Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

The Ethiopian calendar governs the church year here: thirteen months, and a year that runs seven to eight years behind the civil reckoning.

The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church shares the tsenatsil with the Ethiopian church, from which it separated administratively in 1993.

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

This church did not receive the Council of Chalcedon and does not use its two-natures formula, holding that Cyril of Alexandria had already stated the matter correctly and that the Definition of 451 divides what should not be divided. This is the single point that separates the Oriental Orthodox churches from the Eastern Orthodox ones.

Universal jurisdiction and papal infallibility are not held here. This church's own autocephaly was granted in 1993 by the Coptic Pope of Alexandria, within the Oriental Orthodox family, and neither Rome nor Constantinople had a part in it.

The creed is recited without the Latin addition. This church had already been separate from the Greek and Latin churches for four centuries before the addition became a dispute between them, and has never received it.

The Eritrean church holds the Tewahedo Christology of its Ethiopian mother church and refuses the Chalcedonian definition with it.

Prayer for the dead is practised. A distinct state of satisfactory punishment is not taught.

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

The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church was one body with the Ethiopian church until 1993 and keeps the practice in the same form, with the same schools behind it.

The Eritrean church shares the tradition and the liturgy but not the site, having become a separate patriarchate after Eritrean independence.

Carried unchanged out of the Ethiopian church when the two separated after Eritrean independence, the division having been jurisdictional and not liturgical.

Sung in Ge'ez as in the Ethiopian church, from the same books and in the same three modes.

The Eritrean church keeps the same sung office with the sistrum, the staff and the drum as the Ethiopian church from which it separated in 1993.

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

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

The episcopate is held to run in unbroken succession from the apostles. This church's own line runs through Alexandria, from which its hierarchy was received.

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

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

Canonical scripture of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which carries the wider Ge'ez canon it inherited from the Ethiopian Church.

Canonical scripture of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which carries the wider Ge'ez canon it inherited from the Ethiopian Church.

Kept in the Eritrean 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, in the Geez rite the Eritrean church shares with the Ethiopian.

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

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

The covenant theme runs unusually deep in Tewahedo Christianity. Every altar holds a tabot, a consecrated tablet standing for the tablets of the law, and the liturgy is not celebrated without one.

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

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

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

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

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

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Kept in the Eritrean 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 Eritrean 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.

Held in the terms of Ephesus in 431 and of Cyril of Alexandria, and deliberately not in the terms of Chalcedon. The doctrine is the same subject as in the Chalcedonian churches; the formula is not.

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

Kept in the Eritrean 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 Eritrean 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.

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

The Tewahedo name of this church is the doctrine: tewahedo means made one, the union of divinity and humanity in the incarnate Christ in one nature, without confusion or separation. The formula is Cyril of Alexandria's. It is not the Eutychian teaching that Christ's humanity was absorbed into his divinity, which this church rejects as firmly as Chalcedon did.

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

Kept in the Eritrean 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 Eritrean 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 Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

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

Kept in the Eritrean 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.

The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church shares Ge'ez as its liturgical language with the Ethiopian church, from which it separated administratively in 1993.

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