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Ethiopia Organization of the Church and the Clergy
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church's headquarters was in Addis
Ababa. The boundaries of the dioceses, each under a bishop,
followed provincial boundaries; a patriarch (abun) headed
the church. The ultimate authority in matters of faith was
the Episcopal Synod. In addition, the Church Council, a
consultative body that included clergy and laity, reviewed
and drafted administrative policy.
Beginning in 1950, the choice of the abun passed from the
Coptic Church of Egypt in Alexandria to the Episcopal Synod
in Addis Ababa. When Abuna Tewoflos was ousted by the
government in 1976, the church announced that nominees for
patriarch would be chosen from a pool of bishops and monks--
archbishops were disqualified--and that the successful
candidate would be chosen on the basis of a vote by clergy
and laity. The new abun was a fifty-eight-year-old monk who
took the name of Tekla Haimanot, after a fourteenth-century
Ethiopian saint.
From the Christian peasant's point of view, the important
church figures are the local clergy. The priest has the most
significant role. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of adult
male Amhara and Tigray were priests in the 1960s--a not
extraordinary figure, considering that there were 17,000 to
18,000 churches and that the celebration of the Eucharist
required the participation of at least two priests and three
deacons, and frequently included more. Large churches had as
many as 100 priests; one was said to have 500.
There are several categories of clergy, collectively
referred to as the kahinat (priests, deacons, and some
monks) and the debteras (priests who have lost their
ordination because they are no longer ritually pure, or
individuals who have chosen not to enter the priesthood). A
boy between the ages of seven and ten who wishes to become a
deacon joins a church school and lives with his teacher--a
priest or debtera who has achieved a specified level of
learning--and fellow students near a church. After about
four years of study, the diocesan bishop ordains him a
deacon.
After three or four years of service and additional study,
a deacon can apply to be ordained a priest. Before doing so,
he has to commit himself to celibacy or else get married.
Divorce and remarriage or adultery result in a loss of
ritual purity and loss of one's ordination.
A priest's chief duty is to celebrate the Eucharist, a task
to which he is assigned for a fixed period of weeks or
months each year. He also officiates at baptisms and funeral
services and attends the feasts (provided by laymen)
associated with these and other events. His second important
task is to act as confessor, usually by arrangement with
specific families.
Most priests come from the peasantry, and their education
is limited to what they acquire during their training for
the diaconate and in the relatively short period thereafter.
They are, however, ranked according to their learning, and
some acquire far more religious knowledge than others.
Debteras often have a wider range of learning and skills
than what is required for a priest. Debteras act as
choristers, poets, herbalists, astrologers, fortune-tellers,
and scribes (for those who cannot read).
Some monks are laymen, usually widowers, who have devoted
themselves to a pious life. Other monks undertake a celibate
life while young and commit themselves to advanced religious
education. Both kinds of monks might lead a hermit's life,
but many educated monks are associated with the great
monastic centers, which traditionally were the sources of
doctrinal innovation or dispute that had sometimes riven the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Nuns are relatively few, usually
older women who perform largely domestic tasks in the
churches.
Data as of 1991
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