Religion and History in Eritrea

Christianity reached the Eritrean highlands from the Kingdom of Aksum in the fourth century, and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church traces its lineage to that conversion, sharing liturgy, calendar and much early history with the neighbouring Ethiopian church before the two became formally separate patriarchates in 1993. Islam arrived along the Red Sea coast within a few decades of the faith's founding and became the dominant tradition of the lowlands and the coast through centuries of contact with Ottoman and Egyptian rule.

Italian colonization from the 1890s introduced Roman Catholic missions and a smaller Catholic community that has persisted since, while British military administration followed Italy's defeat in the Second World War. Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia in 1952 and then annexed outright in 1962, beginning a thirty year war of independence that ended in 1991 with Eritrean forces victorious, and a 1993 referendum confirmed formal independence.

Since then Eritrea has recognized only four religious communities, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea, and has required every other group to register or cease activity. The country's religious composition today still runs along the old highland Christian and lowland Muslim lines that predate the modern state.