Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Definition and Name

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a Christian church centered in Ethiopia. Its official name is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tewahedo means "being made one" in Ge'ez, the church's liturgical language. The term refers to the church's Christology (its teaching on the person of Christ): that in Christ the divine and human natures are united in one nature, without mixture or division.

Together with the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and others, the church is classified as Oriental Orthodox. The Oriental Orthodox churches are those that did not accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451). They are distinct from the Eastern Orthodox Church, to which the Orthodox Church of Korea belongs.

Biblical and Historical Background

The Ethiopian church traces the roots of its tradition to the Bible. Two grounds are most commonly cited:

• The account in Acts 8 of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch
• The tradition identifying the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, as a queen of Ethiopia

The Kebra Nagast ("Glory of the Kings"), a text compiled around the fourteenth century, relates that Menelik I, the son of the queen and Solomon, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia. The church maintains that this Ark is kept in the cathedral at Aksum.

Historically, Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Kingdom of Aksum under King Ezana in the fourth century. The church's organization is generally dated to the consecration of Frumentius as bishop by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who then sent him to Ethiopia. For centuries thereafter, the Coptic Church of Alexandria supplied Ethiopia's bishops; only in 1959 did the Ethiopian church obtain its own patriarch.

The church maintains many customs rarely found in other churches:

• Every church building houses a tabot, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant.
• It observes the Saturday Sabbath in addition to Sunday.
• It practices circumcision of male children.
• It keeps a large portion of the year as days of fasting.

Its canon, the list defining the books of Scripture, is also broader than the Protestant canon and includes such books as Enoch and Jubilees.

Relationship with the Korean Church

No Korean Protestant denomination is known to have established official relations with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church or to have issued a doctrinal judgment concerning it.

Korean church history textbooks commonly describe the church as "Monophysite" (holding that Christ has only a divine nature). The Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the other Oriental Orthodox churches, however, respond that they do not deny Christ's humanity, and they therefore use the term "Miaphysitism" (one nature in which divinity and humanity are united).

Because the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a member of the World Council of Churches, Korean churches in the ecumenical movement (the movement for church unity) may encounter it through international cooperative activities. Korean Christians know it as the principal religion of Ethiopia, which sent the Kagnew Battalion to fight in the Korean War. Korean missionaries working in Ethiopia are reported to cooperate mainly with local Protestant churches.