Ethiopian Orthodox Church

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Diliza Valisa (Fr Wolde Selassie) came to see us on Saturday, accompanied by Pascal Schmitz and Wolde Emmanuel Solontsi Sindiso. He gave me various documents and pictures relating to the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of South Africa. He explained how they had come to make contact with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church after breaking from the Order of Ethiopia in 1983, and it was a news report of the funeral of the reggae singer Peter Tosh in Jamaica in 1987 where it was said that the funeral was conducted by a bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He had shown the news report (from the Port Elizabeth Evening Post on 28 September 1987) to Father Hopa, who asked Father Ntshebe to look into it, and with the help of a professor of Rhodes University they made contact with Abuna Yasehag, who visited South Africa in 1990, and received them into the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

The one who was asked to investigate it was Father Ephraim Ntshebe, and it was also hoped that he would become the first bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of South Africa, as he was unmarried, but unfortunately he died before he could be ordained. Diliza said that Lunga ka Siboto, whom I had met (and been impressed with) at the SACC counference in 2005, had taken over from Sigqibo Dwane as leader of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church.

Diliza Valisa had come to stay with us in 1997, and wanted to know where he could learn more about Orthodox theology. He told us something of the history of their movement then. They had originally been part of the Order of Ethiopia, which was associated with the Anglican Church. But the Provincial of the Order, Canon Ephraim Hopa, had broken away from it in 1983, to form the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of South Africa, because they did not like Sigqibo Dwane, the grandson of the founder of the Order, who had been appointed bishop of the Order by the Anglican Synod of bishops. Later, in 1997, Dwane had himself led what was left of the Order out of the Anglican Church to form the Ethiopian Episcopal Church.

Thus the Ethiopian movement in South Africa had come a full circle about a century after its founding. It had begun with a vision of an African Christianity that was older by far than the Anglican and Methodist traditions that had established themselves in South Africa, when some black ministers, led by Mangena Mokone, James Mata Dwane and others had broken away from the Methodist Church in 1892 because of racial discrimination in the church, and formed the Ethiopian Church. James Mata Dwane had then led it into union with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the USA, and then, when American ecclesiastical imperialism proved just as stifling as the British variety, formed the Order of Ethiopia in association with the Anglican Church in 1900. And now, after a full century, at least part of the Ethiopian movement had united with the original Church of Ethiopia, through the agency of a dead reggae singer.

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Tags: AIC, AICs, Anglican Church, Christian mission, church history, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Ethiopianism, missiology, Order of Ethiopia, Peter Tosh, reggae