Ge'ez ceased to be anyone's mother tongue centuries ago, yet it remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and its script is therefore in constant sacred use. The Ethiopian biblical canon, the broadest in Christendom, is preserved in Ge'ez, including complete texts of Enoch and Jubilees that survive in no other language, a fact that gives the script a unique standing in biblical scholarship. Manuscript production in the fidal script is a living monastic craft: parchment gospels, psalters, antiphonaries for the chant tradition attributed to Saint Yared, and the small protective scrolls prepared by debtera clergy are still written by hand with reed pens, in black with red rubrication for sacred names.
Beta Israel, the Jewish community of Ethiopia, kept its own religious literature in Ge'ez as well, including its Orit, the Octateuch. The script also serves the modern languages Amharic and Tigrinya, so an Ethiopian reader moves between newspaper and psalter within one system of letters, an unbroken continuity between daily life and an ancient canon that few scripts anywhere can match. Church schools still teach children the fidal table by chant, much as the syllabary has been learned for centuries.