Synthesizing existing scholarship with original interviews and archival research, he demonstrates that the vernacular nature of the Ethiopian church played a critical role in the development of a state church. He also traces the effects of the political on the religious: the growth of other “counter-cultural” movements in 1960s Ethiopia, such as renewal movements, youth discontentment, and the Marxist regime (under which the church still flourished). This strikingly authentic work refutes the thesis that evangelicalism was imported. Instead, Eshete shows, it was a genuine indigenous response to cultural pressures.

Tibebe Eshete is Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies at Michigan State University He is the author of Jijiga: The History of a Strategic Town in the Horn of Africa and My Journey: The Deranged Life and Divine Grace.