The Ancient, Serene Ethiopian Church

For the 10 million Coptic Christians of Ethiopia, one of the spiritual high points of the year is the feast of St.

Gabriel the Archangel. Last week 100,000 pilgrims made their way to the shrine of St. Gabriel at Kulubi, in the jagged mountains 200 miles east of Addis Ababa, for a festival that is al most without parallel in the Christian world.

While bearded priests intoned prayers and blessings over blaring loudspeakers, pilgrims dressed in lionskins paraded around the gold-domed shrine, chanting, wailing, beating drums, and imploring the archangel to answer their prayers in return for offerings of jewelry, cash, painted ostrich eggs, rattails and leopard cubs. Disfigured beggars called upon Gabriel for the miracle of a cure. Vendors selling gum, candy, candles, post cards and pictures of movie stars shoved their way through the multitude. Barren women kissed the church's stones, praying the messenger of good tidings to grant them a child. On hand, in case immediate help was needed, were hundreds of swarthy Lotharios, ready to "strike while the iron is hot," as one Ethiopian observer put it.

Sharing Poverty. The festival's curious blend of saintliness and savagery, paganism and piety, is typical of the ancient, isolated Ethiopian Church, which has managed to keep Christianity alive in its corner of Africa for more than 1,500 years, despite the aggressive proselytizing of Islam. Most of its priests are uneducated and cannot understand the words of their exhausting liturgies, which are celebrated in a long-dead language called Geez. Although monks and nuns are bound to celibacy, the rule has frequently been ignored. The clergy share the poverty of the people, even though the church itself, as the state religion, owns more than one-eighth of the land in feudal style.

In customs and beliefs, the Ethiopian Church is a mixture of authentic Christianity, doubtful Judaism, and animism.

In addition to Sunday, Saturday is observed as the Sabbath. Male and female children are circumcised, and the Mosaic dietary laws are observed. The Ethiopians uniquely celebrate a feast in honor of Pontius Pilate, believing that he ultimately repented of his role in Jesus' passion and death. Western scholars have trouble establishing precisely what the church believes, since there is no defined body of doctrine.

Apostolic Origin? The Ethiopians are convinced that their Emperor, Haile Selassie, is a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and that the Apostle Matthew first brought Christianity to their country. The claim is probably pure legend, since the first known Ethiopian bishop was a certain St. Frumentius, who was consecrated by the Patriarch of Alexandria in the 4th century. Along with the church of Egypt, Ethiopian Christians adopted the Monophysitic teaching that Jesus had one nature in which the human and divine were commingled--a doctrine that was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. Branded heretical, the Ethiopian Church gradually lost touch with the mainstream of Christianity and even with the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria, to which it is still theoretically subject. Since 1959, Ethiopia has had its own patriarch, the blind septuagenarian Basileos.

Encouraged by the Emperor, the Ethiopian Church is painfully trying to overcome the centuries of somnolence.

It is a member of the World Council of Churches; in recent years Ethiopian theologians have held a series of dialogues with Orthodox prelates on the question of possible reunion. The more promising young priests are now being sent to Germany and Greece for graduate study--and already the church is being plagued by a few fiery clerics, who, Luther-like, are demanding radical reform. Nonetheless, educated Ethiopians expect that real progress will be slow in coming. Despite its shortcomings, the church remains serene in its conviction that it possesses the true apostolic faith.

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