Ethiopia is a logical site for a conference on Africa and the Bible. It is one of the world’s oldest countries, rooted in Saba of the 10th or 9th century B.C, more than a thousand years before any of today’s European countries existed. Saba, or “Sheba”, was the realm of Queen Makeda, the Queen of Sheba of the Bible. During later historical periods it is called the Axumite Empire or Abyssinia. Most recently it is called Ethiopia, identifying with the ancient “land of burnt faces”.

Additionally, Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries in the world. Its emperor Aizanas converted sometime after 300 A.D. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the main denomination. Ethiopia also symbolizes African independence because it escaped the “Scramble for Africa” of the late 1800s when Europe conquered and colonized most of Africa. Ethiopia successfully resisted colonization by soundly defeating the Italian army at the Battle of Adowa in 1896.

African-American scholars and pastors organized the 2005 International Conference. It was scheduled to include a welcoming by His Holiness Abune Paulos I, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and meetings with representatives of other Christian denominations located in Ethiopia. Also planned was a trip to Lalibela, where the church buildings remain operational that Africans sculpted out of solid bedrock centuries ago; and a tour to the Ark of the Covenant, which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church says it maintains.

Conference sessions were to include “Ethiopia and the Bible” and “Ethiopia of Ancient Israel and Christianity.” Today’s Ethiopia, however, is engulfed in violent clashes. Street battles have resumed between the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), which insists that the May 2005 election was rigged.

Separately, a southwestern province of Ethiopia has rebelled against the central government. Potentially worse, Ethiopia and its northeastern neighbor, Eritrea, which was once part of Ethiopia, have both moved tanks to their disputed mutual border which could signal the third war between these countries in 20 years.

We frequently blame the European colonial legacy for Africa’s current problems. Such blame is justified. The colonial powers lumped rival traditional nations into single post-colonial nation-states, a formula guaranteed to cause conflict. Moreover, the colonialists initiated alterations in Africa’s economy that transformed centuries-old self-sufficient agricultural societies into impoverished rabbles of consumers dependent on European and American production.

But Ethiopia remained free except for a brief period of conquest by Benito Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Why, then, does Ethiopia experience similar internecine violence as African countries that were colonized?

We need to examine the planks in our own eyes. We must identify and resolve innate weaknesses in Africa regardless of who caused them, including tribalism, personal lusts for power, and corruption. We should prioritize African Peace. If we can establish and maintain peace in Ethiopia, which was least colonized; hopefully we can export the formula to the rest of Africa and the Diaspora.

In doing so, we must recognize that Ethiopia has been an empire, not a homogenous nation, throughout much of its history. Various traditional nations were grouped into a larger state ruled by the Ethiopian Emperor before the overthrow of the monarchy in the 1970’s. The Amhara people were historically on top.

Some of the other ethnic groups and regions may have belonged to the empire reluctantly. Hopefully, the conferees at the 2005 International Conference on the Bible and Its African Roots took time to pray for peace in present day Ethiopia. The study agenda included an afternoon session entitled The Modern Experience, which incorporated a module called “Bible/Religion and Peace in Africa—the New Ethiopian African Millennium”.

Ethiopia’s Christian history needs to count for more than just bragging rights. That grounding should enlighten us to call upon the Prince of Peace right now to end the violence in Ethiopia. Then we should be available for Him to use us to bring it about.
And while we are at it, since the African Union is headquartered in Ethiopia, we should pray for peace throughout the Diaspora, from Uganda to Haiti. Proper prayer can conform us to God’s will. Thus, we may become God’s tools when He answers our
prayers for African Peace.