Tradition · 330

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo

The church of Ethiopia, one of the Oriental Orthodox churches. Tewahedo means “made one”, referring to the union of divinity and humanity in Christ.

History

Roots

Ethiopian Christians trace their faith to the Ethiopian official baptized by Philip on the Gaza road (Acts 8:26–40), and read the promise that “Ethiopia shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God” (Psalm 68:31) as written about them. The church as an institution begins three centuries later in the kingdom of Aksum, in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The founding story comes from Rufinus and was retold by Socrates Scholasticus (Church History 1.19). Frumentius, a young Christian from Tyre, was shipwrecked on the Red Sea coast, taken to the Aksumite court, and rose to run the royal records. Freed later, he went to Alexandria and asked Athanasius to send a bishop to Aksum. Athanasius consecrated Frumentius himself. King Ezana’s coins switch from the pagan crescent and disc to the cross in the mid-fourth century (Ezana, secondary), which is the firmest evidence that the court converted around the 330s to 340s.

Athanasius preserved a letter from Emperor Constantius II to the Aksumite rulers “Aizanas and Sazanas,” demanding that they send Frumentius to Alexandria to be re-examined by the Arian bishop George (Apologia ad Constantium 29–31). The rulers did not comply. The episode tied Ethiopia to Alexandria and to the Nicene side from the start, a link that set the shape of the church for the next sixteen centuries.

Causes

In the late fifth century a group of monks remembered as the Nine Saints (secondary) arrived from the eastern Roman provinces. Tradition credits them with founding monasteries, spreading the faith beyond the court, and translating the Bible and other texts into Ge’ez, which remains the liturgical language. They are usually described as opponents of the Council of Chalcedon (451), and their arrival helps explain why Ethiopia followed Alexandria in rejecting it. The Garima Gospels (secondary), among the oldest illustrated Christian books, have been radiocarbon-dated to this early period.

Ethiopia’s dependence on Alexandria became law. For about sixteen centuries the head of the church, the abuna (“our father”), was an Egyptian monk consecrated by the Coptic Orthodox patriarch, and Ethiopians were not permitted to hold the office. A medieval canon falsely attributed to the Council of Nicaea was cited to forbid an Ethiopian from being made metropolitan. The arrangement kept doctrine aligned with Cairo but left the church with one foreign bishop, often elderly, often absent for years, who ordained the clergy but rarely governed them.

After the fall of Aksum, the Zagwe dynasty (c. 900s–1270) built the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. The Solomonic dynasty that replaced it in 1270 claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. That claim was given its classic form in the Kebra Nagast (“Glory of the Kings”), compiled in Ge’ez around 1314–1322 (summary, secondary). It tells how Menelik, son of Solomon and Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Aksum. E. A. Wallis Budge’s English translation appeared in 1922 as The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek. Modern historians treat the descent as legend, but it fused church and crown and gave the church its Israelite self-understanding.

Influence

The medieval church was shaped by monastic movements and the emperors who disciplined them. Ewostatewos (1273–1352, secondary) taught that both Saturday and Sunday must be kept as Sabbaths and left the country after a new Egyptian abuna opposed him. His followers prevailed in 1450 at the Council of Debre Mitmaq, where Emperor Zara Yaqob made the double Sabbath official. The same emperor persecuted the Stephanites (secondary), followers of Abba Estifanos, who refused to prostrate before the emperor and rejected what they saw as excessive veneration of Mary and the cross.

The sixteenth century nearly destroyed the church. Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim of Adal overran the highlands from 1529, burning churches and monasteries. Portuguese troops helped Emperor Gelawdewos defeat him in 1543, and the Portuguese then pressed for union with Rome. Gelawdewos answered with a Confession of Faith (secondary; written after 1543 and before his death in 1559) defending the church’s Christology and its Sabbath and dietary customs as ancient practice, not Judaizing: of the Sabbath it says “we do not honour it as the Jews do,” and it holds that Christians are not barred from pork as the Jews are (secondary).

The Jesuit mission came close to success. Pedro Páez won Emperor Susenyos, who formally submitted to the pope in the 1620s. The Latin patriarch Afonso Mendes (secondary) then demanded rebaptism, reordination and the Latin calendar. Revolt followed, Susenyos restored the old faith and abdicated in 1632, and his son Fasilides expelled the Jesuits in 1633. Ethiopian memory of this episode still colours relations with Rome; a small Ethiopian Catholic Church (secondary) exists alongside the Orthodox majority.

Independence from Alexandria came in the twentieth century. An agreement in 1948 allowed Ethiopian bishops to be consecrated. Abuna Basilios became the first Ethiopian-born metropolitan in 1951 and in 1959 was crowned the first patriarch by the Coptic Pope Cyril VI (overview, secondary). The church lost its state status with the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974; the Derg regime executed Patriarch Tewophilos in 1979. Today it counts roughly 40 to 60 million members, the largest of the Oriental Orthodox churches, with a large diaspora in North America and Europe.

Key ideas and contributors

One united nature. The church’s name states its Christology. With the other Oriental Orthodox churches it holds Miaphysitism: after the union, Christ is “one nature of God the Word incarnate,” the formula of Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus. The divine and human are united without mixture, confusion or separation, but the church rejects the “in two natures” language of Chalcedonian Christology. It honours Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus as its three ecumenical councils.

Scripture and tradition. The church’s own statement holds that “the word of God is not contained in the Bible alone, it is to be found in tradition as well,” and receives both “with equal veneration” (The Bible). Its canon is the largest in Christendom, counted as 81 books. It includes Jubilees and 1 Enoch, which survive complete only in Ge’ez, along with books such as 1–3 Meqabyan that differ from the Greek Maccabees (canon overview, secondary). The “broader” canon adds church-order books such as the Sinodos and the Ethiopic book of the covenant. See Holy Tradition and Scripture and Inerrancy.

The tabot. Every church holds a tabot, a consecrated tablet representing the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the law (Tabot, secondary). It is the tabot, not the building, that is consecrated, and without one the liturgy cannot be celebrated. Only priests may enter the sanctuary where it rests; on Timkat (Epiphany) the tabots are carried in procession to water. The church of Mary of Zion at Aksum claims to hold the original Ark, which no one but its guardian monk may see (Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, secondary).

Old Testament practice. The church keeps customs that other churches dropped: male circumcision on the eighth day, food laws close to those of Leviticus, the double Sabbath, and ritual purity rules for entering church. It explains these as inherited Israelite and early Christian practice, not as conditions of salvation. Its fasting calendar is the strictest in the Christian world: about 250 fast days, 180 of them binding on laypeople, all of them vegan.

Sacraments and worship. The church counts seven Sacraments, baptizes and chrismates infants, and celebrates the eucharist in Ge’ez with fourteen anaphoras, more than any other rite. Its music tradition is credited to the sixth-century Saint Yared. Its clergy include the debtera, unordained cantors and scholars who carry the chant, poetry and commentary traditions.

Key controversies

Chalcedon. The basic dispute is the one shared by all Oriental Orthodox. Chalcedonian churches long called the Ethiopians “Monophysites” who denied Christ’s full humanity. The church rejects the label, condemning Eutyches as firmly as Nestorius. Modern dialogues between Oriental and Eastern Orthodox theologians since the 1960s, and joint Christological statements with Rome by sister churches, have argued that the split was largely about words. Ethiopia has taken part in these talks; full communion has not followed.

The unction controversies. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century the church tore itself apart over how Christ was “anointed” (qibat). The Qibat party, strong in Gojjam, held that the Son was made perfect by the anointing of the Spirit. The Sost Lidet (“Three Births”) party added a third birth by the Spirit to the eternal birth from the Father and the birth from Mary. The Karra (“knife”) or Tewahedo party, strongest in Tigray, cut these away and held that the union itself is the anointing. Emperor Yohannes IV ended the argument by force at the Council of Boru Meda in 1878 (secondary), backed by a letter from the Coptic patriarch, and imposed the Tewahedo position. Dissenters were punished harshly, and the suppressed views lingered for decades.

The Sabbath and “Judaizing.” Catholic missionaries from the sixteenth century, and some Protestant critics since, charged that circumcision, food laws and the Saturday Sabbath were Jewish survivals incompatible with the gospel (Galatians 5:2–6). Gelawdewos’s Confession answered that the church circumcises as custom, not for salvation, and keeps Saturday as a feast of creation alongside the Lord’s Day. Even inside the church the Sabbath was disputed for a century, between the Ewostatewos movement and the Egyptian bishops, until 1450.

Church and state. Unity of crown and church brought persecution as well as protection: Zara Yaqob against the Stephanites, Yohannes IV against the Qibat and Sost Lidet parties, and forced conversions of Muslims after 1878. When the state turned hostile under the Derg, the church had no independent structure to fall back on.

Schisms of the patriarchate. After the Derg fell in 1991, Patriarch Merkorios (secondary) abdicated under pressure, later said it was coerced, and led a synod in exile in the United States. Abune Paulos was elected in 1992. The two synods reconciled in Washington in July 2018, recognizing both Merkorios and Abune Mathias as patriarchs. Eritrea’s independence produced a separate Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (secondary), granted autocephaly by the Coptic Church in 1993.

Ethnicity and the 2023 crisis. In January 2023 three archbishops in Oromia formed their own synod and ordained new bishops, arguing that the church served Amharic speakers and neglected Oromo believers. The Holy Synod excommunicated them; clashes left dozens dead, and the church accused the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of backing the breakaway. A reconciliation was announced on 16 February 2023 (crisis, secondary). The underlying complaint, that a church tied to Ge’ez, Amharic and the northern highlands must become home to all Ethiopia’s peoples, is not settled.

Evangelical growth. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, along with the Lutheran Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, have grown fast since the 1960s, often drawing members from Orthodox families. Orthodox leaders have answered with a Sunday-school renewal movement and preaching in Amharic and Afaan Oromo. Pentecostal critics accuse the church of ritualism and of veneration of Mary and the saints; the church accuses them of rootless, foreign Christianity.

What remains unresolved

The church has kept an unbroken identity for seventeen centuries: Alexandrian in doctrine, Israelite in self-understanding, African in language and liturgy. The open questions concern how it governs itself. It must decide how far it can share its leadership and languages among Ethiopia’s peoples without splitting, how to relate to a state it no longer belongs to, and whether its Christological agreement with Chalcedonian churches can become communion.