After the cutting of its historical umbilical cord to the Egyptian Coptic Church, the Ethiopian Church was forced to follow and adapt to political changes in Ethiopia. Therefore, the nationalization of the Ethiopian Church was its main challenge in the first half of the twentieth century. But quite quickly it became clear that without organisational changes in the clergy and the Church’s complete submission to secular political authority, it could not continue playing this role. Without going far back into history, this chapter starts at the end of the nineteenth century to show that the Church was instrumental in the unification of the kingdom andits dependencies around a common reinstated Christian identity. Today Orthodox Christians represent more or less one half of the Ethiopian population, concentrated in the northwest but also widely disseminated throughout the urban networks of the state structure. Abstract: For centuries the Christian Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia was considered the dominant framework through which Ethiopia could be understood. Published in: Gérard PRUNIER and Eloi FICQUET, editors, 2015, Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi.
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