The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia: Resistance and Resilience

2. The Challenge of Modernity and the Need for Reform

37 The Challenge of Modernity and the Need for Reform 02This chapter examines the situation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from the Italian period to the 1960s, highlighting the national Church’s encounters with Protestant missionaries and modernity as espoused by Emperor Haile Sellassie. It pays attention to the various reform movements initiated from within or without the Church and describes the responses of the institution. The chapter also discusses the dealings of some missionary organizations that worked in close collaboration with the Orthodox Church and evaluates the impact of the interactions. Furthermore, it highlights the emperor’s challenges of promoting renewal within the Church under his supervision and his inability to chart out a clearly articulated religious policy to transition the conservative institution into a modern phase. The War Years and Restoration The Ethiopian Orthodox Church suffered much during the period of the Italian occupation. Overall, the Italian policy was to discourage the activities of the Church, for it symbolized unity and national identity. The Italian occupiers tried unsuccessfully to promote the Roman Catholic faith by increasing their missionary activities. One way by which the Italian officials desired to diminish the influence of the national Church in the newly incorporated areas was using propaganda campaigns that condemned the Church as a tool of Amhara national oppression. To a certain extent, this tactic led to some local tensions and conflicts between the neftegnas and the local inhabitants. There is no doubt that the Italian 38 The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia smear campaigns tarnished the image of the Church in the southern and southwestern parts of Ethiopia. In so doing, however, the Italians did not succeed in Catholicizing Ethiopians. Instead, paradoxically enough, they opened the way for the Protestant faith to get an upper hand.1 The crack left due to the weakened position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church constitutes an important background for this development. As pointed out earlier, the Orthodox Church bore stains because of its association with the provincial power elite and the neftegna settlers, and the local people viewed the Catholic faith as the religion of the new “white rulers,” with which the people were not willing to identify. The religious movement that brought about the conversion of tens of thousands of people in the Welayta, Kambata, and Hadya areas to the Protestant faith during the Italian occupation must be seen against this background.2 After the restoration of independence in 1941, Emperor Haile Sellassie tried to give a new face to the Ethiopian Church at the national and local levels. As a short-term solution to the problem the Italian interlude engendered, he encouraged the Church to engage in vigorous pursuit of evangelization both in the towns and the rural areas. In areas where there had been some kind of discord between the local population and the neftegna settlers at the time of the Italian occupation, he called for mutual toleration and harmony. Some of his short-term programs in relation to the Church were definitely pushed by the clergy. A good example of this is the muchdetested and unwise government directive of 1944 which proclaimed that the indigenous people should be converted to the Orthodox faith. The move of the emperor was designed to ease tensions and bring healing and national harmony following the disturbed relations during the brief Italian interlude. The mass conversion that took place by a political directive sought to give the impression that all are equal and there is no difference between the settlers and the local ethnic community, for they all were household members of the same faith.3 At the national level, Emperor Haile Sellassie adopted a more enlightened approach toward religion in general. The national Church, both the lower-level priests and its upper-echelon hierarchy, had been most resistant to change and was one of those countervailing powers with which the forces of modernization had to contend.4 The role of the Church in the government and public space was perfectly summarized by the emperor when he said in 1945 that “The Church is like a sword, and the government like an arm; therefore the sword cannot cut by itself The Challenge of Modernity and the Need for Reform 39 without the use of the arm.”5 He wanted to introduce slow reforms to the established Church as part of his modernization programs, while at the same time he demonstrated some openness to Western missionaries...