Policy Paper: Ali Hindi, Centre for Arab Progress
Executive Summary:
The Ethiopian government has waged a bloody confrontation against the Tigray Liberation Front with all its human and financial losses. It brought the country into a difficult ordeal that threatens the ethnic and religious fabric. The multi-ethnic and multi-religious country is facing another confrontation reminiscent of the past, but with different premises and tools, as the tension rises between the ancient religious establishments in Ethiopia in the face of the Oromo ethnicity.
This paper aims to shed light on a kind of “killer identity” in a country that has struggled with civil wars ever since the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie till the present day.
Analysis:
The Orthodox Church has succeeded in keeping the religious conflict hidden ever since the success of the Oromo uprising in 2018, and when one of its followers, Dr. Abi Ahmed, ascended to power for the first time in the history of the country. Even though this nationalism constitutes a numerical majority of Muslims and Christians, it has suffered from marginalization and historical hardship under the rule of the Amhara and Tigray. This nationalism has remained trapped within complex religious legislation, where it does not only demand equality in power, wealth, and rights to regain the ownership of land, but rather an additional list of demands that address the historical injustice that transpired on the Christian part of that mounting nationalism.
The sensitivity was opened again after the Oromo Churches requested to hold masses and prayers in the Oromo language, as well as the authority to appoint bishops for churches and dioceses located in Oromo-dominated areas. On January 22, 2023, a group led by Father Sawirus, Bishop of the Dioceses of South and West Showa, with the participation of two other Archbishops, appointed 17 bishops for the Dioceses located in the Oromia region, and 9 others outside of it. Father Sawiris was also appointed as the general bishop of the church. It demanded that the Synod recognizes the new appointments, and include its members in the Synod, and threatened to establish a Synod for the Oromia region if the Church does not comply with their demands. However, the Synod, in an emergency meeting held on January 26th, adopted a decision to expel and condemn the dissident group, and considered its members outside the teachings and laws of the Church.
Furthermore, the Synod stripped church titles and priestly positions from the members of the group and warned the church’s followers against them. As for Father Sawirus, he explained that his group took the decision following long-term consultations with the church failed in response to serving the believers in their original languages and respecting their culture – which led to the loss of millions of believers over the past years in Oromia and the southern region. Father Sawiris also accused the current Synod that one of its groups is exclusively controlling 85% of its members, referring to the Amhara nationality, which impedes any reforms. Equally, the extremists within the church accuse the nationalists of seeking to reshape the church on the politically dominant ethnic lines in the country.
The Orthodox Church in the Oromia region and southern Ethiopia suffers great losses among its followers, as large segments turn to the Protestant sect, whose reformist teachings and liberal orientations appeal to many elites and segments of youth. Even Prime Minister Abi Ahmed and his government have distanced themselves from the church conflict by stating that “they are all our fathers, and we do not stand with one group against another”. The Church regarded this statement as negative neutrality in favour of the dissident group.
At the same time, the Ethiopian Prime Minister considered the church’s disputes to have a political, ethnic, and reformist angle and urged religious leaders to stay away from political and ethnic differences and to fight rampant corruption within religious institutions.
Abi Ahmed’s statements come in light of accusations by the church and conservative parties that accuse the government of interfering in church affairs and encouraging religious leaders of Oromo origin to rebel against the central church.
History of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest churches in the world, dating back to 330 AD, the year in which the Kingdom of Aksum approved the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Kingdom. It was the second country in the world to officially adopt Christianity.
The Orthodox denomination in Ethiopia is known as “Tawahdu”, which is a Ge’ez word – an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. It originated in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and is close to Tigray language spoken in Eritrea, the Tigrinya languages spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as Amharic spoken in Ethiopia. The word “Tawahdu” means united as one, and refers to the Eastern Orthodox belief in the one, fully united nature of Christ, which is the complete union between the divine nature and the human nature in one to achieve the divine salvation of humanity.
The Ethiopian Orthodox “Tawahdu” Church succeeded in achieving separation from Rome, and in confronting attempts to spread Islam. It also succeeded in confronting the repeated colonial attempts to change its teachings. The “Tawahdu” and Ethiopian churches are considered one of the largest Eastern Orthodox churches. It is one of the few Christian churches in sub-Saharan Africa that arose before European colonization of the continent.
Successive kings and emperors who ruled the Abyssinian plateau adopted Orthodox Christianity as the official religion of their kingdoms. As a result, the church had a role in drawing up the state’s policies.
In the first instance, there was the creation of a powerful narrative of the semi-divine imperial dynasty associated with King Solomon, and adopted the theory of the regional state’s association with a divine blessing.
The second instance represented the role of Christianity in the Ethiopian national narrative linked to the rule of the political conditions in the Amharic language. The Bible was translated into Amharic in the year 1808, in a historical paradox of significance that it was translated by the Egyptian Abu Al-Roumi. This then led to the church’s association with the Amharic culture, and after the birth of modern Ethiopia in the year 1889, at the hands of Emperor Menelik II, it became the official religion of the country till the present day.
Consequently, Christianity has retained its position as the official religion of the modern state. The appropriate conditions were provided for the domination of the Amhara nationality over the state institutions. This helps explains the association of the Amharic with the name of the church, as it was known for many years as the Amharic Orthodox Church.
Oromo in the face of the Church:
Some sources indicate that the Orthodox clergies were among the soldiers of Emperor Menelik, who was expanding the areas of his kingdom by extending his influence over the Oromo lands. Given that these clergies came in as soldiers and not as men of God resulted in the majority of the sons of Oromo adopted a negative outlook.
This feeling was strengthened after the clergy, like the feudal landowners, who were mostly Amhara, confiscated the lands from the peasants and forced them to work on them. Then the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie consolidated the authority of the church after it officially grew as a parallel authority to the authority of the emperor. He also provided them with the right to a quarter of the state’s land. Accordingly, this made it difficult for the Oromos to resist the marginalization and persecution that was practiced on them by the clergy or feudal lords of the new landowners.
Moreover, there were various attempts by Oromo public figures to encourage the effective participation of the Oromo in managing their religious affairs and to get rid of the forms of hegemony exercised on them. The most prominent of these attempts was the translation made by the Oromo Onesimus Naseeb of the Bible into the Oromo language in 1905. His effort led to clergies putting Onesimus on trial for using incomprehensible language and assaulting the Virgin Mary. Even the Pope of the Church at that time ordered him to be exiled outside the country, had it not been for the intervention of the Emperor, who refuted the order. Instead, they confined his residency to the city of Nekmati, and prevent him from preaching his faith.
Later in 1993, churchmen refused to allow mass over the body of the 22 year old activist Ibrash Debala, after accusing her of heresy because she published religious teachings in the Oromo language.
Many years have passed for the Oromo Christian movement, before the appropriate conditions were available, for it to raise a claim that paved the way for what the General Ecclesiastical Council considered as daring against the holy entity. The demands were as follows:
• Making available a copy of the Bible in the Oromo language, so that the Oromo can understand the teachings of the religion.
• Establishing a college or university to teach theology in Oromo, and preventing discrimination against Oromo students in theological institutes.
• Setting restrictions to ensure that the people benefit from the lands in the possession of the Church, and to stop granting privileges to strangers using doctrinal justifications.
• Developing laws to prevent clerics, bishops, and monks who do not wish to learn Oromo from benefiting from funds collected from worshipers.
• Ensuring the exclusive benefit of the Oromo regions from the funds raised in the name of the investment expansion of the churches in Oromia. And not to allocate it to projects that benefit non-Oromos.
In the past, the majority of Oromo Christians followed the Orthodox faith, however, the past thirty years witnessed the migration of large numbers of them towards the Protestant sect. Then there was the spread of Western missionaries which played a role in obtaining educational opportunities for large numbers of Oromo people. There are no official statistics available on the percentage of Orthodox and Protestants, and this applies to the percentage of Oromo Christians. This is due to the ambiguity surrounding official statements about numbers and lineages as well.
The dissemination of education in some Oromo regions was carried out by the Protestant missionaries, which may have resulted in a movement to defend the rights of the Oromo. This led to practical competencies that bore the responsibility of confronting the traditional powers in place.
Conclusion:
The Orthodox Church has retained its status despite the fierce winds it has been subjected to since the fall of the imperial regime in the mid-seventies of the last century. The fall of the military regime in 1991 also resulted in the appointment of Father Boulos as a new patriarch, to succeed Father Mercurius, whom the government said at the time had stepped down from his exile.
This was denied by Father Mercurius and a group of bishops joined him to declare their rejection of the legitimacy of the Ecclesiastical Synod in Ethiopia and to announce their establishment of their own Synod that represents the Orthodox Church from exile. Successively, the schism within the church that lasted for 26 years, at last, ended in 2018. After delegates from the Patriarchate in Addis Ababa, and those in the United States, announced reunification in Washington, this was due to the efforts made by Abiy Ahmed upon his accession to power.
The second schism was when the Eritrean Orthodox Church gained its independence from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church on September 28, 1993. A move that was met with fierce opposition by a group of bishops who described it as dismantling Ethiopia’s spiritual heritage.
For the other Ethiopian nationalities, these events were a chapter in Ethiopian political play that reflected their history. As for the Amhara, those rifts tormented the religious entity and considered it a threat to their identity, status, and influence. This led to the fact that the Amhara are concerned with all the details of this confrontation that flared up between the clergy, and the consequences it will have on the future of the confrontation between them and the Oromo.
After succeeding in displacing the Amhara hegemony over the Showa region, where the center is Addis Ababa, the church will be its other theater, and their success in winning the cultural battle paves the way for displacing the dominance of the Amharic culture.
As for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, he may face the challenge in his project of smelting different Ethiopian nationalities, which he called the “destructive” merger theory. It is not clear whether he will succeed in marketing a different vision regarding the role of the church, which involves the theory of separation rather than integration. Thus sparing Ethiopia another bloody confrontation that may be more dangerous than the one that was with the Tigray Liberation Front.
Sources
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