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Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Also Known As Ethiopian Orthodox · Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo
Christianity

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Origin 320 to 340 CE

The largest of the Oriental Orthodox churches, tracing its Christianization to the fourth century Aksumite kingdom and to Frumentius, consecrated by Athanasius of Alexandria as its first bishop. It holds the miaphysite christology affirmed at Ephesus, did not accept the Council of Chalcedon of 451, and remained under the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria until it gained full autocephaly in 1959. Its worship is conducted in Ge'ez, and its biblical canon is the widest in Christianity.

Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Miaphysite: one incarnate nature of the Word, divine and human united 2
Organisation
Governance
Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod 1
Governed by a Patriarch (Abuna) and Holy Synod, autocephalous since 1959
Ordination
Married clergy permitted 4
Parish clergy (qeses) commonly marry before ordination; monastics (memhir, abba) remain celibate
Relation to the State
Disestablished 5
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church held official state church status under the Ethiopian monarchy for centuries; the Derg's 1974 revolution ended the monarchy and stripped the church of its state position, and Ethiopia's 1995 constitution formally separated state and religion, declaring that neither shall interfere in the affairs of the other.
Practice
Liturgical Language
Geez 6
Observance
Observance Note
Keeps an extensive fasting calendar, over 200 days in the year for observant laity, and the distinctive Qene poetic tradition in its scholarship 6
History
Separation or DivergenceSourced to the subject's own account
Did not accept the two nature christology defined at the Council of Chalcedon 3
Date of SeparationSourced to the subject's own account
from 451 3
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 5
A living national church, the largest religious body in Ethiopia
Open Questions
Institutional Wealth or Finances
No current aggregate figure found.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was historically one of Ethiopia's largest landowners, but was stripped of its extensive landholdings, including centuries old sacred forests, when Ethiopia's socialist Derg government abolished the monarchy and nationalized land beginning in 1974. No reliable current aggregate valuation of the Church's present day wealth was found in the sources consulted. See the linked open question.
Financial Disclosure Regime
No consolidated public account found.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has not published a consolidated account of its own present day finances in the English language sources consulted this wave, following its 1974 disestablishment and loss of its historic landholdings under the Derg.
Origins
Origin Period
320 to 340 CE 1
Place of Origin
Aksum, Ethiopia 1
Founder
Frumentius, consecrated first bishop of Aksum by Athanasius of Alexandria 1
Origin of the Name
Tewahedo is Ge'ez for being made one, the church's name for its miaphysite christology of a single united nature in Christ 2
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
Ethiopia's 2007 national census recorded 32,154,550 people, 43.5 percent of the population, as Ethiopian Orthodox. 7
Membership Over Time
Pew Research Center estimated 36 million Ethiopian Orthodox Christians as of 2010, the world's second largest national Orthodox population after Russia and about 14 percent of the world's total Orthodox population that year. 8
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2007-01-01 7
Membership Figure As Of
2010-01-01 8
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
National Census 7
Basis of the Membership Figure
Independent Survey 8
Learn More
Origins and Autocephaly

Ethiopian Christianity begins with a shipwreck. In the fourth century, according to the church's own account, a Syro-Phoenician youth named Frumentius survived a Red Sea wreck, was taken into the Aksumite royal household, and eventually converted King Ezana. Frumentius travelled to Alexandria seeking clergy for the new church and was instead consecrated its first bishop by Athanasius himself, establishing a bond between the Ethiopian and Egyptian churches that lasted more than sixteen centuries. Every Ethiopian Abuna, or metropolitan, was thereafter a Coptic monk sent from Alexandria until the twentieth century.

The late fifth century brought the Nine Saints, monks associated with the Byzantine world who settled in Tigray, founded monasteries, and translated the Bible and patristic works into Ge'ez. Their monastic foundations, especially Debre Damo, became the seedbed of Ethiopian scholarship and church architecture, including the rock hewn churches later built at Lalibela. When the wider church divided at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 over how to describe the union of divine and human natures in Christ, Ethiopia followed Alexandria in rejecting the Chalcedonian formula, holding instead to Cyril of Alexandria's teaching of one united nature, Tewahedo in Ge'ez. That word became the church's own name for itself.

Autocephaly, full self-governance under an Ethiopian rather than Egyptian head, was a nineteenth and twentieth century goal tied to Ethiopian sovereignty during the era of European colonization in Africa. It was achieved in 1959, when Abuna Basilios was enthroned as the first Ethiopian Patriarch with the agreement of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, senior see of the Oriental Orthodox communion the two churches share.

Canon, Chant and Worship

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church holds the broadest biblical canon in Christianity, commonly counted at eighty one books. Alongside the books familiar to other churches it includes works that circulated widely in the ancient Mediterranean world but were excluded from every other church's canon, among them the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, both preserved in full only in Ge'ez translation. Their survival here, when the Aramaic and Hebrew originals were largely lost, has made the Ethiopian textual tradition a primary source for scholars of Second Temple Jewish literature.

Worship follows the Divine Liturgy of Saint Mark in its Ge'ez recension, chanted rather than spoken. The chant tradition, called zema, is credited by the church to Saint Yared, a sixth century composer who is said to have devised its three musical modes and its notation of prosodic signs written above the liturgical text.

Zema is taught orally over years at church schools called qene bet, alongside qene, an improvised and deliberately riddling form of Ge'ez poetry composed for the liturgy. Services are accompanied by the sistrum, drum and prayer staff, and by the characteristic swaying dance step of the debtera, the church's cantors and scholars.

Ethiopian church architecture is equally distinct, built traditionally in round or octagonal plan with a threefold division into outer ambulatory, nave and an innermost sanctuary, the qidist qidusan, that only clergy may enter. The eleven or so churches at Lalibela, cut downward into volcanic rock in the twelfth or thirteenth century, are the most famous examples and remain active pilgrimage sites, alongside Aksum's Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which the church holds to house the Ark of the Covenant.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Injera, Sacred Foods

The fasting calendar that gives injera its fasting-food role here belongs to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Saint Yared, Figures

Venerated as the creator of zema, the tradition's liturgical chant, its three modes and the Deggua hymnary; every debtera lineage traces its art to him.

Source Yared (reference article)Wikipedia contributors

The tsenatsil is shaken during the sung portions of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo liturgy, usually alongside the kebero drum.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, whose exclusive standing as the state's religion the campaigns' land, inheritance and forced-baptism measures were written to enforce.

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

One of the Oriental Orthodox communion of churches that did not accept the Council of Chalcedon.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Derived from This

Administratively part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church until granted its own autocephaly in 1993.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Holds Element

Aquaquam is a clerical office of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church with its own school, its own master and its own place in the great feasts.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

The Ethiopian church holds that the Ark was brought to Aksum and is kept in the chapel beside the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, seen by one guardian monk who never leaves the enclosure. Every Ethiopian altar carries a tablet standing for it.

The church at Aksum is where the Ethiopian tradition holds the ark of the covenant to be kept, in a chapel that one guardian monk alone may enter.

The antiphonary of the whole church year, ascribed to Yared and sung in Ge'ez.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

The Ethiopian church is governed by dioceses under its own patriarch, an arrangement it has held since it ceased to receive its metropolitan from Alexandria.

The three modes of zema, ge'ez, ezl and araray, carry the calendar between them and are taught in the church schools alongside the notation.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery
Lalibela, Sacred Sites

The eleven churches cut downward out of the rock are the Ethiopian church's greatest monument and remain in continuous liturgical use.

Michael, Archangels

The Ethiopian church keeps a monthly commemoration of Michael and receives the Book of Enoch as scripture, which gives its angelology a longer roster than the Western churches use.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Ethiopian monasticism is large and old, and its houses have been the principal carriers of the church learning.

Source Two Thousand Years of Coptic ChristianityOtto F. A. Meinardus

The Ethiopian church has had its own patriarch since 1959, having been under the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria until then.

Source Two Thousand Years of Coptic ChristianityOtto F. A. Meinardus
Raphael, Archangels

Raphael is received in the Ethiopian church, whose canon is the broadest of any Christian communion and includes both Tobit and the Book of Enoch.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The sistrum is shaken in the Ethiopian office with the prayer staff and the drum, and the instrument is the same one the ancient Egyptian cult used.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

The Ethiopian community holds the monastery of Deir al-Sultan on the church roof, and its possession has been disputed with the Coptic church since the nineteenth century without ever being settled.

Received as the third and last council, closing the conciliar inheritance the Tewahedo church recognises.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Received as the first of three councils, and the Nicene faith is the ground the Tewahedo church shares with the churches it later separated from.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Uriel, Archangels

Uriel is a leading figure in the Book of Enoch, which the Ethiopian church receives as scripture, so his standing there rests on a canonical text rather than on devotion alone.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Held Differently

Orthodox Cross, Religious Symbols

The Ethiopian cross is a lattice of interlaced arms whose pattern varies by region and by workshop, and it is neither the Byzantine barred cross nor the Latin one.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

Rejected Here

The Tewahedo name of the church is itself the position: one made nature, against the two natures the council defined.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Anointing of the sick is kept as a mystery of the church, administered to the living faithful and not reserved to the dying.

Baptism, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Baptism is by threefold immersion and is followed at once by chrismation and communion.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Baptism, chrismation and first communion are given together in infancy, as in the Byzantine churches.

Canonical scripture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, preserved in full only in Ge'ez.

Canonical scripture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, preserved in full only in Ge'ez.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Syriac churches likewise ordain married parish priests while drawing their bishops from monasteries, and Egyptian desert monasticism is the ancestor of the whole Christian monastic tradition.

Kept as Genna on 29 Tahsas, January 7 of the civil calendar, and marked at Lalibela by an all-night vigil in the rock-hewn churches.

Held by the church to house the Ark of the Covenant; its principal seat at Aksum.

Source Church of St. Mary of Zion (Encyclopaedia Britannica)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Confession, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and other Oriental churches keep private confession to a priest, with the Coptic practice of a father of confession, a single priest to whom a person confesses habitually, and absolution before receiving the sacrament.

Confirmation, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Chrismation is given with baptism in infancy, using myron consecrated by the patriarch, and is not a separate later rite.

Covenant, Doctrines

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church holds the shared Christian covenant doctrine distinctively, claiming physical custody of the Ark of the Covenant at Aksum and retaining Sabbath observance, circumcision and other Mosaic practices.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, within the Oriental Orthodox family

The liturgical chant tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, credited to Saint Yared.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Exorcism, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.

The church dates its foundation to his reign and to the episcopate of Frumentius, whom Athanasius consecrated for Aksum.

Fasting, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Funeral Rites, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The funeral offices differ by order and by day, and prayer for the dead is offered at the Liturgy.

Gebre Meskel, Figures

The chant his patronage is credited with establishing is still the liturgical music of this church.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery
Gloria Patri, Prayers

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

His own church throughout his life, and the church whose autocephaly from the Coptic patriarchate he obtained in 1959.

Holy Orders, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. A married man may be ordained deacon or presbyter but not bishop, and bishops are drawn from the monasteries.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Armenian and Syriac icon traditions are distinct schools with their own canons of proportion and colour, and are not branches of the Byzantine one.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Infants are baptised and receive the full rite of initiation. Coptic custom sets the day at forty for a boy and eighty for a girl.

Lalibela, Sacred Sites

The rock hewn churches of Lalibela, an active Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo pilgrimage site.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Each of these churches keeps a full daily office. The Coptic form, the Agpeya, has seven hours and a midnight prayer of three watches.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The marriage rite is a crowning, as in the Byzantine churches, with a distinct anointing of the couple in the Coptic form.

Matins, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The night office is kept, most fully in the monasteries, and in the Coptic use it is the Midnight Prayer with its three watches.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tonsure marks entry into the monastic life in the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian houses alike.

Monastic Vows, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The monastic profession of these churches descends directly from the Egyptian desert and is the oldest continuous monastic observance in Christianity.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Sunday is kept as the day of the Resurrection. The Ethiopian and Eritrean churches additionally keep Saturday, which sets them apart from the rest of Christianity.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Kept as Fasika, at the end of a fast of fifty-five days, the longest of the Ethiopian fasting seasons.

Pilgrimage, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Lalibela and to the desert monasteries of Egypt is a settled devotion across these churches.

Prayer, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Prayer follows a fixed daily cycle in each of these churches, the Coptic Agpeya, the Armenian Zhamagirk and the Ethiopian horologion, rather than a single common book.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopian churches keep the same seven mysteries, likewise baptising, chrismating and communicating infants in one service, each with its own rites and its own reckoning of the details.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
The Anaphora, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Each of these churches has its own family of anaphoras, and the Ethiopian church uses more of them, fourteen in the received collection, than any other in Christendom.

Source Saint Yared and the Deggua (Wikipedia and Britannica)Wikipedia contributors and Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
The Epiclesis, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

The Fraction, Rituals

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The fraction is an extended rite here, with a fraction prayer that varies by season and by anaphora.

The actual custodian church: the manuscripts have been held at Abba Garima Monastery, an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church institution, continuously since their creation and are still used in the church's own liturgy there.

Source Wikipedia, "Garima Gospels"Wikipedia contributors
Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Each of the Oriental Orthodox churches keeps its own ancient liturgy in its own language, the Coptic of Saint Basil, the Armenian Badarak, the Ethiopian Qeddase, with a substantial fast required beforehand.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The institution narrative stands within the anaphora in each of these rites.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic, Armenian and Ethiopian churches keep their own iconographic styles and honour images in worship, though they were not party to the seventh council at which the East settled the question, having separated in the fifth century.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep an unusually heavy Marian devotion, with monthly as well as annual feasts and widely reported apparitions such as Zeitoun in 1968, and honour their own martyrs, of whom the Coptic calendar counts very many.

Vespers, Practices

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The evening office is kept daily, and in the Coptic use the Raising of Incense at Vespers precedes the Liturgy of the following morning.

Originated In

Aksum, Regions

Originates in Language

Ge'ez, Languages

Ge'ez remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, chanted rather than spoken in daily life.

Source Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An AnthologyKay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

Position On

Incarnation, Doctrines

The miaphysite definition, held since the rejection of Chalcedon in 451.

Regions Where This Is Principal

East Africa, Regions

East Africa is home to the ancient highland church of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Ancient Churches of Ethiopia: Fourth-Fourteenth Centuries
David W. Phillipson, Yale University Press, 2009
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
3. The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon
Council of Chalcedon, 451the holders' own accountView the Source
4. The Egyptian or Coptic Church: A Detailed Description of Her Liturgical Services
O. H. E. KHS-Burmester, Societe d'Archeologie Copte, Cairo, 1967View the Source
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
6. Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant: An Anthology
Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery, A-R Editions, 1993
7. Religion in Ethiopia (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source
8. Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century
Pew Research Center, 2017View the Source
Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity
Otto F. A. Meinardus, American University in Cairo Press, 1999View the Source
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumes
Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Sheed and Ward / Georgetown University Press, 1990View the Source
Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, Aksum (Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church)
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, 2019the holders' own accountView the Source
Yared (reference article)
Wikipedia contributorsView the Source
Gold Coin of King Ezana, British Museum (1921,0316.1)
British MuseumObjects and Practices of This Tradition: Gold Coin of King Ezana (British Museum, circa 340 to 400), British Museum 1921,0316.1View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Does the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Hold a Formal Personal Member Giving Obligation, Distinct From the Historical State-Administered Asrat Land Tithe?

The word asrat, literally "tithe", is well documented historically, but as a state-administered land tax of one tenth of agricultural produce collected by secular officials (mesle, gult gash, cheqa shum), administered separately from the Church's own monastic gult land holdings, per a peer-reviewed regional economic history of one Ethiopian ruler's own early-20th-century tax system. Two bands across this axis have now searched (scholarly databases, the Fetha Nagast, the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica) and found no canonical or doctrinal Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church text stating a personal member giving percentage. A modern US diaspora parish's own fundraising campaign uses the word "Asrat" in its title, showing the term is in living use, but a single campaign title is not a doctrinal statement of what the Church formally expects.

What would resolve this A direct reading of a canonical Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church text, a Holy Synod statement, or a scholarly ethnography of contemporary EOTC parish finance (in Ethiopia or in the diaspora) stating whether an ordinary member is expected to give a set percentage of income and what follows if they do not.
Ethiopian studies, primary source review of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canonical textsGeremew Eskezia, The Taxation System of Ras Haylu Taklu Haymanot of Gojjam: 1907-1932
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