Home›Africa›Modern AreaBrowse ByModern AreaThis page groups sacred regions by the present-day country or countries they actually fall inside. Wikipedia notes that the Holy Land "today ... chiefly overlaps with the combined areas of Israel and parts of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Palestine." Browsing by modern-area lets a visitor find every sacred region that falls inside the same present-day country.FactsModern AreaSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedRegions 1Modern AreaFilter Results1 entryApostasy or Blasphemy LawAllEthiopia's Criminal Code punishes blasphemy at Article 816, which fines or arrests for up to one month anyone who, publicly and by word or gesture, scoffs at religion or expresses themselves in a manner that is blasphemous, scandalous or grossly offensive to the feelings of others or toward a divine being, a religious symbol, rite or religious personage. The constitution otherwise commits the officially secular state to strong protection of religious expression, limited only by public safety, health, morality and the rights of others, a protection Article 816 sits in tension with. (1)CapitalAllAddis Ababa (1)Establishment StatusAllNo Establishment (1)Government TypeAllfederal parliamentary republic (1)Legal StatusAllConstitution establishes a secular state with no official religion and guarantees religious freedom; the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church experienced an internal schism in 2023 when Oromia-region bishops formed a separate, unrecognized synod. (1)Registration or Recognition RegimeAllArticle 11 of the 1995 constitution declares Ethiopia a secular state with no state religion and bars either side, state or religion, from interfering in the other's affairs. Religious groups register with the Directorate of Faith and Religious Affairs under the Ministry of Peace, submitting a founding document, founders' national identity cards, and the institution's planned address and branches; the threshold is fifty founding members for registration as a religious entity or fifteen for registration as a ministry or association, with the same rights either way. Registration confers legal status, letting a group congregate openly, acquire land for a place of worship, and establish a cemetery; an unregistered group has none of those rights. (1)Religious CompositionAllAbout 62-65% Christian (chiefly Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo); about 32-34% Muslim (mostly Sunni); small traditional indigenous religion communities (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). (1)Sovereignty StatusAllSovereign UN member state (1)State Funding MechanismAllEthiopia funds no religious institution today. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was the country's official state church from the fourth century until the 1974 revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie, after which the Marxist Derg regime disestablished the church, nationalized its landholdings and, in 1976, executed Patriarch Abune Tewoflos, ending more than fifteen hundred years of formal church-state union. No state funding mechanism for any religious body has replaced it since. (1)EthiopiaModern Area1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category TreeComments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.