls imposed. Aligned religious leaders lent the state
political legitimacy, while alienated religious groups formed alternative political communities,
be it through Pentecostal underground churches, Protestant missionary support for Oromo
liberation movements,69 or the rise of Islamic reformism as a response to the co-optation of
ʿulamā.70
LIBERATION AND CONTROL: RELIGION AND ETHNIC FEDER ALISM
In 1991, the Derg was ousted by a coalition of rebel armies, led by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF). The TPLF came from a similar ideological background as the regime it fought,
with its leader, Meles Zenawi, only renouncing Marxism-Leninism in 1990, at about the same
time as Mengistu Hailemariam.71 Like the Derg, the TPLF’s former ideological leanings had not
prevented it from co-opting religion during the insurgency. The TPLF leadership refrained from
attacking monastic and ecclesial privileges, and Orthodox priests were recruited as combatants
or for practical support, while Muslim support for the TPLF rose as the Derg failed to deliver
on religious equality.72 At the same time, the TPLF stepped into the established political role of
regulating the church, organizing church conferences that, for example, pushed for a separate
church secretariat in ‘liberated territories’ or sought structural reforms.
Having ousted Mengistu, the TPLF established a new governing formula in the form of ethnic
or ‘multi-national’ federalism. The Ethiopian state now no longer rested on the integrity of
the centre, but rather on a constitutional contract between the ‘nations, nationalities and
peoples of Ethiopia’.73 Politically, this entailed forming a governing coalition made up of ethnic
parties: the EPRDF. Administration of the country was organized into ethnically defined states
or regions, which were allowed to adopt their own languages and scripts, and even given the
right to secede. Earlier notions of Abyssinian cultural supremacy were replaced by the official
68 Østebø, Localising Salafism, 199 .
69 Haustein, ‘Navigating Political Revolutions‘, 12 8f.
70 Østebø, Localising Salafism, 22 0–35.
71 Andargachew Tiruneh, The Ethiopian Revolution 19 74–1987: A Transfor mation From an Aristocratic to a
Totalitarian Autocracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 , 362 .
72 John Young, Peasant Re volution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975–199 1, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 199 7, 174–7 8.
73 ‘The Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’, Federal Negarit 1 (1995): preamble.
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valorization of cultural and ethnic diversity, visualized in seemingly ubiquitous depictions of
‘cultural’ dances on state television.
Despite being a radical and promising attempt at solving the age-old friction between Ethiopia’s
fragmentary and centrist tendencies, the project was fraught with tensions. The main ethnic
groups recognized were very different in terms of their geographic distributions, cultural
configurations and internal plurality.74 In addition, the dynamic of centralization continued
unabated, with the TPLF establishing undisputed hegemony over the army, the political process
and economic assets.75
The EPRDF’s stance regarding religions was also characterized by ambivalence. Officially,
Ethiopia was a strictly secular state. For the first time, the Ethiopian constitution provided
a robust formula for freedom of religion and the non-discrimination of religious minorities.
In accordance with the 1966 regulations, all religious groups could attain legal status through
registering as a non-governmental association. The EOTC, however, retained its privileged legal
position as the only religious body directly established in Ethiopian law and thus was not subject
to the registration requirement and the state oversight this afforded.
Moreover, as soon as political considerations got in the way, the government’s promise of state
neutrality was cast aside.76 Shortly after the TPLF took over Addis Ababa, Patriarch Abunä
Merkorios was forced to abdicate and managed to escape from Ethiopia. Surrounded by a
tightly knit entourage that regarded him as the legitimate patriarch, he established what became
known as the ‘Legal Synod in Exile’ in the USA.77 In 1992, the Ethiopian Holy Synod elected a
Tigrayan monk, Abuna Paulos, as the new patriarch. Despite the EPRDF wishing to emphasize
its discontinuity from the Derg, the election was seen as a continuation of the long-standing
pattern of governmental interference in Orthodox institutional processes. Meanwhile, other
Orthodox believers considered the election of Paulos—a protege of Abuna Theophilos and a
former political prisoner of the Derg—as the ‘the reinstatement of the righteous succession to
74 Merera Gudina, ‘Contradictory Interpretations of Ethiopian Histor y: The Need for a New Consensus’,
in Ethnic Federalis m: The Ethiopian Experience in Comparative Perspective, ed. David T urton, Oxford:
James Currey, 20 06; Fisseha Assefa, ‘Theory versus practice in the implementation of Ethiopia’s ethnic
federalism’, in Ethnic Federalism: The Ethiopian Experience in Comparative Perspect ive, eds. David Turton,
Oxford: Ja mes Currey, 20 06.
75 Sarah Vaughan, ‘Federalism, Revolutionary Democracy and the Developmental State, 1991–2 012’, in
Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Ze nawi, eds. Gérard
Prunier and Éloi Ficquet, London: Hurst & Co., 2015 .
76 Jörg Haustein and Terje Østebø, ‘EPRD F’s Revolutionar y Democracy and Religious Plurality: Islam and
Christianit y in Post-Derg Ethiopia’, in Reconfiguring Ethiopia: The Politics of Authoritarian Reforms, eds.
Jon Abbink and Tobias Hagmann, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013 .
77 See Walle Engedayehu, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Diaspora: Expansion in the
Midst of Division’, African Social Scie nce Review 6 (2014).
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Abuna Theophilos, who had been uncanonically eliminated and replaced’.78 Throughout Paulos’
patriarchate, there were widespread concerns that he was a fervent supporter of the EPRDF,
sharing its modernistic approach to development. In 1997, Bahatawi Fekade Selassie, a hermit
who had been a vocal critic of Abuna Paulos, was shot dead in the church of Istifanos in Addis
Ababa, allegedly by a bodyguard attempting to defend Paulos from the hermit’s aggression.79
This excessive use of force to repress dissent shocked the Orthodox community, indicating as
it did an affinity between state brutality and a violent church authoritarianism embodied by the
patriarch.
In 2012, Abuna Paulos and Meles Zenawi died unexpectedly within a week of each other, fuelling
fevered speculation and creating a disorienting power void.80 Following the nomination of an
interim patriarch, the government made a failed attempt to reconcile the Ethiopian synod with
the exiled one. In 2013, the election of a new Tigrayan patriarch, Abuna Mathias, frustrated
Orthodox believers’ expectations for change, confirming in their eyes that the government
intended to continue meddling in religious affairs. The absence of any high-profile contenders
in the election only served to confirm suspicions about governmental involvement.81 Abuna
Mathias was seen as less politically involved than his predecessor, and widely considered a
skilful diplomat having himself tried to reconcile the two synods while Archbishop of North
America. Yet, his closeness to Paulos and ethnic identity provoked ongoing anxiety.
Muslims, meanwhile, suffered ‘enduring constraints’82 in the securitization of Islam and the
co-optation of the EIASC, with mosques remaining a contested presence in the public sphere.83
Much of this was framed as protecting Ethiopia from ‘religious extremism’, typically in
connection with events that fuelled concerns about Islamic terrorism in the country: a violent
clash in the al-Anwar mosque in Addis Ababa in 1995; the assassination attempt on Mubarak
the same year; 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’; and Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia
78 Stéphane Ancel and Eloi Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) and the
Challenges of Modernity’, in Understanding Contemporar y Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution, and the Legacy
of Meles Zenawi, eds. Gerard Prunier and Eloi Ficquet, London: Hurst & Co., 2015 , 80.
79 Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox’, 80 .
80 Éloi Ficquet, ‘La Mort du Premier Ministre Éthiopien Meles Zenawi (Aout 2 012): Dissimu lation,
Assomption et Sancti fication’, Politique Africaine 142 (2016).
81 See Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopia n Orthodox’, 88 .
82 Feyissa, ‘Muslims Renegotiating’, 2 89.
83 Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or Confrontation’, 12–14 .
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in 2006.84 As with the Derg, state interventions tended to produce the opposite of what was
intended, with the government’s sponsorship of a particular Sufi movement (al-Ahbash) an
especially instructive example of how EPRDF interference eroded the EIASC’s legitimacy and
therefore the very ‘Ethiopian Islam’ it sought to promote through this conduit.85 Al-Ahbash was
cast by the EPRDF as non-violent and contextually adapted Islam, and in political terms was
perceived as easier to control given its less robust ties with international Muslim communities
and institutions. This transparent move on the part of the government prompted resistance,
however, strengthening the reformist factions within Islam the state had sought to contain.
Protestants benefitted most from the EPRDF regime. For the first time, they could freely register
churches and gain regular access to land for church buildings and burial grounds. Having already
grown substantially during the era of operating underground, Protestant numbers soared, their
population share increasing from just over 5 per cent in the mid-1980s to well over 25 per cent
in recent statistics. This Protestant proliferation was fuelled to a large degree by Pentecostal
expressions and inaugurated an entrepreneurial fragmentation of the church landscape. As
Pentecostal beliefs and practices became embedded in mainline Protestant denominations,
the (originally derogatory) epithet ‘Pente’ became a widely accepted self-designation for all
evangelicals.86
Pentecostals largely understood their success as the ‘fruit’ of the persecution they had endured
and a vindication of their political strategy—liberty and growth had not come through ‘worldly’
politics, but rather through spiritual resilience and defying government oppression. For much
of the EPRDF era, this led to widespread disengagement from formal politics in favour of
‘healing the country’ through personal conversions and realizing developmental aspirations.87
Accordingly, converted ex-politicians such as Tramrat Layne, former prime minister (PM) of
the transitional government, were held in higher regard than Pentecostal politicians who had
risen through the party ranks. Even Meles’s successor, Pentecostal PM Hailemariam Desalegn,
84 Abbink, ‘An historical-anthropological approach’, 118; Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or
Confrontation’; Jörg Haustein and Terje Østebø, ‘EPR DF’s Revolutionary Democrac y and Religious
Plurality: Islam and Christianity in Post-Derg Ethiopia’, in Reconfigur ing Ethiopia: The Politics of
Authoritarian Reforms, eds. Jon Abbink a nd Tobias Hag mann, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, 166 f;
Mohammed Dejen Assen, ‘Contested Secularism in Ethiopia: The Contention Between Muslims and the
Government’, PhD dissertation, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, 2 016.
85 Terje Østebø, ‘Islam a nd State Relations in Ethiopia: From Containment to the Production of a
“Governmental Islam”’, Journal of the Ame rican Academy of Religion 81 (2 013); Feyissa, ‘Muslims
Renegotiating’, 289 .
86 Jörg Haustein and Emanuele Fantini, ‘Introduction: The Ethiopian Pentecostal Movement – Histor y,
Identity and Current Socio-Political Dynamics’, PentecoStudies 12 (2013).
87 Dena Freeman, ‘Pentecostalism in a Rural Context: D ynamics of Religion and Development in Southwest
Ethiopia’, PentecoStudies 1 2 (2013); Emanuele Fantini, ‘Go Pente! The Charismatic Renewa l of the
Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia’, in Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the
Legacy of Meles Ze nawi, eds. Gérard Prunier and Éloi Ficquet, London: Hurst & Co., 2 015.
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failed to earn a wholehearted Protestant embrace. While this was arguably in part due to his
membership in the widely ostracized anti-trinitarian sect of Oneness Pentecostalism,88 as a man
of the party he lacked—despite his religious confessions—the transformational aura of a born-
again politician.
Two EPRDF policies influenced all religions alike. Firstly, in seeking to cut off outside political
influence, the government enforced a strict separation between advocacy organizations and
development work in its 2009 charity proclamation. In practice, this meant charitable work
by a religious organization had to be split off into a separate entity, with detrimental effects
for development areas that were of religious concern, such as efforts to curb female genital
mutilation/cutting.89 Secondly, in 2010, the government pushed for the establishment of inter-
religious councils at a national and local level. While this fitted with the EPRDF’s political
aesthetics, it made religious leaders vulnerable to political surveillance and co-optation.
On the whole, the official secularism and pluralizing logic of the EPRDF regime came with a
certain systematic affinity for Protestantism, thus promoting its growth. The fragmented and
mostly Pentecostalized proliferation of Protestant churches matched the state’s divide-and-
rule strategy, while the movement’s internal differences and largely apolitical vision of spiritual
transformation presented no direct challenge to those in power. Nevertheless, the substantial
growth of Protestantism prepared the ground for the re-emergence of religious narratives at the
heart of Ethiopian nationhood.
EMPIRE RESURGENT? A BIY AHMED’S GOD TALK AND ETHIOPIAN NATIONALISM
In February 2018, following three years of unrest, Hailemariam Desalegn announced his
resignation as PM and chairman of the EPRDF. The protests were led by Ethiopia’s largest
ethnic group, the Oromo, who had long been subject to political marginalization. Hailemariam’s
resignation sparked a political crisis, with the various ethnic parties within the EPRDF vying for
power. In the end, Abiy Ahmed from the Oromo Democratic Party managed to gain the crucial
support of the Amhara National Democratic Movement, as well as a sizeable bloc of the Southern
Ethiopian People’s Front, and was elected chairman of the EPRDF and sworn in as PM. It soon
became apparent that this was more than a swing of political power toward the Oromo within
the ruling governing coalition. Abiy moved to abolish the EPRDF’s ethnic rendering of politics
altogether, reverting instead to a one-nation ideal of Ethiopia, albeit articulated as multi-ethnic
collaboration within his governing philosophy of ‘mädämär’ (synergy).90
88 Jörg Haustein, ‘The New Prime Minister’s Faith: A Look at Oneness Pentecostalism in Ethiopia’,
PentecoStudies 12 (2013).
89 Jörg Haustein, and Emma Tomalin, ‘Keeping Faith in 2 030 : Religions and the Sustainable Development
Goals: Findings and Recommendations’, Arts & Humanities Research Council, 2019, 1 2, https://
religions-and-development.leeds.ac.uk/research-network.
90 Abiy Ahmed Ali,
መደመር
[Synergy], Addis Ababa, 2019 .
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Politically, this made sense. The system of ethno-regional federalism was controversial, in
particular among urban elites and sections of the formerly predominant Ethiopian highlands,
who felt disowned by the TPLF’s erasure of the old imperial symbols of nationhood and its
redrawing of borders and administrative units around ethnicity. Aligning with these forces
represented the most straightforward way for Abiy to broaden his Oromo power base into
a national coalition capable of displacing the TPLF hegemony and circumventing ethnic
coalitions, with their long history of tactical manoeuvring. Abiy quickly built a broad popular
platform through a series of liberating reforms, and weakened the TPLF by making peace with
former arch-enemy Eritrea. He then set about transforming the EPRDF from an ethnic coalition
into a programmatic party: the Prosperity Party.
The audaciousness and pace of these reforms can only fully be understood if one takes into
account religion, which, in a sharp departure from previous leaders, is at the forefront of Abiy’s
political rhetoric.91 There are a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being Abiy’s
personal faith as a Pentecostal Christian. Among Pentecostals, stories abound of his reign
having been prophesized—a notion Abiy had nurtured for years.92 In his acceptance speech
upon being elected to office, Abiy recounted how as a boy his mother had whispered into his
ear that he would one day serve his nation from the palace. On multiple occasions since, he has
reiterated the notion that his rule was ordained and is upheld by God.93
It is important not to reduce Abiy’s invocation of faith to religious psychology, however, as
two important political factors underlie the prominent role played by religion in his governing
platform. Firstly, Abiy’s background and political career impressed on him the political potency
of religious identities in Ethiopia. Hailing from a Muslim father and Orthodox mother, Abiy
converted to Pentecostalism during his youth.94 This personal acquaintance with all three faiths
soon became an important political resource as Abiy transitioned from a military to political
career. Posted by the military to his home town of Beshesha in the Jima zone, he was engaged
in Christian–Muslim peacebuilding and conflict resolution initiatives following violent inter-
religious clashes in 2006. Subsequently, as parliamentarian and deputy president of Oromia
91 Jörg Haustein and Dereje Feyissa, ‘The Strains of “Pente” Politics: Evangelicals and t he Post-Orthodox
State in Ethiopia’, in Routledge Handbook on the Horn of Africa, ed. Jean-Nicolas Bach, London: Routledge,
2022, 486f.
92 Bekele Woldekidan, a well-established pastor and histor ian of Abiy’s denomination, the Fu ll Gospel
Believers’ Church, recounted how Abiy himself claimed over twenty years ago that he wou ld one day be
PM (Etalem Mesgana, ‘Amazing Miracle in Ethiopia Inter view with Pastor Bekele Woldekidan Part II’,
YouTube, 9 April 2020. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw TGtO8vEE4).
93 Feyissa and Jörg Haustein, ‘The Strains’, 48 6.
94 According to the above-mentioned story, he would have been a Pentecostal already in the autumn of
2000.
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Region, he intensified these efforts in his support for the Religious Forum for Peace.95 This led
to his PhD thesis on ‘Social Capital and its Role in Traditional Conflict Resolution in Ethiopia:
The Case of Inter-Religious Conflict in Jimma Zone State’, which he defended at Addis Ababa
University in 2017.96 Brokering inter-religious peace and emphasizing Ethiopia’s multi-religious
character thus became a key element of Abiy’s political capital as he ascended to power.
Accordingly, Abiy quickly involved himself in religious policy upon becoming PM, inserting
himself into the already advanced negotiations aimed at resolving the schism between the EOTC
and the exile synod. To much acclaim, he steered the talks to a successful end. Abiy also helped
mend a rift among Muslims that had arisen between some of the Muslim protest leaders and
the EIASC, whose leadership had been installed by the previous government. Alongside these
reconciliation efforts, Abiy carefully avoided the usual evangelical exclusivism and embraced all
religions, paying tribute to the Orthodox Church’s role in Ethiopian history, becoming the first
PM to attend ifṭār celebrations in Ramadan 2019, and signalling his support for the celebration
of Oromo traditional religion.97 More fundamentally, he established Islam and Protestantism as
fully institutionalized religions in Ethiopian law, giving them the same status as the EOTC. On
the Muslim side this involved granting legal personality to the EIASC through a parliamentary
act, while on the Protestant side a new entity was created in the form of the Evangelical Council,
which unites (almost) all major Protestant denominations in Ethiopia and gives them legal
status as religious bodies.98
A second political reason underlying Abiy’s foregrounding of religion is the link between
Ethiopian national identity and religious exceptionalism. As noted above, all the major
religions in Ethiopia attribute a special status to the country in their historical narratives,
embracing the notion that its people are especially blessed by God. It is little wonder, then,
that Abiy’s emphasis on Ethiopian unity over ethnic diversity regularly entails invoking God’s
favour, whether this be in spiritualized interpretations of political events or the newly minted
tradition of ending speeches with the phrase ‘May God bless Ethiopian and all its peoples’.99
Even in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Abiy argued that Ethiopia’s ‘thousands of
95 Abiy Ahmed Ali, ‘Countering Violent Extremism Through Social Capital: Anecdote from Jimma,
Ethiopia’, Horn of Africa Bullet in 29 (2017).
96 Abiy Ahmed Ali, ‘Social Capital and Its Role in Traditiona l Conflict Resolution: The Case of Inter-
religious Conflict in Jimma Zone of t he Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia’, PhD disser tation, Addis
Ababa University, 2016 .
97 Haustein and Dereje Feyissa, ‘The Strains of “Pente” Politics’, 489.
98 The Evangelical Council gave itself a basic trinitarian formula, which by default excludes Oneness
Pentecostals, a large g roup in Ethiopia (see Haustein, ‘The New Prime Minister’s’).
99 In many instances, Abiy uses the Amharic word ‘
fä
ṭ
ari
’ for God, which means creator. Other words for
God have specific Christian connotations and would under mine the appeal of Abiy’s multi-religious
offering among Muslims.
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years’ of independence were linked to peaceful coexistence between Islam and Christianity.100
Abiy’s religious governing platform therefore presents much more than the narrow evangelical
politics often diagnosed in the foreign press.101 In essence, it revives the old imperial/Orthodox
vision of ‘one Ethiopia under God’, now broadened into a multi-religious proposal delivered in
Pentecostal style.
Even so, the limits of Abiy’s governing pitch emerged early in his reign. From September 2018
onwards, the country has been afflicted by violent inter-ethnic and inter-religious clashes that
have left hundreds dead and millions internally displaced.102 Amid a context of simmering,
decades-long grievances, Abiy’s lofty rhetoric of synergy and Ethiopian unity has proven largely
vacuous. Instead, people have increasingly resorted to the safety of ethnically or religiously
defined kinship communities, with each clash deepening antagonisms and sowing expectations
of further conflict.103
This failure of governance has left Abiy vulnerable to criticisms that he is driven by religious
zeal rather than political reason. Most prominent among his critics have been leading members
of the TPLF, who as early as August 2019 contrasted their secular ‘realism’ with Abiy’s ‘Great
Ethiopia mantra’ of a country prospering as it stretched its hands to God.104 This dissonance
only increased as Abiy failed to secure the support of the TPLF for his reform agenda, ultimately
resulting in the Tigray War.
100 Abiy Ahmed A li, ‘Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize’, Nobel Prize, YouTube, 10 December 2019, www.youtube.
com/watch?v=jESA8ML AuCw.
101 Andrew DeCort, ‘Christian Nationa lism is Tearing Ethiopia Apart’, Foreign Policy, 18 June 2022, https://
foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/18/ethiopia-pentecostal-evangelical-abiy-ahmed-christian-nationalism/;
‘God Will Make You Prosper: Charismatic Christianity Is Transforming Ethiopia’, The Economist,
24 November 201 8; ‘Make Me a Cit y: Power and Planning in Eth iopia’, The Economist, 18 June 202 2;
Jean-Philippe Rémy, ‘Abiy Ahmed, chef de guerre avec un prix Nobel de la pa ix’, Le Monde, 4 February
20 21, www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2021/02/04/abiy-ahmed-premier-ministre-d-une-ethiopie-entre-
guerre-et-paix_6068696_3212 .html; Fritz Schaap, ‘Ethiopia’s Chosen One: A Brutal War Waged By a
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’, Spiegel International, 2 8 October 2021, www.spiegel.de/international/world/
ethiopia-s-chosen-one-a-brutal-war-waged-by-a-nobel-peace-prize-laureate-a-d2f4d03e-90e4-49a4-
918b-9 6d45 43f722b.
102 For an over view and detailed analysis, see Østebø et al., ‘Religion, Ethnicity ’.
103 Østebø et al., ‘Religion, Ethnicit y’. 31.
104 Haustein and Dereje Feyissa , ‘The Strains of “Pente” Politics’, 490f.
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CONTEMPORARY SITUATION
As religion has returned to the forefront of Ethiopian politics, significant tensions exist within
all three main religious blocs: Orthodoxy, Islam and Protestantism. These are important to
understand in order to appreciate the complexities of inter-religious relations in the country.
Traditional religions form a fourth religious bloc that will be discussed in this section, which
however, overlaps with the three other religions in many respects rather than forming a primary
affiliation for many Ethiopians. The Catholic Church, despite retaining an official presence
in Ethiopia, has a statistically insignificant reach of less than one per cent of the country’s
population overall.105 Smaller churches and religious groups, such as Adventists and Jehovah’s
Witnesses, also exist, but have not left a noticeable imprint on Ethiopia’s religious fabric. A final
group worth mentioning are Ethiopian Jews or Beta Israel, which following their large-scale
immigration to Israel between 1977 and 1991 no longer have a numerically significant presence
in Ethiopia.106
ORTHODOX CHRIST IANIT Y
Since the end of the Derg regime, the EOTC has experienced a period marked by the ‘progressive
erosion of Orthodox privilege and Church influence in matters of state’.107 This loss of hegemony
is exemplified by the steep decrease in the number of Orthodox Christians, many of whom have
converted to competing Christian denominations.108 According to the census, the population
share claimed by Ethiopian Orthodoxy declined from 54 per cent to 43.5 per cent between 1984
and 2007. At the same time, however, the post-socialist era saw a period of intense innovation
in which the church experienced something of a revival.109 After years of social control and
repression—in religion as in other spheres of life—the Orthodox Church witnessed a significant
uptick in attendance as people sought refuge from the uncertaintiesof the socio-economic
105 According to the 20 07 census, the church only exceeds the 1 per cent threshold in Gambella (3 .4 per
cent) and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (2.4 per cent).
106 Steven Kaplan, ‘Art. Betä Ǝsra’el’, in Enc yclopaedia Aethiopica: Vol. 1, ed. Siegbert Uh lig, Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 20 03. In contemporary scholarship, the Beta Israel’s claim to Jewish heritage is largely
understood as mythological (Kaplan 2 003), akin to that of the Judaising influences in Ethiopian
Orthodoxy (Afework Hailu 2020).
107 Tom Boylston, ‘Orthodox Modern’, Focus On The Horn, 2 July 20 12, https://focusonthehorn.wordpress.
com/20 12 /07/20/orthodox-modern-religion-politics-in-todays-ethiopia-part-1/.
108 Haustein and Terje Østebø, ‘EPRDF’s Revolutionary Democracy’.
109 Tom Boylston, The Stranger at the Feast: Prohibit ion and Mediation in an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian
Community. Oakland: Universit y of California Press, 2018 .
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transformations sweeping the country.110 Confronted with a new religious market characterized
by intense inter-religious competition, the EOTC emphasized its role as the ‘pillar of Ethiopian
history’111—that is, an institution capable of providing continuity between the ancient Ethiopian
state and its recent revolutionary incarnations.112
This historiographical repositioning of the EOTC was, in part, facilitated by the EPRDF’s
folkloric re-stylization of religious identities in the public square and media—through selected
Orthodox festivals and symbolism—which reinforced the pluralistic image of the country the
government wished to perpetrate. Despite initial concerns regarding the over-regulation of
religious expression in public and the ‘domestication of religion as culture’,113 the EOTC soon
realized the potential of occupying the public sphere with its sounds, symbols and rituals.
Religious festivals became a means of invoking the historical imagination of Orthodoxy as the
pillar of Ethiopian history through ‘highly recognizable indicators of civilization’: historical
buildings, a literary tradition and national origin myths.114 This engagement with history,
however, remained vulnerable to being co-opted by the state in the service of wider national
self-representation projects. With Orthodox believers seeking to consolidate and expand their
presence in public spaces, these spaces became catalysts for inter-religious confrontations and
violence across the country.115 Recent years have seen a surge in polemics between the Orthodox
Church and other religious groups—often intersecting with ethnic grievances—regarding
ownership of specific sites in Ethiopian cities, or even concerning the fact that particular names
bear religious connotations (for example, Meskel Square, or the Square of the Cross, in Addis
Ababa and other towns).
While Abiy Ahmed’s ascension to power brought about an initial loosening of control over
public expressions of religious belonging, it also engendered increasingly embattled forms of
religious communication. During recent Orthodox festivals, for instance, believers have been
110 Diego Mar ia Malara and Bethlehem Hailu, ‘Possessed by the Post-Socialist Zeitgeist: History, Spir its and
the Problem of Generationa l (Dis)continuity in an Ethiopian Orthodox Exorcism’, in Char ismatic Healers
in Contemporary Africa: Deliverance in Muslim and Christian Worlds, eds. Sandra Fancello and A lessandro
Gusman, London: Bloomsbury, 202 2.
111 Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox’, 63 .
112 Diego Maria Malara, ‘Exorcizing the Spirit of Protestantism: Ambiguity and Spirit Possession in an
Ethiopian Orthodox Ritual’, Ethnos 87 (2 02 2).
113 Tom Boylston, ‘What kind of territory? On public religion and space in Ethiopia’, The Immanent Frame:
Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere, 6 August 2 014 , https://tif.ssrc.org/2 014/0 8/26/what-kind-of-
territory-on-public-religion-and-space-in-ethiopia/.
114 Boylston, ‘What kind of territory?’.
115 Abbink, ‘Religion in public spaces’; Boylston, ‘Orthodox Modern’; Boylston, ‘What kind of terr itory?’;
Boylston, The Stranger; John Dulin, ‘Intelligible Tolerance, Ambig uous Tensions, Antagonistic
Revelations: Patterns of Muslim-Christian Coex istence in Orthodox Christian Majorit y Ethiopia’, PhD
dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2016.
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spotted wearing t-shirts bearing slogans that depict Ethiopia as a Christian island in a Muslim
sea. For many observers, this represents an exceptionalist and exclusionary message that seeks
to re-centre Orthodoxy as the real driver of Ethiopian history—a vision at odds with the secular
policies of recent decades. Despite early enthusiasm surrounding Abiy Ahmed’s attempts to
place God at the heart of Ethiopian politics, there is growing discontent in Orthodox quarters
about the PM’s scrutiny of religious groups, as well as his inaction in protecting Orthodox
Christians of Amhara background, who have been victims of recurrent ethnic and religious
violence.
Politically, the post-EPRDF years have been difficult for the EOTC. Abiy Ahmed’s facilitation of
Merkorios’ return to Ethiopia involved an unprecedented arrangement whereby two patriarchs
would share power. While it is difficult to infer any direct political consequences arising from
Merkorios’ return, one possible impact is a limiting of Abuna Mathias’ political influence, thereby
breaking the government–patriarch axis. Merkorios’ media and public event appearances
were very limited in the months preceding his death in March 2022, leading to speculation
that he had previously suffered a stroke and that the real decisional power during this time
rested with his embattled entourage (which is notorious for is opposition to the EPRDF). Some
commentators claim that after Abuna Mathias openly used the term genocide to denounce mass
violence against Tigrayans, members of Merkorios’ entourage went to the government palace
to protest about his behaviour. It is also rumoured that high-ranking clerical figures close to
Merkorios were the real architects of the press silence imposed on Abuna Mathias. Hard as it is
to validate such rumours, they should be recognized as having agency in their own right in terms
of shaping politico-religious discourse in the country. Some members of the synod have publicly
distanced themselves from Abuna Mathias’s comments, making it clear they do not represent
the synod’s official view.
Abuna Mathias has also come under attack from prominent Mahibere Kidusan members,
who, under Abiy Ahmed, have gained access to important government positions. Mahibere
Kidusan, initially set up in 1991 as a student-led movement active in higher education and
subsequently brought under the Sunday School Department of the Church, soon expanded its
communication activities to encompass religious pamphlets, newspapers, and programmes
aired on the radio, television and, later, the internet,116 with the aim of democratizing access to
religious knowledge.117 The movement’s ‘discourse is aimed at restoring the original identity and
values of Christian Orthodox Ethiopians by extending to the laity practices that used to govern
only priests, such as strict observance of fasting, sexual abstinence, and celebrating marriage
by taking communion’.118 As the movement’s conservative message gained popularity among
116 Ralph Lee, ‘“Modernism” and the Ethiopian Orthodox Sunday School Movement: Indigenous
Movements and Their International Connections’, Journal of Ecclesial History 73 (2022); Ancel and
Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox’.
117 Boylston, ‘What kind of territory?’.
118 Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox’, 84.
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middle-class, educated elites with access to a robust socio-political capital, Mahibere Kidusan
grew in strength within the Orthodox panorama, and ultimately ‘felt strong enough to criticize
patriarch Abuna Paulos, whom they considered to be too careless about the deterioration of the
Church and too subservient to the government’.119 This critique engendered divisions within the
synod, leading to the movement’s members being threatened with excommunication.120
Tigrayan Orthodox Christians are acutely concerned about the appointment of Daniel Kibret—a
renowned Mahibere Kidusan preacher—as advisor to the PM, fearing the movement will feel
further legitimated in extending its influence over the synod. This would be in line with Mahibere
Kidusan’s ambition to set the Orthodox agenda and the movement’s tendency to consider itself
the true custodian of the Orthodox tradition. Daniel Kibret, along with other famous preachers,
have not only accused Abuna Mathias of partisanship in the conflict, but have been criticized for
deploying dehumanizing metaphors in their portrayal of Tigrayan people. For some Tigrayan
commentators, Mahibere Kidusan has always been characterized by reactionary nostalgia for
an idealized imperial past in which the Orthodox Church occupied a prominent role in politics.
In recent years, however, the fear is that this vision has morphed into open support for Amhara
nationalist claims and their version of history. Meanwhile, in some Amhara nationalist circles,
Daniel Kibret is accused of no longer speaking in defence of Amhara’s interests because he is
seen as co-opted by the government in his position of social affairs advisor. While Mahibere
Kidusan may be less homogenous in terms of its members’ opinions—including about the
war—than is commonly assumed, internal dissent is often condemned to public invisibility
due to fears of repercussions, with elements of the movement’s leadership now having direct
access to political power. There are, however, indications of divisions along ethnic lines, and
influential Tigrayan Mahibere Kidusan members have abandoned the movement following the
onset of the civil conflict.
Mahibere Kidusan’s support for the war has been highly visible, with preachers criticized for
inflammatory rhetoric, which thanks to digital media has had immediate, countrywide impacts.
Moreover, Mahibere Kidusan, as well as other Orthodox organizations, have come under
scrutiny for their alleged fundraising capacities in relation not only to the government’s war
effort, but, according to Tigrayan activists, armed nationalist groups such as Fano. It is worth
noting that despite international attention being focused on Mahibere Kidusan, there are a
number of other mahəbäroč (associations) that, since the end of the Derg, have extended their
operations well beyond their original purpose of commemorating saints days.121 Indeed, these
associations have developed dense national and transnational networks capable of mobilizing
119 Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Or thodox’, 84 .
120 Ancel and Ficquet, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox’, 84 .
121 Stéphane Ancel, ‘Mahbär et Sänbäte: Associations Religieuses en Éthiopie’, Aethiopica: International
Journal for Ethiopian and Er itrean Studies 8 (20 05); Anne Britt Flemmen and Mulumebet Senese,
‘Religious Mahbär in Ethiopia: Ritual Elements, Dynamics, and Cha llenges’, Journal of Religion in Africa
46 (2016).
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significant amounts of capital for pious purposes, such as restoring rural monasteries or
countering the expansion of other faiths in rural areas through church-planting.122 The extent of
these associations’ involvement in fundraising for the army and/or ethnic militias is, however,
hard to determine.
The outbreak of the Tigray War in November 2020 put the Tigrayan Orthodox clergy in a
difficult position. Their hopes of receiving support from non-Tigrayan Orthodox Christians in
other regions were soon thwarted as it became apparent that many supported the Ethiopian
National Defense Force. In November 2020, the International Orthodox Tewahido Association
of Tigrayan Clergy was established, lamenting the absence of an unambiguous condemnation of
war atrocities from the Holy Synod. In February 2021, the Tigrayan clergy refused to meet with
a group of elders from Addis Ababa that included an EOTC delegation. The Dioceses of Mekelle
issued a statement of protest denouncing the indiscriminate violence that had taken place
during the conflict, as well as the looting of religious artefacts. In March 2021, the Tigrayan
clergy issued a statement announcing the foundation of the International Orthodox Tewahedo
Association of Tigrayan clergy, an unaffiliated political organization bringing together clergy
from across Tigray and the Tigrayan diaspora with the aim of establishing a separate church.
Further statements in May detailed the killing of over 300 religious figures and the destruction
of several Tigrayan churches.
In December 2021, the International Orthodox Association of Tigray Clergy stated its support
for a schism, bemoaning Abuna Mathias’s mistreatment at the hands of other members
of the Holy Synod, who had criticized his stance on the war. Meanwhile, many in Ethiopian
Orthodox circles dismissed such statements as the work of the diasporic community and, as
such, unrepresentative of the will of the Tigrayan people. This dismissal echoed widespread
accusations that the Tigrayan diasporic community—often termed ‘digital Weyane’—were not
only detached from the concerns of Tigray’s residents, but supported a ‘terrorist group’ (the
TPLF) more interested in retaining political power than in the wellbeing of Tigrayans. Finally, on
10 February 2022, under ‘Tigray Orthodox Tewahido Church’ letterhead, a statement appeared
announcing a local patriarchate had been established. Abuna Merha Kristos, interim chair of the
independent Tigrayan Orthodox Church, stated in an interview that ties to the central synod
were irrevocably broken and that ‘We can’t live with those who massacre us’.123 Importantly,
independent Tigrayan Orthodox congregations had already formed in the diaspora by that time,
with sizeable communities in Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Toronto, Adelaide and Leeds.
Despite this, many Ethiopian Orthodox Christians remain critical of the schism’s legitimacy, or
are doubtful as to whether a schism had taken place at all. While the lack of notable statements
in the meantime has left the issue unresolved, for many Tigrayans residing abroad—who are
playing an increasingly central role in framing discussions about the conflict—returning to the
122 Boylston, ‘W hat kind of territor y?’; see Boylston, The Stranger.
123 Dimtsi Weyane Television, ‘/// - ’
[The establishment of a Tigraya n church office will help to keep the histor y and heritage of the Tigrayan
people], YouTube, 13 Feb 2 022 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB THd6qybw.
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EOTC is not a viable option.
Tigrayans are not the only ethnic group to air major grievances against the EOTC leadership.
On 22 January 2023, three Orthodox Archbishops led by Abuna Sawiros announced the
constitution of a new Orthodox Synod in Oromia, and the ordination of 26 new Bishops without
the consent of the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. The schismatics
were excommunicated on January 26 and accused of illegal ordination.124 Following this strong
reaction, the Holy Synod called on Orthodox believers throughout the country to publicly
demonstrate their support for a united church. Abuna Sawiros maintained that the split was
a consequence of the fact that Oromo were under-represented in positions of power within
the EOTC and that the church did support the use of Oromo language in praying, preaching
and religious teaching. These conditions, he lamented, led many Oromo Orthodox Christians
to convert to other faiths. On 4 February 2023, when a Bishop appointed by the schismatics
was expected to enter the church of St. Michael in Shashamane, large crowds of Orthodox
Christians loyal to the official Synod gathered in the area attempting to occupy the church.
Ethiopian security forces killed at least eight people in their attempt to disperse the crowd.125
There were multiple reports of violence towards Ethiopian Orthodox clergy and believers in
different areas of the country, which led to increasing concerns about Abiy Ahmed’s inaction in
protecting citizens as well as accusations that he actively supported the schism.
An agreement to resolve the crisis was reached on 15 February 2023, resulting in the reunification
of the two Synods.126 Speculation remains as to whether the rapprochement was a consequence
of church diplomacy or of a direct involvement of Abiy Ahmed in response to Orthodox
mass-mobilization. As the schismatics sought forgiveness, the Holy Synod made significant
concessions, committing, for instance, to promoting the use of Oromo language in church
services and activities in Oromia, allocating more economic resources to those churches, and
opening more theological colleges and training centres in which local clergy can be taught in
the Oromo language. The schismatic Archbishops will be allowed to return to their original
dioceses retaining their old title, while the bishops they ordained will return to their former
rank, but the Holy Synod will consider confirming their promotion whenever possible.
124 EO TC TV, ‘ ’ [A Statement from the Sy nod on the Current Issue],
YouTube, 29 January 2023 , https://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=K4yJ4NjcWgE.
125 Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, ‘’
[Work to Find a Solution Must be Strengthened to Avoid Worsening of Human Rights Violations], Press
Release 10 February 2023, (https://ehrc.org/%E1%8B%A8%E1%88%B0%E1%89%A5%E1%8A%A0%E1%
8B%8A-%E1%88%98%E1%89%A5%E1%89%B6%E1%89%BD-%E1%8C%A5%E1%88%B0%E1%89%B6
%E1%89%BD-%E1%88%B3%E1%8B%A D%E1%8 9%A3%E1%89%A3%E1%88%B1-%E1%8A%A0%E1%8
D%8B%E1%8C%A3/)
126 EOT C Broadcasting Service Agency, ‘
’ [Agreement Reached Between the Holy Synod and the Factional Fathers
Reached], Facebook Post, 15 February 2023 , https://www.facebook.com/eotctvchannel/posts/
pfbid02GTc8DAhFhexgDFYfxHMe7Y2CURPjahWwXkv9i8YYAFBZUUE9rppeFEY8AETnv33tl.
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Islam
The 2007 national census puts the proportion of Ethiopians who are Muslim at 33.9 per cent.
This figure has, however, been roundly rejected by Muslim critics. Mainly citing estimates by
US Department of State publications and the CIA World Factbook, which in the preceding
years estimated the figure as being 45–50 per cent, most in the Muslim community assert
they constitute at least half the national population. In light of the overwhelming lack of
trust in Ethiopia’s public institutions—including the national population and housing census
commission—elites from almost every ethnic and religious segment claim much higher figures
than shown in official statistics. The census figures remain, however, the most geographically
detailed numbers there are, and any plausible refutation of them should deconstruct them at
the local level.
Abiy’s swift enaction of the EPRDF Executive Committee’s decisions to release political
prisoners, including numerous Muslim protest movement leaders, won him considerable
support. He invited the protest movement’s main figures to his office and took some of them
on his various trips around the country and to his meeting with the Badr Association in the
US, a significant diaspora organization supporting Ethiopian Muslims. Despite this, the reform
of the EIASC soon proved to be a lingering point of tension between the incumbents—widely
understood as having been installed by the EPRDF government—and a broad coalition of outside
groups pushing for reform, at the forefront of which was the Ethiopian Muslims’ Solution
Finding Committee. Initiatives involving prominent personalities, including business people,
senior civil servants and former diplomats, achieved little. With a sense of stalemate creeping
in, Abiy created a committee tasked with putting forward solutions. This was composed of
three members of the EIASC, three representatives of the Ethiopian Muslims’ Solution Finding
Committee, and three ‘neutral’ actors—comprising two academics from Addis Ababa University
and Mohammed Jemal Agonafer, an influential religious personality—intended to serve as a
balance between the two groups. Mufti Haji Umer Idris, one of the three EIASC representatives,
had been less than enthusiastic about the EPRDF regime’s promotion of the ‘al-Ahbash’ brand
of Sufism, which triggered the 2012 protests, and even took part in events organized by the
protest movement as a show of unity between ‘Sufi’ and ‘Salafi’ groups.127 For this reason, his
appointment as chair of the select committee was widely popular.
This ‘Committee of the Nine’—as it became known in order to distinguish it from the so-
called ‘Awolia Committee’—identified three main tasks for itself, which were to culminate in
the production of three documents. The first task was to prepare a legislative draft that would
provide sturdier legal ground for the EIASC—a longstanding demand of Muslims in Ethiopia
given its importance for attaining formal legal equality with the EOTC. The second task was
to produce a range of proposals for the organizational restructuring and reform of the EIASC,
127 Juxtaposing ‘Sufi’ and ‘Salafi’ is unhelpful in its generality, as it elides the wide spectrum of difference
within each group and sets up a cliched antagonism that has a fflicted understanding of Muslim reform
movements in many countries. Given these labels have now become self-identifications within the
Ethiopian Muslim political discourse, however, they are adopted here within quote marks.
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encompassing—among other issues—representation, election and internal administrative
structures, and defining the role of the ulema and lay management personnel. The third task
was to produce a theological document—dubbed the ‘ulema document’ but formally named
‘yä-uläma andənät sänäd’, meaning ‘religious scholars unity document’—setting out the basic
theological positions underpinning the unity of Ethiopian Muslims. As such, it was perceived as
an attempt at managing the points of difference between the ‘Salafi’ and ‘Sufi’, with the aim of
organizing under an umbrella national organization.
While work on producing the legislative draft went smoothly, the latter two tasks proved
controversial. The main sticking point on the restructuring agenda was the role of the ulema
in the EIASC’s day-to-day administration, as well as the need for and mode of accountability
regarding the laymen’s executive board. The initial proposal was to delineate the functioning
of the EIASC into two areas—religious and administrative—with power over these functions
assigned to, respectively, the council of ulema and the executive board. Some groups broadly
identifying with the ‘Sufis’—both from within and external to the EIASC— argued that the ulema
should take a more direct role in the EIASC’s everyday management, and that the executive
board should be directly accountable to the council of ulema rather than being a parallel
body. There was also pushback—again mostly from the ‘Sufi’ network—against elections as a
representation mechanism, and the suitability of emulating the federal structure in the EIASC.
Further controversy dogged efforts to draft the unity document. A faction of ‘Sufi’ groups
insisted that a narrower definition of mainstream Sunni Islam articles of faith should be
used for the purposes of EIASC membership, claiming the existence of an ‘Ethiopian Islam’
characterized by unique religious traditions. This includes the notion that the EIASC was
established on the basis of the ‘Al-Ashari’ and ‘Maturidi’ theological schools, thereby precluding
the schools that ‘Salafi’ Muslims generally rely on regarding matters of divinity. As such, the
‘Sufi’ group insisted that the broader expression ‘Ahl As-Sunna wal-Jamaʿa’ (Adherents to the
Sunna and the [Muslim] Community) was insufficient and that the ‘Al-Ashari’ and ‘Maturidi’
schools should be explicitly referenced in this foundational document. In response, the ‘Salafi’
groups insisted that religious figures such as ‘Ibn Taymiyah, Ibn Al-Qayyim, and Muhammed
Ibn Abd al-Wahab’ should be included in the document as well. In light of such divisions, some
key figures in the ‘Sufi’ camp went as far as arguing that the EIASC should be reserved for them,
and that the ‘Salafis’ should establish ‘their own Mejlis’ or council. The vast majority of the
gathered scholars from all ‘sects’ were, however, willing to compromise in order not to let this
historic opportunity slip through their fingers.
With frustrations at the lack of progress mounting, a coalition of the ‘Salafis’, together with a
faction of the ‘Sufis’ around Mufti Haji Umar and outside activists, organized—with government
assistance—a ‘national conference’ at the Sheraton Hotel in Addis Ababa on 1 May 2019, which
was also attended by the PM and the then minister of peace Muferihat Kamil. Here, a change
of leadership was made, with the transitional leadership body now composed of two main
structures. The first was a council of ulema composed of an equal number of ‘Sufi’ and ‘Salafi’
scholars, with Mufti Haji Umer appointed president, and Dr Jeilan Khedir, a prominent figure
among the ‘Salafis’, vice president. The second was an executive board of laymen consisting
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of academics and organizational management professionals. The radical dissenters form the
‘Sufi’ camp staged a walk-out and protest at the event, even heckling Abiy on his arrival. Despite
this, many from their ranks—including Hassan Taju, now ambassador to Kuwait—seemed to
endorse the process at the time. A major concession to reassure ‘Sufis’ was the appointment of
firebrand lawyer and religious scholar Shiekh Kassim Tajudin as the council of ulema’s general
secretary.
The transitional leadership’s expressed objective was to finalize the pending reform documents
and facilitate elections within a year. Not long after its formation, however, some within the
transitional body—together with their affiliates—actively sought to undermine the arrangement,
claiming the Sheraton consensus, including its decisions and planned arrangements, had
been imposed upon them. Various mediation efforts from within the community, as well as
by the United Arab Emirates government, failed, while some members convinced Mufti Haji
Umer to take a more sectarian and hardline position. Attempts by PM Abiy to intervene were
unsuccessful, with Haji Umer claiming he regretted the integration of the ‘Salafis’ into the
EIASC and would do everything he could to reverse it.
When members of the laymen’s executive board were suspended by the council of ulema’s
general secretary and Mufti Haji Umer, they refuted the suspension’s validity in light of their
direct mandate from the Sheraton conference and the internal rules adopted since. Members of
the council of ulema—enough to command a majority—held meetings that were not attended by
the president or general secretary, and passed major decisions aimed at breaking the paralysis.
These, however, were not enforced, resulting in a long period of stalemate. Both factions —
the executive board and the majority of ulema in the council on one side, and the president,
secretary general and their allies on the other — sought the intervention of the Ministry of
Peace and other authorities, but, citing the Tigray War and other ‘more pressing matters’, the
government failed to act in any decisive manner until July 2022, when the approaching Eid
al-Adha holiday risked open violence. Calling a meeting of figures from both sides, which was
later televised, PM Abiy proposed reconvening the Sheraton conference and gave detailed
instructions on who was to attend. Mufti Haji Umer and his followers, however, refused to
participate. Thus, of the 300 attendees who elected the transitional EIASC leadership at the
original Sheraton conference, 261 were involved in the reconvened conference on 18 July 2022.
However, prominent ‘Sufis’ notably the Imam of the Grand Anwar Mosque, Sheikh Taha Harun,
took part. Sheikh Hajj Ibrahim Tuffa, was elected president of the council of ulema, with both
the former president and vice president removed from office.
Earlier, in April 2022, following the Tigray Orthodox Church leaders’ declaration of separation
from the EOTC with the intension of establishing their own synod, the Tigray Regional Islamic
Affairs Council had declared something to the same effect.128 The July 2022 elections, however,
128 BBC News, ‘ ’
[Tigray’s Muslim Leaders Announce their Decision to Break Relations with the Et hiopian Islamic A ffairs
Supreme Council], BB C News, 15 April 2 022 , www.bbc.com/amharic/news-603 8501 6.
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included a round of votes by regional delegates in which attempts were made to ensure Tigrayan
Muslims were represented. Thus, the status of Tigrayan Muslims remains unresolved at present.
PROTES TANTISM
The rise of Protestantism is the biggest demographic shift Ethiopia has seen in the past 30 years.
Protestants accounted for little more than 5 per cent of the country’s total population in the
1984 census—this more than tripled to 18.6 per cent in the most recent 2007 census, and has
grown further since.129 The latest full Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 2016 estimated
Protestants at constituting just under 23 per cent of 15–49 year olds, while the most recent
mini-DHS estimated Protestants as accounting for 27.4 per cent of Ethiopia’s 15–49 year-old
women.130
As is the case for all the major religions in Ethiopia, the regional distribution of Protestants is
uneven. In the Orthodox heartlands of Tigray and Amhara, Protestants remained a marginal
minority of less than 1 per cent in the 2007 census, despite a significant urban presence.131
According to the same census, over 97 per cent of Protestants live in the south and west of
the country, with the largest populations shares in the Gambella (70.1 per cent), the (former)
Southern Nations’, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (55.5 per cent), and the West Wellega
Zone (59.5 per cent) and Guji Zone (56.1 per cent) in the Oromiya Region. These areas have
also seen higher than average population growth, which—aside from conversions—explains
some of the national Protestant increase. Protestantism has a significant rural presence in areas
where it is strong, making it more of a rural than an urban phenomenon overall.132 In Addis
Ababa, Protestants were recorded as constituting just under 8 per cent of the city’s population
in the 2007 census, though this is likely to have increased significantly since then. The gender
distribution in Ethiopian Protestantism largely follows the country’s, while its age distribution
is skewed towards youth and young adults.
129 Transitional Gover nment of Ethiopia, Office of the Population and Housing Census Commission,
The 19 84 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia: Analytical Report at National Level, Addis Ababa:
Central Statistical Authority, 1991, 60; Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Population Census
Commission, Summary and Statistical Report of the 20 07 Population and Housing Censu s: Population Size
by Sex and Age, Addis Ababa, 2 008 , 17, www.csa.gov.et/pdf/Cen2007_prelimineray.pdf.
130 Central Statistical Agency, Demographic and Health Survey 2016. Addis Ababa: Central Statistical
Agency, 2017, 42 ; Ethiopian Public Health Institute and ICF, Mini Demog raphic and Health Sur vey 2019:
Key Indicators, Rockville: EP HI and ICF, 2019 , 8.
131 Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Population Census Commission, Summary and Statistical
Report, 17; Jörg Haustein, ‘Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianit y in Ethiopia: A Historical
Introduction to a Largely Unexplored Movement’, in Multidisciplinary Views on the Horn of Africa, eds.
Hatem Eliese, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2 014 .
132 Only 11 .6 per cent of Protestants live in cities or towns, compared to 1 6.1 per cent of t he overall
population (Haustein, ‘Pentecostal and Charismatic, 1 4).
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This Protestant growth has been marked by an almost universal proliferation of Pentecostal
liturgical forms, now accommodated theologically by all major Protestant denominations.133 At
the same time, this ‘Pente’ landscape is characterized by significant fragmentation, with the
number of new churches and denominations increasing dramatically in recent years. Over the
past 15 years, the Evangelical Churches’ Fellowship of Ethiopia (ECFE), traditionally the main
umbrella organization for Protestants, has seen the number of churches in its membership
increase from 22 to over 200.134 Moreover, in recent years there has been a marked increase in
churches and ministers propagating prosperity theology or claiming special prophetic/healing
abilities.135 The ECFE has a long tradition of rejecting such movements as ‘false teachings’,
which has prompted the establishment of other umbrella organizations, such as the Pentecostal
Churches’ Fellowship, Visionary Fellowship and the Gospel of Love Fellowship.
When in June 2019 Abiy Ahmed called Protestants to unity in a large meeting of over 400
leaders, promising official recognition as a religion in return, complicated negotiations ensued
in order to bring all evangelicals together under a single umbrella. Given its longstanding role in
representing all trinitarian Protestants, the ECFE resisted the formation of a new organization.
This role had, however, been substantially eroded around 2012 when the two largest and most
historic Protestant churches in Ethiopia, the EECMY and the Kale Heywet Church (KHC), left
the ECFE over disagreements about political representation, voting proportions and attempts
to centralize Protestant development efforts. In the end, Abiy’s call to unity prevailed—at least
initially—and the Ethiopian Council of Gospel Believers’ Churches (ECGBC) was formed,
consisting of the aforementioned Protestant fellowships, the EECMY and KHC, as well as
numerous ministries and Protestant development organizations.
Proclamation No.1208 of 2020 endowed the ECGBC with legal personality as representative of
the Evangelical Christian community, granting Protestants the same legal status as the EOTC
and EIASC.136 The ECGBC’s member churches no longer have to renew their registration with
the Ministry of Peace, with the Council expected to monitor the organizational and financial
affairs of its over 1,000 members. Aside from a large land grant for erecting a head office and
133 Jörg Haustein, ‘Charismatic Renewal, Denominational Tradition and the Transformation of Ethiopian
Society’, in Encounter Beyond Routine: Cultural Roots, Cultural Transition, Unde rstanding of Faith and
Cooperation in Development. International Consultation, Academy of Mission, Hamburg, 17th–23rd January
2011, ed. Evangelisches M issionswerk Deutschland, Hamburg: E MW, 20 11, www.emw-d.de/fix/files/
doku_5 _encounter-beyond-routine2011.pdf.
134 It is symptomatic of P rotestant fragmentation that the entrance requirement of a minimum 5,00 0
members per denomination was lowered to 1,50 0.
135 Emanuele Fantini, ‘Transgression and Acquiescence: The Moral Confl ict of Pentecostals in Their
Relationship with the Ethiopian State’, PentecoStudies 12 (2013); Fantini, ‘Go Pente!’; Ema nuele
Fantini, ‘Crafting Ethiopia’s Glorious Destiny: Pentecostalism and Economic Transformation Under a
Developmental State’, Archives Des Sc iences Sociales Des Religions 175 (2016).
136 ‘Proclamation No. 1 208 /202 0: A Proclamation to Provide Legal Personality for Ethiopian Council of
Gospel Believers’ Churches and Members’, Federal Negarit Gazette, 4 July 2020.
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a house to rent in the interim, the ECGBC receives no support from the government. Even so,
as Abiy’s brain-child, it is viewed by many observers as a political forum, a perception that was
reinforced by the fact that Professor Eyasu Elias, former president of the ECGBC and of the
KHC, ran as a Prosperity Party candidate in the 2021 elections without resigning from either
of his religious offices. Eyasu only stepped down after having secured his mandate, proceeding
to enter government as state minister for agriculture. He was succeeded by Dr Tassew Gebre,
a lifelong government employee who has served in various administrative capacities under the
Derg and the EPRDF, and is a strong advocate of active Christian involvement in politics.
The unresolved tensions with the ECFE soon came to haunt the ECGBC in a dispute over voting
arrangements. This led to the withdrawal of the ECFE from the voting assembly, followed by
four of its largest and most historic member churches: the (Mennonite) Meserete Kristos
Church, as well as the three first Pentecostal churches, including Abiy’s own Full Gospel
Believers’ Church.137 While all claim to retain their membership in the ECGBC and thereby their
legal status, they refuse to recognize the ECGBC’s current leadership. With no negotiations
ongoing to resolve this conflict, it would appear that Abiy’s attempt to unify Protestants has
failed for now. In addition, the ECFE’s president, pastor Tsadiqu Abdo, has sought to establish
a reputation as a politically independent voice, further increasing the risk that the ECGBC
comes to be regarded as a politically willed compromise with ‘false prophets’, while the ECFE
represents the ‘untainted’ venue for evangelicals.138
Political divisions now afflict all Protestant churches, whether it is in their stance towards the
ECGBC, the Tigray War, or ethnic politics. Both the ECGBC and the ECFE issued strong calls
for peace at the outset of the Tigray War, with the ECFE following up with further calls to prayer
and fast when the TPLF broke the Ethiopian siege and advanced closer to Addis Ababa in 2021.139
Despite this, individual Protestant preachers were vociferous in supporting the war, some
invoking prophecies about a quick and victorious end. This effectively neutralized whatever
political weight the official calls to peace may have had, while alienating Tigrayan Protestants in
137 See Haustein, Writing Religious Histor y.
138 Tsadiku Abdo, ‘
|
’ [‘We do not have a governmental faith |
You cannot dance alone by pushing us aside’], Yegna T V, YouTube, 2 Apr il 202 2, ww w.youtube.com/
watch?v=Uw vvQ_4 Xa7o.
139 Ethiopian Evangelical Council, ‘ !!!’ [‘The Council Urgently Announces Prayer
and Fasting’], Facebook post, 5 November 2020, www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0M9Z-
v9KTnLymXb3EL8KFvipNTJJtaTaQUY14LsqCD2TcdJv6CavM2W4HtoWsqBd5bl&id=111866470446458.
Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, ‘ ’ [‘Countrywide Call to Prayer’], Facebook post, 5
November 2020, www.facebook.com/ecfethiopia/posts/pfbid0jrRK5yJL4qdcfBhuZMPqk6V5etC5jW2ct1qiY-
J5SbG3j9BD9gUUJJVpkNh7oxS2Yl; Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, ‘
’ [‘Looking to Seek God’s Face in Prayer and Fasting’], Facebook post, 6 September 2021,
www.facebook.com/ecfethiopia/posts/pfbid0q62Nid6tmraR56rMsCPSUvQerDaNTzrCmxjXwmZXSE3PB-
Ni5LRZckHScNJ98TTKDl; Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, ‘ ’ [‘A Call to Prayer
and Fasting’], Facebook post, 24 November 2021, www.facebook.com/ecfethiopia/posts/pfbid037D5cpe-
F63YEfmvsfYTKFheS6dSnN2qQaZtaP7BrySFamVU2BxyweucsfJQjVbNKBl.
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Addis Ababa and the churches in Tigray. These prophesies have since been criticized by many,
with church leaders in Addis Ababa maintaining they are still in contact with their Tigrayan
branches even as official relations have been severed. Even so, one does not have to look far to
find serious divisions about the war and Abiy’s politics, or ethnic politics more widely.140
TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS
The share of people adhering to ‘traditional religions’141 in Ethiopia seems to be in steady
decline, down from nearly 6 per cent in the 1984 census to just under 1 per cent in the last full
DHS of 2016.142 This decline, much like that of the EOTC, seems to be explained by the rise of
Protestantism over the same period of time. As anthropologists have shown in rural settings in
the south of the country, there have been dramatic rates of conversion from traditional religions
to Protestantism over the past two decades, often coinciding with noticeable changes in the
local economy, value systems, traditional feasting and customary law.143
These statistics and the idea that traditional religions are being entirely supplanted by
conversion to another faith are, however, somewhat misleading. In only allowing one choice,
the demographic question merely reveals which religion respondents wish to be affiliated with
in official statistics, obscuring how traditional practices, beliefs and values inform people’s
embrace of Christianity or Islam. Ethiopian Orthodoxy has a long tradition of incorporating
local spirit beliefs and management. Accordingly, Harald Aspen, in his extensive study of
140 See, for example, Naol Befkadu, ‘Dear Abiy, please resign: a plea from a fellow Ethiopian evangelical’,
Ethiopia Insight, 4 October 2021, www.ethiopia-insight.com/202 1/10/04 /dear-abiy-please-resign-a-plea-
from-a-fellow-ethiopian-evangelical/; Getachew Tamiru, ‘Abiy Deser ves Our Respect, Not Calls for
Resignation’, Ethiopia Insight, 28 October 2 021, w ww.ethiopia-insight.com/2021/10/2 8/abiy-deserves-
our-respect-not-calls-for-resignation/.
141 This term is rather problematic in a country like Ethiopia, where both Christianity and Islam have
equally long and locally rooted traditions. It is used here nonetheless because ‘African traditional
religions’ is still the established term for non-Christian/Muslim religions of African orig in, and as such
‘traditional religion’ is also used as an identifier in the census.
142 Tra nsitional Government of Ethiopia, Office of the Population and Housing Census Commission, The
1984 Population, 56 ; Central Statistical Agency, Demographic and Health.
143 Dena Freeman, ‘Development and the Rural Entrepreneur: Pentecostals, N GOs and the Market in the
Gama Highlands, Ethiopia’, in Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGO s and Social Change in
Africa, ed. Dena Freeman, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 20 12; Freeman, ‘Pentecostalism in a Rural
Context’; Erik Egeland, Christianity, Generation and Narrative: Relig ious Conversion and Change in Sid ama,
Ethiopia, 1974–2012 , Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2 016; Julian Sommerschuh, ‘Whatever Happened to
Respect? Values and Change in a Southwest Ethiopian (Aari) Community’, PhD dissertation, University
of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2019 ; Julian Sommerschuh, ‘Legal Plura lism and Protestant Christianity:
From Fine to Forgiveness in an Aari Community ’, in Legal Pluralism in Ethiopia: Actors, Challe nges and
Solutions, eds. Susanne Epple and Getachew Assefa, Bielefeld: Transcript, 20 20; Julian Sommerschuh,
‘From Feasting to Accumulation: Modes of Value Realisation and Radical Cultural Change in Southern
Ethiopia’, Ethnos 8 7 (2 02 2).
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Amhara spirit beliefs, concluded that Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity was the predominant
‘conceptual and religious framework for venerating spirited trees, praying for the soul of the
a carnivorous beast, or conversations with personified, possessing spirits’.144 While there may
be efforts to control and correct such practices within the Orthodox Church,145 these stand
to bear little fruit given that esoteric practices within the church thrive on the ‘interplay of
concealment and revelation’ emerging from the Orthodox tradition itself.146
On the Protestant side, a similar integration of traditional spirit beliefs can be seen in the
practice of exorcism. Local beliefs are usually collapsed into the category of the Christian demon
and exorcized with the proclamation ‘in Jesus’ name!’, together with a right-hand karate gesture
directed at the spiritual entity. Even so, Pentecostal claims regarding the ultimate efficacy of
their remediation—that exorcism will take care of malignant spirits once and for all—produces
the paradoxical effect of amplifying spirit beliefs. The search for spirits to be exorcized, often
accompanied by a ‘word of wisdom’ whereby the leader ‘sees’ and calls out to the spirits in
an assembly until they manifest, has led to the ubiquitous presence of traditional spirits in
Pentecostal healing meetings.147 Moreover, given that some Ethiopian spirits are believed to
afflict their host periodically, Pentecostals have battled with the issue of ‘re-possession’. While
the majority of Pentecostals would frame such a case as spiritual relapse, the issue led to an
early split in the movement, with one particular church proclaiming that upstanding, ‘born-
again’ Christians may be afflicted by demons and therefore required ongoing diagnostic care
and treatment.148
Beyond the question of spirit beliefs and management, some research has explored the extent
to which traditional value systems have enabled the rise of evangelicalism. While Freeman
suggests that in the Gamo highlands Pentecostals gained strength from their ability to channel a
modernist disruption of the inherited economic and moral order,149 Julian Sommerschuh makes
the opposite observation, claiming it was the aspiration to more fully realize traditional values
144 Harald Aspen, Amhara Tradition s of Knowledge: Spirit Mediums and Their Clients, Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz Verlag, 20 01, 235 f.
145 Data Dea, ‘Christianity and Spir it Mediums: Experiencing Post-Socialist Religious Freedom in Southern
Ethiopia’, Working Paper 75, Ma x Planck Institute for Social Anthropolog y, 20 05.
146 Diego Maria Malara, ‘Sympathy for the Devil: Secrecy, Magic and Transgression Among Ethiopian
Orthodox Debtera’, Ethnos 87 (20 22): 45 8.
147 Jörg Haustein, ‘Embodying the Spir it(s): Pentecostal Demonology and Deliverance Discourse in
Ethiopia’, Ethnos 76 (2011).
148 Haustein, ‘Embody ing the Spirit(s)’.
149 Freeman, ‘Development and the Rural Entrepreneur’; Freeman, ‘Pentecostalism in a Rural Context’.
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that attracted many within the Aari people of Dell to evangelicalism150—and that converts hence
continue to challenge Pentecostal excesses regarding individualism and prosperity. Clearly, the
engagement of evangelicals with traditional beliefs (and Ethiopia’s new market economies) is
complex and requires further research.
Ethnic nationalism is another context in which traditional religions continue to play a
significant role. The Oromo religion is the most important in this regard, particularly its
annual Irreecha festival. As Serawit Bekele’s study shows, this festival has acquired a significant
political dimension in the context of the Oromo protests and the state’s brutal assault on the
2016 celebrations, which had turned into an anti-government demonstration.151 The significance
of Irreecha for Oromo nationality also means it overlaps with other religious identities, with the
majority of spirit mediums identifying as Orthodox or Muslim.152 Pentecostals, in turn, openly
preached against Irreecha, though the more ethno-nationalist minded among them continued
to attend despite the official proscription of their churches.153 Between 2011 and 2013 a similar
push against Irreecha took place within the Orthodox Church, largely following the Protestant
logic characterizing the festival as built around demonic practices. Abiy Ahmed, however,
has openly embraced the celebrations, despite the political cost among his own Pentecostal
constituency, which considers them to be ‘pagan’.154 Similar ‘traditional’ religious revivals
may be underway elsewhere, with the Sidama religion, for example, experiencing a recent rise
despite the strong and generally prohibitive Protestant majority in the region.155
150 Julian Sommerschuh, ‘Questioning Growth: Chr istianity, Development, and the Per ils of Wealth
in Southern Ethiopia’, Journal of Religion in Africa 50 (2 020); Sommerschuh, ‘From Feasting to
Accumulation’.
151 Serawit Bekele Debele, Locating Politics in Ethiopia’s Irreecha Ritual, Brill: Leiden, 2019 .
152 Debele, Locating Politics, 33.
153 Debele, Locating Politics, 76 , 155.
154 Haustein and Dereje Feyissa, ‘The Strains of “Pente” Politics’, 490.
155 Egeland, Christianity, Generation and Narrative, 200–206.
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INTER-RELIGIOUS RELATIONS
While inter-religious relations in Ethiopia were already fragile during the time of the EPRDF,
instances of inter-communal violence with a religious component have increased markedly since
Abiy came to power.156 This is partially due to the local erosion of state power and government
institutions capable of regulating inter-religious affairs, resulting in open conflict arising from
deeply rooted grievances. As such, it is important to take a long view of Muslim–Orthodox,
Protestant–Muslim and Orthodox–Protestant relations when exploring possible avenues for a
peaceful coexistence.
MUSLIM–ORTHODOX REL AT IONS
Contemporary Muslim–Orthodox relations are governed by a myriad of constellations and
narratives arising from Ethiopia’s long history of engagement between the two religions.
Politically, Ethiopia’s Muslims were largely marginalized under the Christian empires, while
the freedoms and equality gained in the decades since have often been limited by securitization,
whether in the Ogaden War of the 1970s or in the more recent concerns about ‘extremism’ under
the EPRDF regime. This has led to two mutually reinforcing narratives regarding Orthodox–
Muslim relations in Ethiopia: on the one hand, the country is cast as a place of peaceful inter-
religious relations, while on the other, instances of Christian–Muslim conflict are represented
as recent erosions of this peaceful fabric, driven by extremist ideologies.
Claims to an Ethiopian tradition of peaceful religious coexistence often focus on Wollo province,
a hub of Sufi Islam and Islamic learning, which due to its proximity to the old centres of the
Ethiopian Christian empires has a long history of Christian–Muslim engagement. Hussein
Ahmed has shown that contrary to such perceptions, the province was riven by the Christian
expansionism under emperors Tewodoros II, Yohannes IV and Menelik II, often accompanied
by enforced conversions or rebellions in the name of religion.157 Similarly, Elois Ficquet reveals
how the enforced ingestion of Christian meat was used as a means of conversion, though he also
argues that under Menelik respect for dietary boundaries led to early forms of inter-religious
coexistence, ultimately culminating in recent transgressions of these boundaries through joint
feasting in the interests of a joint Oromo national project or the creation of public spaces of
‘relative secularism’.158
In contemporary Ethiopia, the Sufi spirituality of Wollo province does indeed seem to generate
156 Østebø et al., ‘Religion, Ethnicity ’.
157 Ahmed, Islam in Nineteenth-Century.
158 Éloi Ficquet, ‘Flesh Soaked in Faith: Meat as a Marker of the Boundary Between Christia ns and Muslims
in Ethiopia’, in Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa, ed. Benjamin F. Soares, Leiden: Brill, 2 006 .
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unique forms of Orthodox–Muslim co-existences, as Meron Zeleke Eresso demonstrates in
relation to dispute settlement at the Sufi shrine of Teru Sina.159 Meron studied the ‘category-
crushing’ expressions of syncretic religious practice at the shrine, which combine Muslim,
Orthodox and Oromo religious ideas and rituals, resulting in an indeterminate constellation
of religious coexistence that aligned well with the EPRDF’s emphasis on ‘religious tolerance’
and provided conflict settlement mechanisms in lieu of functioning state structures. For Jon
Abbink, Wollo is emblematic of socio-cultural hybridity, enabling unique but precarious modes
of inter-religious coexistence.160 Thus, the area became a key site for testing the advancement
of reformist thought. As such, Abbink argues that the historical Wollo ‘model of Islam that was
not antagonistic nor nationally divisive’ could act as a counterweight to the reformist Islam
spreading in urban environments and among Ethiopian elites.161
Abbink’s other work on Christian–Muslim relations in Ethiopia is similarly concerned with rising
exclusivism and intolerance. While in 1998 he argued that the ‘social and cultural conditions
for the emergence of political Islam in a “fundamentalist” or, better, Islamist form are not
good in Ethiopia’,162 he offered a different assessment over a decade later, expressing concern
regarding Ethiopia’s ability to maintain ‘secular order’ in the face of Islamic reformism.163
This is symptomatic of a wider shift in perceptions of Christian–Muslim relations in Ethiopia
during this time, driven in large part by the securitization of Islam (especially in the context of
Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia), a rise in Christian–Muslim conflict (involving both Orthodox
and evangelical Christians), and studies about Islamic reform movements.164 The 2006 clashes
between Muslims and (predominantly Orthodox) Christians in Jima Zone attracted particular
attention within the political system, as evidenced in the work of current PM Abiy Ahmed,
who built his early political profile on reconciling and researching this conflict.165 While Abiy’s
conflict analysis pointed to Islamic reform movements as the main causative factor, research
published just two years before the initial conflict highlighted the role of rumour and political
159 Meron Zeleke Eresso, Faith at the Crossroads: Religious Syncretism and Dispute Settlement in Northern
Ethiopia, A Study of Sufi Shrine in North Eastern Ethiopia, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015.
160 Jon Abbink, ‘Transformations of Islam and Communal Relations in Wallo, Ethiopia’, in Islam and Muslim
Politics in Africa, eds. Benjamin F. Soares and René Otayek, New York: Palg rave Macmillan, 20 07.
161 Abbink, ‘Transformations of Islam’, 73 .
162 Abbink, ‘An historica l-anthropological approach’, 123 .
163 Abbink, ‘Religion in public spaces’; Jon Abbink, ‘Religious freedom and the political order: the Ethiopian
“secular state” and the containment of Muslim identity politics’, Journal of Eastern Afr ican Studies 8
(201 4 ).
164 Ter je Østebø, ‘Growth and Fragmentation: The Salafi Movement in Bale, Ethiopia’, in Global Salafism:
Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer, London: Hurst & Co., 20 09; Terje Østebø, ‘Islamism in
the Horn of A frica: Assessing Ideology, Actors, and Objectives’, Repor t 2, International Law and Policy
Institute, 20 10; Østebø, Localising Salafism.
165 Abiy Ahmed Ali, ‘Social Capital’, Social Capital, YouTube, 19 September 2015 , www.youtube.com/
watch?v=SMD2pmSYZ2k; Ali, ‘Countering Violent Extremism’; Ali, ‘Social Capital and Its Role’.
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leveraging in provoking inter-religious tensions.166 These aspects were re-emphasized in a recent
study of Orthodox attacks on Muslims in Mota in 2019.167
Two recent anthropological studies in Northern Ethiopia have helped move the analysis beyond
a juxtaposition of ‘traditional’ peace and the threat of ‘extremism’. While Tom Boylston’s
research on the Zege peninsula of Lake Tana is mainly concerned with the material, social and
religious effects of ritual prohibition among Orthodox Christians, it also includes important
insights about changing relations with the local Muslim minority.168 Boylston notes how ritual
boundaries, in particular around the consumption of meat and alcohol, have enabled inter-
religious conviviality, aided by an avoidance of confrontational statements and the use of shared
spaces, for example in the production and consumption of khat. In recent years, however,
tensions have arisen. The upgrading of the local mosque from a mud house to a large concrete
structure with a towering minaret prompted complaints, as well as the erection of competing
Christian structures. This competition over public space is amplified by the now ubiquitous
loudspeakers broadcasting religious ceremonies in the vicinity of mosques and churches. Social
media has, according to Boylston, eroded the boundary between public and private, undercutting
the politeness and conviviality that had characterized inter-religious spaces.169 Moreover,
Facebook and other social media have connected the local context to Christian–Muslim conflict
elsewhere, for example in the circulation of shocking footage of the 2015 beheading of Orthodox
Christians by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya and the multiple reactions this sparked.
John Dulin, in his study of Christians and Muslims in Gondar, attempts to map the instantiation
and maintenance of Orthodox–Muslim boundaries, noting the considerable ‘cost’ of migrating
between both communities, even as an outsider.170 Dulin’s work offers an insightful analysis
of day-to-day Christian–Muslim friendships and the management of latent antagonisms,
combined with detailed analysis of the violent clashes that took place in 2009 during a ṭimqet
procession in relation to a mosque construction. According to Dulin, an ‘ethics of concealment’
prevails under normal circumstances, preventing antagonisms from being articulated.171 This
precarious arrangement has come under pressure, however, not least from Pentecostals, whose
mode of evangelism depends on bringing religious difference into the open. In addition, Dulin
demonstrates how intra-religious diversity may lead to different interpretations of conflictual
events, spotlighting the various ways in which ISIS’ murder of Ethiopians was perceived by the
166 Daniel Mains, ‘Drinking, Rumour, and Ethnicity in Jimma, Ethiopia’, Africa 74 (20 04 ).
167 Østebø et al., ‘Religion, Ethnicit y’, 15–23 .
168 Boylston, The Stranger, 131 –43.
169 Boylston, The Stranger, 137.
170 Dulin, ‘Intelligible Tolerance’.
171 John Dulin, ‘“My Fast Is Better Than Your Fast”: Concealing Interreligious Evaluations and Discerning
Respect ful Others in Gondar, Ethiopia’, Ethnos 87 (2 02 2).
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local value regimes in Gondar.172
Boylston’s and Dulin’s work emphasizes the importance of local circumstances and discourses
in understanding inter-religious relations and conflict. Broader analyses of Christian–Muslim
dialogue and antagonism, such as Jürgen Klein’s recent survey of Amharic apologetic writings,173
retain importance for understanding the wider field, but like the general notion of ‘traditional
conviviality’ versus ‘extremism’ provide no clear indicator of pending conflict. The long history
of Orthodox–Muslim relations in Ethiopia has accumulated both conflictual relations and
amicable social capital, so that local political dynamics must be studied in order to understand
how inter-religious relations can fall out of balance and morph into open conflict.
PROTES TANT–MUSLIM RELATIONS
Historically, Muslims have tended to focus their inter-religious attention on the EOTC, given
its traditional predominance and the conflictual history of Islam and Orthodox Christianity in
the country. Protestants, however, have preoccupied themselves with Muslims from their first
missionary endeavours onward, aimed, in part, at preventing the further spread of Islam among
the Oromo.174 The works of John Spencer Trimingham, a former missionary of the Church
Missionary Society in Sudan, Egypt and West Africa, provide a late instance of this attitude
toward Islam. Trimingham’s Islam in Ethiopia is a history of Christian–Muslim antagonism that
casts Islam as an outsider religion.175 As such, Trimingham, who two years prior had called for
greater missionary efforts to contain Islam in Ethiopia,176 was mainly interested in explaining
how ‘this Monophysite Christian fortress’ was able to survive in the Ethiopian mountains and
why it failed to propagate Christianity among the Muslim people of the lowlands.177
Trimingham’s scholarship not only dominated the Western study of Islam in Ethiopia for decades
to come, his missional approach was also archetypal for the Islam in Africa Project (IAP), which
represented the first sustained Protestant effort to engage with Islam in the continent. The
IAP was formed between 1957 and 1959 in order to help Christian churches conduct missions
among Muslims while avoiding polemics and strengthening neighbourly relations in Christian–
172 John Dulin, ‘Transvaluing I SIS in Orthodox Christian–Majority Ethiopia: On the Inhibition of Group
Violence’, Current Anthropology 58 (2017).
173 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 219–376.
174 See Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 116 –18.
175 Spencer J. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, Oxford: Ox ford University Press, 195 2.
176 Spencer J. Trimingham, The Christian Church and Missions in Ethiopia (Including Eritrea and the
Somalilands), London: World Dominion Press, 195 0.
177 See especially Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 143–46
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Muslim encounters.178 Gradually, a more dialogical approach won the upper hand, signalled by
the organization’s 1987 change in name from the IAP to the Programme for Christian–Muslim
Relations in Africa (PROCMURA).179 IAP/PROCMURA entered Ethiopia in the late 1960s at the
behest of the Mekane Yesus Church, in collaboration with Gunnar Hasselblatt, who had written
his PhD dissertation on Islamic reformer Muḥammad ʿAbduh.180 Hasselblatt’s IAP/PROCMURA
tenure was marked by research on Ethiopian Islam and educating the church on his findings
and possible missionary endeavours.181 When Hasselblatt departed in 1975,182 this missional
approach was continued by his successors, with more dialogical and relational work mainly
advocated by European PROCMURA advisers.183
The growth of Pentecostalism saw a rise in more confrontational Protestant approaches to
Islam, occasionally prompting Muslim counter-reactions.184 A much less covered missionary
initiative spearheaded by Pentecostals and Charismatic Lutherans caused some controversy
among Ethiopian Evangelicals, as it appeared to erode the strictly demarcated Christian–Muslim
boundary. The so-called ‘insider mission’ approach is premised on the idea that someone can
become a ‘faithful follower of Jesus’ while remaining within the mosque or ‘Muslim culture’.185
The intra-Protestant discussions around this controversial approach came to the boil around
2012 when well-established Bible translation institutes and publishers began producing so-
178 Douglas Pratt, Christian Engagement with Islam: Ecumenical Jour neys Since 19 10, Leiden: Brill, 2 017, 14 4.
179 Pratt, Christian Engagement, 151–5 3.
180 Gunnar Hasselblatt, ‘Herkunft und Auswirkungen der Apologetic Mu hammed ʿAbduh’s (184 9–19 05),
untersucht a n seiner Schrif t: Islam und Christentum im Verhältnis zu Wissenschaft und Zivilisation’,
dissertation, Theologische Fak ultät der Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, 1 968 .
181 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 12 5–26 .
182 Hasselblatt would go on to produce Oromo-nationalist writings in the serv ice of the Berlin Mission
throughout much of the Derg era (see, for example, Gunnar Hasselblatt, Leben und Sterben im Oromoland,
Stuttgart: Radius, 198 4; Gunnar Hasselblat t, Nächstes Jahr im Oromoland: Von der eklatanten Verletzung der
Menschenrechte durch den abessini sch-amharischen Rassismus in Äthiopien. Ein Ber icht, Stuttgart: Radius,
1984 ; Gunnar Hasselblatt, ed. Konflikt am Horn von Afrika: Oromoland und Abessinie n in Äthiopien.
Zeitzeugen in Zeitungsartikeln 1982–19 86, Berlin: Berliner Missionswerk, 1986 ).
183 See Peter F. Ford, ‘Christian–Muslim Relations in Ethiopia: A Checkered Past, a Challenging Future’,
Reformed Review 61 (2 008); Peter F. Ford, ‘Christian–Muslim Relations in Ethiopia: Lessons from the
Past, Opportunities for the Future’, in World Christianity in Muslim Encounter: Essays in Memory of David
A. Ker r, ed. Stephen R. Goodwin, London: Continuum, 2009; Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen,
127–36.
184 Abbink, ‘Religion in public spaces’, 266 .
185 The idea was spearheaded by American missiona ries in Bangladesh and at Fuller Theological Seminary
in California, and subsequently spread to various places in Asia and A frica Though there is a flurr y
of primary material on this movement there is as of yet no completed academic study. A current
PhD project at the University of Cambridge aims to close this gap (see Christian J. Anderson, ‘World
Christianit y, “ World Religions” and the Challenge of Insider Movements’, Studies in World Christianity
26 (2020)).
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called ‘Muslim-friendly’ Bible translations, some of which attempted to utilize different
language around the divine sonship of Jesus. These efforts were subsequently condemned by
the World Evangelical Alliance and led to widespread criticism of ‘insider movements’ as a
syncretic form of ‘Chrislam’.186
In Ethiopia, one of the most prominent ‘insider mission’ advocates was Lutheran priest
Belay Guta Olam, who had worked with missionaries in Bangladesh and wrote his PhD on
‘contextualizing Christianity’ among Oromo Muslims.187 From 2005 to 2008, Belay also headed
the PROCMURA office.188 The ‘insider mission’ approach also found favour among other
evangelical churches in Ethiopia, with the Gennet Church—one of the oldest Pentecostal
churches in Ethiopia—operating a dedicated programme, mainly in the Rift Valley. Within
the Full Gospel Believers’ Church and the KHC, similar missions were led by converts from
Islam (Shiferaw Said and Anwar Mohammed), both of whom favoured a contextualized,
insider approach and subsequently guided the ECFE’s efforts in this direction.189 As in the
international debate, it was the attempt to produce a ‘Muslim-friendly’ Bible translation in
Amharic that brought discussions to a head in Ethiopia. This earned widespread condemnation
of ‘syncretism’, leading the ECFE to distance itself from ‘insider’ approaches.190 The intensity
of the debate appears to have foreclosed any broader discussion of evangelical exclusivism
in Ethiopia. Meanwhile, there has been no evidence of a Muslim reaction to these Protestant
‘insider’ mission efforts, possibly indicating that they have not been as successful or widespread
as claimed by advocates.
ORTHODOX–PROTE STANT REL ATIONS
Though early Protestant missionaries regarded their work in evangelism, Bible distribution and
theological dialogue as contributing to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, competing European
and Ethiopian interests in the region meant any Protestant–Orthodox partnership would be
186 The World Evangelical Alliance Global Review Panel, ‘Report to the World Evangelical Allia nce for
Conveyance to Wycliffe Global Alliance and SIL International’, 2013 , https://worldea.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/01/2013 _0429-Final-Report-of-the-WEA-Independent-Bible-Translation-Review-Panel.
pdf.
187 Belay Guta Olam, ‘Contextualizing the Church Among the Muslim Oromo’, DMiss thesis, Fuller
Theological Seminary, School of World Mission, Pasadena, 200 3.
188 Klein,
Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 13 0.
189 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 13 7–41 , 144–47; see also Gary Ray Munson, ‘A Critical
Hermeneutic Examination of the Dynamic of Identity Change in Christian Conversion Among Muslims
in Ethiopia’, PhD dissertation, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2014.
190 Mathetes, ‘Chrislam ?’ [‘Chrislam in Ethiopia?’], 21 July 20 12.
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fraught with irreconcilable differences and political dangers.191 Emperors therefore sought to
divert Protestant efforts to non-Orthodox regions, first to the Beta Israel (Falasha) and later
to the western and southern peripheries, which dovetailed with the nationalist interests of
Swedish and German missionaries in the Oromo people.192 Ethiopian Pentecostals would later
follow a similar trajectory. Many of the early Pentecostals aimed to revive their churches of
origin, whether Orthodox or mainstream Protestant, but the unfavourable response to their
efforts prompted them to form a national association of their own. This decision was intensely
debated, with some resisting the abandonment of the original revival mission.193 Nonetheless,
subsequent opposition endured by Pentecostals hardened denominational fronts and forged
a sense of being persecuted for being the purest form of Christianity.194 Therefore, even when
the Orthodox Church also endured political pressure during the years of the Derg, an intra-
Christian alliance never formed.195
As Charismatic forms became ubiquitous among Protestants in the EPRDF era,196 the divide
between Protestants and the EOTC deepened. This was not only fuelled by the significant
growth of Protestantism at the expense of the Orthodox Church. Pentecostals in particular
displayed a significant proselytizing impetus toward Orthodox Christians,197 and their loud,
intense services were harder to ignore in any given neighbourhood. Taking advantage of the
EPRDF’s relatively liberal policy on land grants for religious buildings and burial grounds, ‘Pente’
churches mushroomed in predominantly Orthodox areas, their buildings often competing
visibly with Orthodox sanctuaries.198
Amid this environment of religious change, Orthodox Christians increasingly resorted
to longstanding tropes of Protestants as ‘foreign’, ‘heretics’ and ‘enemies of Mary’, while
191 Arén, Eva ngelical Pioneers, 29 –104 ; Daniel Seblewengel, Percept ion and Identity: A Study of the
Relationship Between the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Evangelical Churches in Ethiopia, Carlisle:
Langham, 2019 , 127–22 3.
192 Friedrich Flad, ed. 60 Jahre Mission unter den Falaschas in Abessinien: Selbstbiographie des Missionars
Johann Martin Flad, Gießen: Brunnen Verlag, 1922 ; Arén, Evangelical Pioneers.
193 Haustein, Writing Relig ious Histor y, 1 28–29 .
194 Haustein, Writing Religious Histor y, 1 60– 67, 22 6–47.
195 Afework Hailu Beyene, ‘The Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Charismatic/Pentecostals’
Relationships in 1951 –1991 : A Charismatic/Pentecostal Perspective’, MA thesis, Vrije Universiteit,
Amsterdam, 200 9. 49 –55.
196 Haustein, ‘Charismatic Renewa l’.
197 Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 123–2 4, 2 62–66 .
198 Jörg Haustein, ‘Pentecostalism in Ethiopia: A Unique Case in Africa’, in Global Renewal Christianity. Vol.
3: Af rica, eds. Vinson Synan, Amos Yong and Kwabena Asa moah-Gyadu, Lake Mar y: Charisma House,
2016; for a rare counter-example of Orthodox growth in a Protesta nt areas, see Julia n Sommerschuh,
‘Respectable Conviv iality: Orthodox Chr istianity as a Solution to Value Conflicts in Southern Ethiopia’,
Journal of the Royal Anthropolog ical Institute 27 (2 02 1).
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evangelicals tended to portray themselves as the ‘true believers’ and attacked the Orthodox
Church as authoritarian and lacking true salvation.199 Despite the EOTC’s founding membership
of the World Council of Churches, there is no meaningful ecumenical forum in Ethiopia apart
from the Bible Society, which has launched some high-level dialogue initiatives among trinitarian
Christians.200 As a result, the Protestant–Orthodox divide is often as sharply demarcated as the
Muslim–Christian boundary, with considerable social costs when Orthodox Christians convert
to Protestantism.
This antagonism has left Charismatic movements within the Orthodox Church in a precarious
position. These movements are typically addressed using the Amharic word for renewal
(‘tehadiso’), which in itself reveals a foundational split. For more traditionally minded
Christians, renewal signals illicit innovations, whereas for ‘tehadiso’ groups it entails refreshing
the church and its Orthodox profile, typically through engagement with some elements of
Pentecostal spirituality or Protestant theology.201 Despite their desire to remain within the
Ethiopian Orthodox tradition and institutional framework, ‘tehadiso’ groups often run into
trouble with clerical hierarchies, which may accelerate their transition into an independent
Protestant church. A case in point is the Ammanuel United Church, which emerged from two
Orthodox Charismatic youth groups that were exiled from their home congregations due to their
exorcism practices, use of modern music and female leadership. The youths sought to establish
themselves as an independent Orthodox Charismatic congregation distinct from Protestants
in worship style and theology, which paradoxically increased its attractiveness to many
Ethiopian Pentecostals seeking to reconcile their spirituality with the country’s cultural and
religious heritage. Over time, this led to a ‘Protestantization’ of the fellowship, until it became a
Pentecostal church like any other in liturgy and theology.202 This case has intensified Orthodox
scepticism against ‘tehadiso’ groups being a covert form of Protestant proselytization,203 leading
many Orthodox Charismatic fellowships to operate clandestinely. These groups often seek to
ground their legitimacy in earlier Orthodox reform movements, particularly the Estifanosites
of the fifteenth century.204
In recent years, movements within the EOTC have attempted to adapt to the challenge of
Protestantism. Foremost among these movements is the previously mentioned Mahibere
Kidusan, which has sought to defend the Orthodox Church as the only legitimate expression
199 Seblewengel, Perception and Identity.
200 Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 22 6–83.
201 Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 346 –49.
202 Data Dea, ‘Changing Youth Religiosity in Ethiopia: A Generational Perspective’, in Generations in Af rica:
Connections and Conflicts, eds. Erdmute Alber, Sjaak van der Geest and Susan R Whyte, Münster: Lit.,
20 08, 3 24; Haustein, ‘Pentecostalism in Eth iopia’, 138–139 ; Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 35 6–57.
203 Lee, ‘“Modernism” and the Ethiopian, 109.
204 Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 35 1–59.
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of Christianity in Ethiopia, targeting Pentecostal doctrine as well as Orthodox Charismatics
in its publications.205 Moreover, Mahibere Kidusan has embraced an educational modernism
that answers and to some extent mirrors the Pentecostal/Protestant challenge. The strength of
Ethiopian Orthodoxy is no longer premised on the authority of tradition, monks or educated
clerics, but on intellectual endeavour that explicitly grounds Orthodox theology in Biblical
arguments, establishing its compatibility with modern life while shoring up the church through
educating believers.
Another reaction within the Orthodox Church has been to spiritualize the Pentecostal challenge
in the form of exorcism. The EOTC has a longstanding tradition of spirit management via
priests or monks who act as healers by exorcizing ailments, including at holy water shrines
where the role of the priest/monk is ancillary, if not secondary, to the power inherent in the
location and holy water. Memher Girma, who was particularly popular in the early 2010s, has
been one of the more prominent exorcists of recent years, regularly driving out the spirits of
Pentecostalism.206 The inquisitions of spirits preceding many of his exorcisms point to how the
‘Pente’ faith has been framed as a ‘lying spirit’ attempting to trick Orthodox Christians into
betraying their faith through its music, glossolalia or prophecy. This Ethiopian Orthodox vision
of spiritual warfare presents ‘an inversion of the geopolitical and historiographical imagination
of African Pentecostalism’,207 and seeks to shore up Orthodox believers against the modern
dangers of foreign spiritual movements. Utilizing his status as social media sensation, Memher
Girma managed to extend his reach far beyond his Addis Ababa constituency. Like Mahibere
Kidusan’s intellectualist approach, the methods employed by Memhir Girma—who could be
accused of acting like a ‘Pente’ pastor—illustrate how Ethiopian Pentecostals and Orthodox
shape one another in a largely competitive and non-dialogical constellation.
INTER-RELIGIOUS ORGANIZ ATIONS AND INITIATIVES
The most prominent organization for managing inter-religious relations in Ethiopia is the Inter-
Religious Council of Ethiopia (IRCE), founded in 2010 by the Ethiopian government, spurred by
a perception of increasing extremism and the political mobilization of religious constituencies
the authorities wished to control. The IRCE is organized in parallel with government structures
from the national level down to kebeles (sub-districts), and had as its founding members the
205 Mengist u Gobeze and Asamenu Kasa,
:
[Church History, vol. 2], Addis Ababa:
Mehabir Qdusan, 2 008 ; Seblewengel, Perception and Identity, 36 9–7 6; Lee, ‘“Modernism” and t he
Ethiopian, 11 0–12 . There are a number of similar publications from the Ethiopian diaspora (see, for
example, Esubalew Belete,
: - -
[Gates
of Hell. When the Protestant Jihad against Ethiopianess or Oneness thrives], Alexandria, Virgina: Artistic
Printers, 20 04; Melaku Bawoke Terefe,
[The Secret Grew. To warn the Orthodox about the Wrong Direction of the Protestant World], Los
Angeles, 20 05).
206 Malara, ‘Exorcizing the Spirit’.
207 Malara, ‘Exorcizing t he Spirit’, 765.
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EOTC, EIASC, ECFE, Ethiopian Catholic Church and the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Among Protestants, the IRCE deepened divisions about political representation, culminating
in the previously mentioned exodus from the ECFE of the two largest churches (KHC and
EECMY), which subsequently joined the IRCE. The IRCE seeks to facilitate national and local
encounters between religious leaders and has produced an inter-religious training manual,
which Klein sees as a milestone in the development of an Ethiopian inter-religious theology.208
At the same time, the IRCE claims its main goal is to fight extremism, here defined as the
denial of another religion’s right to exist,209 which may create the impression that its main aim
is actually the securitization of religion. This, along with its official character, have limited the
IRCE’s popular appeal and effectiveness, a point yet to be fully examined in the few academic
publications discussing the council and its genesis.210
Alongside and preceding the IRCE, there are a number of civil society organizations (CSOs)
that engage in inter-religious activities,211 the oldest of which is Norwegian Church Aid (NCA),
which entered the country in 1974. During the Ethio–Eritrean War of 1998–2000, NCA facilitated
dialogues between Christian and Muslim leaders from both countries.212 This led to continued
involvement in peacebuilding efforts, including in the aftermath of inter-religious conflicts in
Ethiopia. With the restrictive CSO law of 2009, this advocacy work had to be discontinued and
was not resumed when Abiy replaced the law in 2019. Inter-religious work continued in more
traditional areas of development, however, such as work surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic
or reducing gender-based violence.213
The Ethiopian Interfaith Forum for Development, Dialogue and Action took a similar approach
of working via religious communities in the areas of HIV/AIDS, orphan care, peacebuilding and
conflict transformation. It was founded as a branch of the World Faiths Development Dialogue
at the Berkeley Centre for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and was registered in Ethiopia
in 2002. The forum largely functions as an umbrella framework for religious development
organizations, and in attaining resident status was able to circumvent the strict confines of the
208 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 360 –75.
209 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 2 13.
210 Tony Karbo, ‘Religion and Social Cohesion in Ethiopia’, International Journal of Peace and Development
Studies 4 (2013); Getahun Kumie Antigegn, ‘An A ssessment of Religion, Peace and Confl ict in the
Post 1991 of Ethiopia’, Vest nik RUD N. International Relations 19 (20 19); Klein, Christlich-Muslimische
Beziehungen, 2 07–15.
211 For a full list, see Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 1 96–20 7.
212 Stein Villumstad, ‘Inter-Faith Action in Times of Conflict’, 202 2, www.academia.edu/794862/Inter_
Faith_Action_in_Times_of_Conflict; for a critical appraisal of NC A, see Aud V. Tønnessen, ‘Faith-Based
NGOs in Internationa l Aid: Humanitarian A gents or Missionaries of Faith’? Forum for Development
Studies 3 4 (2 00 7).
213 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 198.
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2009 CSO law.214 Other organizations taking an inter-religious approach to development are
Justice for All—Prison Fellowship of Ethiopia and Religions for Peace.215
The Life and Peace Institute (LPI) was founded in Uppsala in 1985, supported by Swedish
churches, and came to Ethiopia at the end of the 1980s with the aim of using religious and
traditional concepts to facilitate dialogue between the Derg and insurgent factions.216 It
is engaged in various inter-religious dialogue- and tolerance-building initiatives, many in
collaboration with government universities. At the same time, the LPI has a wider Horn of
Africa research project, which supports the African Union and other policy-makers on conflict
issues, including inter-religious matters. It partners with the InterAfrica Group and the Peace
and Development Centre, both of which are engaged in similar peacebuilding activities and
research.
The Interfaith Peace-Building Initiative (IPI) has roots in a local branch of the United Religions
Initiative and was officially registered in Ethiopia in 2003.217 In the aftermath of the 2006 Jimma
conflicts, IPI became co-ordinator of the National Interfaith Peace Council of Ethiopia, the
forerunner of the IRCE. With the foundation of the IRCE, IPI was dissolved at the behest
of the Ministry of Federal Affairs. Around 2010, PROCMURA strengthened its emphasis on
inter-religious relations and set up interfaith committees, counterbalancing the conversion
approach to Islam that had previously been predominant.218 At the same time, the African Union
established an Interfaith Dialogue Forum, which collaborates with the IRCE and since 2016 has
been supported by the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural
Dialogue.219
In addition to these CSOs, a number of universities engage in research and knowledge exchange
on inter-religious affairs. While, like all state universities, Addis Ababa University has no official
religious studies department, studies on religion and inter-religious relations have nevertheless
been produced in various departments, as well as the Institute for Peace and Security Studies,
214 ‘Who We Are’, Ethiopian Interfaith Forum for Development Dialogue and Action, w ww.acrl-rfp.org/
networks-affliliates/east-africa/ethiopian-interfaith-forum-for-development-dialogue-and-action-
eifdda/; on religion and development in Eth iopia, see also Emma Tomalin and Jörg Haustein, ‘Keeping
Faith in 2 030 : Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals. Workshop Report: Religions and
Development in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, September 20th–21st 2018 ’, Arts & Humanities Research
Council, 2018, https://religions-and-development.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2 019 /02/
Workshop-Report-Ethiopia-Final-corr1.pdf.
215 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 2 03, 205.
216 K lein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 20 1.
217 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 200 .
218 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 133 –134 .
219 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 20 6.
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which is part of the university.220 Klein also notes that the MA programme at the Centre for
African and Oriental Studies (College of Social Sciences) contains elements of religious
studies,221 though this is not well supported by the content descriptions on the webpages of the
degree and the college. Religious colleges also offer inter-religious courses and support related
research, but this is rooted in a confessional perspective, strengthening Klein’s assertion that a
‘neutral institution for (inter)-religious research, study, and education … is desirable’.222
220 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 204 .
221 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 2 04.
222 Klein, Christlich-Muslimische Beziehungen, 2 05.
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CONCLUSION AND AVENUES
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
As this survey has shown, religion is of considerable historical, social and political significance
in Ethiopia. Rather than being a distinct social or even ‘private’ factor, religious identity is
best understood as interwoven with historical narratives about Ethiopia, inherited political
imbalances, claims to public space, ethnic identities, and articulated visions about the country’s
future. As the historical overview shows, Ethiopia’s political management of religions has never
been fully equal, even under robust legal frameworks separating church and state. Instead,
the political system has laboured to mobilize and control the country’s religious plurality and
particular faith constituencies. PM Abiy’s invocations of faith as he attempts to apply a post-
ethnic formula to the Ethiopian nation state must therefore take account of this broader history.
Further research is needed into how religion is employed in contemporary political rhetoric, as
well as the ways in which religious constituents participate in and echo this rhetoric, acting as
catalysts or conduits for social tensions.
Against this backdrop of historical processes and historiographical claims, there are local
encounters between religions. These follow their own dynamics of boundary demarcation and
mutual accommodation, concealment and revelation of difference, conflict and peace-making.
Significant demographic shifts, as well as more liberal policy governing access to land for
religious buildings and burial grounds, have exacerbated competition over public space, with
previous claims to historical predominance sometimes challenged by these changes. Moreover,
the major religions are far from homogenous entities, and as such are often engaged in internal
discussions over how to align their politics and react to religious others. The standard narrative
of ‘traditional’ peaceful coexistence being confronted by rising ‘extremism’ is not sufficient
to unpack these various parameters, though the expectation and accusation of ‘extremism’
certainly plays a role in anticipating and generating conflict. This calls for more local research
and comparative analysis aimed at mapping out the interplay of national and local politics with
conflict drivers, and how this drives or helps reconcile religiously demarcated conflict.
Finally, existing avenues of inter-religious dialogue and peacebuilding may not be adequately
adapted to local complexities and the changing religio-political environment. The IRCE is
characterized by political capture and the securitization of religion, while the extent to which
high-level efforts such as the inter-religious training manual for peace are reaching local actors
is unclear. In other arenas of conflict, such as the Tigray War, calls for peace tend to ring hollow
given that religious institutions themselves are riddled with political conflict. While there are
a significant number of CSOs working in religious peacebuilding, it does not appear that their
efforts are joined up particularly well. Where inter-religious conflict has emerged in recent
years, it has generally been marked by failures on the part of state authorities and civil society
actors to prevent outbreaks of violence or install avenues for post-conflict adjudication and
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reconciliation. As anthropological writings in particular have shown, communities possess many
cultural assets and traditions capable of preventing or alleviating conflict. Further research is
necessary to identify these and elucidate a vernacular understanding of religious coexistence.
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