Communique

Good News in Addis Ababa

The Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative's 2016 Consultation by John Coatney

As I walked into the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 11, 2016, I could hardly mistake the group gathered there to register for this consultation. The Orthodox clergy in their variegated dress—priests and deacons from Ethiopia, India, and Kenya, alongside Coptic, Malankara, Ethiopian, and -Kenyan bishops, archbishops, and metropolitans—intermingled with an equal number of Evangelicals from many of the same places, called for immediate notice, even in the heart of Ethiopia, where clerical dress is ubiquitous.

The mood was joyous, excited, and hopeful (though a tad drowsy—travel to Ethiopia is, for most, an exhausting venture), and especially so for Dr. Tim Grass, the newly appointed Lausanne Facilitator for Lausanne-Orthodox Relations. Dr. Grass's tall figure could be easily spotted amid the registrants, welcoming all as they arrived, assuaging concerns, and encouraging participants to pray and prepare for a successful meeting, one that had been in the thoughts and prayers of many Ethiopian Orthodox and Evangelicals for some time.

An Evangelical-Orthodox Issue

The origins of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative (LOI) and the events that led to the 2016 consultation in Ethiopia demonstrate the power of truth spoken in love and gracefully received with a desire to come alongside others in love and mutual respect. The story was briefly recounted in "The Gospel Out of Egypt," in the September/October 2015 Touchstone, and it is told in detail in a book edited by the LOI staff, The Mission of God: Studies in Orthodox and Evangelical Mission (Regnum Press, and Wipf and Stock, 2015).

Briefly, Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, was invited to attend the 2010 congress of the Lausanne Movement in Cape Town, South Africa. There, the bishop made the acquaintance of Leslie Doll and Grace Mathews, who served with the Lausanne Movement, and he attended a session in which countries in Eastern Europe that are majority Orthodox were referred to as "unreached." This raised the issue of Orthodox-Evangelical relations for Bishop Angaelos, who had been concerned about a similar dynamic in Egypt.

Because of this concern, the bishop invited Mrs. Doll and Mrs. Mathews to meet with him in London in January 2011, and, along with the Reverend Canon Mark Oxbrow, discuss steps to reduce tensions between Orthodox and Evangelical Christians. A steering committee was formed, which met three times to make plans. Thus, in 2013, the first international consultation of the LOI was held in Albania, followed by another there in 2014.

In 2015, a third consultation was held in Helsinki, Finland. At that time, members of the LOI steering committee were approached by four Ethiopians, including the Reverend Daniel SeifeMichael Feleke of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC; tewahedo is a Ge'ez word that indicates the emphasis within the Ethiopian Church on the single human and divine nature of Christ), and Mr. Tekletsadik Belachew Nigru of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY), who expressed a mutual interest and desire to host a regional LOI consultation in Ethiopia. As a result, plans were made for such a meeting, to be held in October 2016.

Over half of the attendees came from the host country, with further regional representation from Egypt, Eritrea, and Kenya. Others came from farther flung places, including India. Orthodox participants came from both the Oriental family of Churches and the Eastern Orthodox family of Churches. Evangelical participants came from the Mekane Yesus Church, the Kale Heywet Church, the Meserete Kristos Church, the Mulu Wongel Church, and the Anglican Church of Ethiopia, and there were Anglicans, Baptists, Independent Evangelicals, Methodists, and Presbyterians in attendance as well, from other parts of the region and the world.

Ethiopian Christianity

The history of Christianity in Ethiopia was presented to us in two introductory presentations on October 11, by Rev. Feleke and Dr. Eyasu Ferenj of the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church. Tradition claims that the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon (1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles 9) was in fact Queen Makeda of Axum (part of modern-day Ethiopia), who introduced Old Testament religion to her people in about 1000 b.c. This is the typical explanation for the Jewish customs that have been kept by the EOTC, including the liturgical role of the Ark of the Covenant (the Tabot), observance of the Sabbath, and certain dietary restrictions. Tradition also suggests that Christianity was introduced in Ethiopia by several means in the first century a.d.: the presence of Ethiopians at Pentecost, who returned to Ethiopia as Christians; a visit of the Evangelist Matthew to Ethiopia; and (most notably) the return of the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by Philip (Acts 8:27–39).

It is widely agreed, however, that the advent of Christianity as the state religion of the Axumite Empire came with Frumentius in the early fourth century. Frumentius was a Syrian, shipwrecked as a youth, who ended up in the court of the Axumite king Ezana. He taught the court about the Christian faith and was eventually sent by the king to Alexandria, Egypt, to inform the patriarch about the faith of the Axumite people. The patriarch (Athanasius) then ordained Frumentius to be the first bishop of Axum. Thus began the history of the Christian Church in Ethiopia and its close relations with Alexandria and the Coptic Church.

---

The EOTC continued to grow in Ethiopia over the next millennium, but in the sixteenth century the Christian kingdom faced a fierce challenge from the Muslim invader Ahmad Gragn. Advances by Gragn's army led Ethiopia to ask Portugal for military support. Along with this support came Jesuit priests, some of whom attempted to convert Orthodox Christians to Catholicism. In 1633, Roman Catholics were expelled from the country, and foreign missions were (for the most part) banned in Ethiopia until the end of the eighteenth century.

Protestant missionaries began coming to Ethiopia in significant numbers in the nineteenth century. During this time, the (Lutheran) Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) was founded, followed in the twentieth century by others, including the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church, the Ethiopian Mulu Wongel (Full Gospel) Church, and the Meserete Kristos (Mennonite) Church.

In 1944, the Ethiopian government issued a decree attempting to limit and control the work of missionaries in the country; Emperor Haile Selassie instructed foreign missionaries to direct their attention to the largely animist south of the country rather than the majority Orthodox areas of the country. Following the rise (in 1974) and fall (1987–1991) of the communist regime (the Derg), many churches (especially those listed above) resumed growth, as did Islam. Today, tensions between Protestants and Orthodox remain high, especially in the majority Orthodox areas of the  country.

First Steps

Political events occurring in Ethiopia just as preparations for the consultation were coming to fruition did manage to toss a wrench into the works. Several protests against the Ethiopian government had arisen among the Amhara and Oromo peoples, and the government's response had been criticized in some circles for excessive violence. These criticisms apparently served to exacerbate the protests, resulting in a vicious cycle that looked to be growing worse. Just three days before the consultation began, the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency, but provided very little information as to what that would entail. As a result, a handful of individuals who had planned to attend the consultation cancelled their trip to Ethiopia, and several people from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church who had agreed to speak were forced to bow out in order to fulfill their pastoral duties during the crisis.

Nevertheless, the facilitators and local organizing committee persevered, and the consultation opened in Addis Ababa on October 11. Among those who welcomed the participants were Bishop Angaelos, Mrs. Doll, and Dr. Grass on behalf of the LOI steering committee; Archbishop Daniel (on behalf of Patriarch Matthias) and Abba Kaletsadike of the EOTC; and the Rev. Dr. Waqseyoum Edosa of the EECMY.

Of special note was Bishop Angaelos's emphatic reminder that the purpose of the LOI is not for theological dialogue—which is already being conducted in various churches at various levels—but for Evangelicals and Orthodox to better understand each other's views of mission, and how mission is approached, considering the historical and current tensions that exist between the two groups. The hope is that dialogue might result in love, reconciliation, forgiveness, mutual understanding, and common respect. He concluded, "Even if we are not one in our theology, we can be one in how we stand before the world, until we are united in Christ."

The evening closed with a review of the history of mission in Ethiopia. Two presentations were given: "Ethiopian Orthodox Mission from the Time of the Evangelist Until Today: The Land of the Two Covenants," by Rev. Feleke, and "Evangelical Mission in Ethiopia," by Dr. Ferenj. These presentations opened up some intense and frank dialogue. Challenges to exclusivist claims regarding the right way to believe in "Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior" were raised. One Protestant, for example, proclaimed that although he had been taught in his youth that the Orthodox were not Christian but pagan, he was no longer convinced that this was the case, nor that they should be a target for evangelism. Bishop Angaelos closed the session by emphasizing the need to understand one another's positions ("ignorance of the other is unacceptable") as well as the need for balance, so that one could speak the truth while avoiding judgment ("Whether a person is or is not a Christian is in one's heart; I can't judge. What I can say is, 'Brother, your behavior is not Christian.'").

Witness & Muslims

The following three days of the consultation were associated with the themes "Witness, Peace, and Unity." The focus of discussion on the first full day was witness, and especially with regard to Christian-Muslim -relations. We began with a devotional on John 17:21, led by Dr. Ralph Lee, a representative of the Navigators and a researcher of ancient Ethiopian manuscripts at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich.

A joint presentation followed, in which Bishop Angaelos and Mr. Ramez Atallah, General Secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt, shared "a living example of how Christians serve as witnesses in a majority Muslim country, in a majority Muslim region, which is inflamed." First, they gave a brief history, noting that 85 percent of Egyptians were Christians until around 1000 a.d. Islamization/Arabization occurred over the next 300 years, dropping the percentage of Egyptian Christians down to 15 percent, where it remains today.

They went on to describe how, in 2011, when Egyptian churches were being bombed and numerous Christians attacked, there was not one act of retaliation from Egyptian Christians: "There was no memo that went out from the 'head office'; they just did what they did as Christians. . . . They wrote on their charred walls, 'Love your enemies.'" In the face of such kindness and graciousness, Angaelos and Atallah concluded, it was no coincidence that the Muslim Brotherhood fell in 2013. Bishop Angaelos also referred to the election of Pope Tawadros following the death of Pope Shenouda as a witness of peace, especially considering the chaotic political elections happening simultaneously in Egypt.

Mr. Atallah then spoke about the Bible Society of Egypt, in particular about how "the strong support of all churches for the work of the Bible Society gives us legitimacy and allows us to place the Bible in the public -arena." He particularly praised the late Pope Shenouda's support for the Bible Society.

Rev. Feleke of the EOTC then gave a brief overview of the development of the Inter-Religious Council (IRC) in Ethiopia, an organization that had its roots in dialogues between the EOTC, the EECMY, and the Roman Catholic Church in the 1970s, but was officially established by religious leaders in 2010, and included Ethiopian Muslims (the Islamic Supreme Council), as well as the other major Ethiopian churches. (The IRC has published a manual for peace-building that uses texts from both the Bible and the Qur'an as source material.)

Most of the afternoon was taken up with group discussions on the concept of Christian witness and the necessity of such witness for Christian-Muslim relations. The need for "a running, living, daily dialogue" between Muslims and Christians was affirmed, with the understanding that we Christians must say what we believe uncompromisingly, that we should focus on productive dialogue (e.g., on ethical, moral, and social issues rather than on explicitly theological issues), and that the goals for dialogue should be well thought out beforehand.

Peace-Building

The next day's talks concentrated on the peace-building function of religious communities. The morning devotional, led by Dr. Bruk Asale, a professor at the EECMY seminary, was centered on Ephesians 2:10–22, with an emphasis on verse 14: "For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of
hostility."

The first two sessions were both titled "The Role of Religious Communities in Peace-Building." The first was led by Dr. Priscilla Adoyo, a professor at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. She focused on the roots of conflict, and the role of religion and religious actors in conflict. The second session, led by Metropolitan Dr. Geevarghese Yulios of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, began with a parable that concluded, "Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or rigidity. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart." The day ended with a round of group discussions focused on our role as peacemakers.

The third day's sessions addressed the theme of "Promoting the Priority of Dialogue Between Our Christian Traditions." The devotional was led by the Very Rev. Protopresbyter Evangelos Thiani, a professor at Makarios III Orthodox Seminary in Nairobi, who focused on Mark 9:38–41: "For he who is not against us is for us."

The first session was led by Mr. Nigru of the EECMY, who is also a professor at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. In his talk, titled "The Future of African Theology: Convergences Between Ancient Orthodoxy and Newer Evangelicalism," he identified the concept of sankofa, of remembering the common African roots shared by both groups, as well as common views shared because of their uniqueness as Africans and, even more particularly, as Ethiopians.

Metropolitan Dr. Geevarghese Mar Coorilos, of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, reported on the Global Christian Forum Consultation on Proselytism, and then brought the consultation to a final discussion and debriefing.

One significant result of the consultation was the formulation of its statement of intent, which is worth quoting at length:

To fulfill this commitment we will endeavour, in the strength of the Holy Trinity, to:

• bear witness daily, in word and deed, to the reconciling love of the Gospel;

• be patient, forgiving, generous and humble towards one another as we struggle with theological, cultural, historical and personal differences that divide us, as well as the historical context of our relationships, always seeking the mercy of God;

• foster continuing engagement between our traditions within the whole region of the Horn of Africa, as in other regions, for the sake of the Kingdom of God—using, where appropriate, the insights, resources and experience of the LOI;

• support those in Ethiopia whose vision is to explore and express more deeply our respective, and joint, participation in the Mission of God for the sake of His glory in this land;

• encourage the "formation of mission-minded leaders" within our respective traditions. . . .

Personal Note & Future

I was delighted to attend this consultation. Every session and event was encouraging and inspiring. The most beneficial time, though, was during coffee breaks and meals, when participants interacted one-on-one, learning from one another. I will treasure my conversations with Archbishop Makarios of Nairobi and Dr. Bill Black about the state of the Orthodox Church in Kenya; with Dr. Asale, a Protestant who has done extensive study of EOTC angelology and iconography and found it to be of enormous benefit to his own theological development; and with Dr. Ralph Lee about his experiences studying with the monastics of Ethiopia. Perhaps most memorable was the joy and love of the Malankara participants; the memory of offering a hand in farewell but being pulled into a bear hug by the Metropolitan of Gujarat will certainly stay with me for some time.

The LOI continues to plan future projects, including a program on theological educators for the fall of 2017 in Cambridge (UK), and a regional consultation in North America in June 2018 (see loimission.net). Despite the challenges associated with the Ethiopian consultation, the benefits were readily apparent, and the work of LOI serves a worthy purpose. I close with Dr. Grass's thoughts on the consultation's outcome:

[T]he original aim, of seeing relationships formed, strengthened and encouraged, was more than amply fulfilled as we shared together. For some, the consultation came as an answer to years of prayer; for many, it was a time when they experienced the blessing of God. May it lead to deeper understanding and co-operation between Orthodox and Evangelical believers in a country where both traditions appear so vigorous.