The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, like its Ethiopian counterpart, holds the miaphysite Christology common to the Oriental Orthodox communion, keeps an extensive fasting calendar, and celebrates its liturgy in Ge'ez, the shared classical language of both churches' worship. Its monastic culture, canon of scripture and chant tradition closely parallel Ethiopia's, a reminder that the modern political border between the two states cuts through what was for over a millennium a single religious culture.
Independence from Ethiopian ecclesiastical authority did not bring the new Patriarchate independence from state pressure at home. Eritrea's government has been repeatedly reported by international human rights bodies to interfere directly in church governance; the state-recognized Patriarch Antonios was deposed by a government-backed synod in January 2006 after resisting state interference in church affairs, and placed under house arrest that followed, formalized from May 2007 and continuing until his death in 2022, a dispute over his legitimate succession that remains unresolved and contested among Eritrean Orthodox communities both inside the country and in its large diaspora.
The Eritrean church remains, despite this internal dispute, one of the four Oriental Orthodox Tewahedo churches, in communion with the Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac Orthodox churches through their shared rejection of the Council of Chalcedon and their shared confession of Christ's single united nature.