Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The narrative of Ethiopia is engulfed within a background of religious-martial tradition. Correspondingly, as a function of its national heritage, emerges the concept of Judeo-Christian statecraft as commensurate with the Ethiopian religious-cultural-political complex. The developed statecraft definitively shaped Ethiopia’s social-political narrative and implicatively other societies. Whilst Aksumite Ethiopia was the military hero in the realm of 5th-7th century Eastern Christianity and dually a symbol of resistance against Islamification, it was also the 1896 victory at Adwa from which an ideologized symbol of black consciousness emerged in the form of Ethiopianism. This research reviews the religious statecraft of Ethiopia against relatable dynamics such as Zionist elements derived from Judaism, Islamification, Rastafarianism, and African Nationalism as derivates of Ethiopianism. An intrinsic investigation of the notion of Ethiopian Christian statecraft, regarding its determination of social-economic strata within the multiplicity of ethnicity and religions is done. This enables a modular comparison with other historically religiously defined states such as Zionist Israel, historic America, Apartheid South Africa, Pontifical Rome, and Islamic states under Sharia. This comparative study notes how religious statecraft defined these nations, adopted to modernisation of the political apparatus, shaped martial policy or determined national warfare, and effected the treatment of natives-minorities. This study is enabled through document analysis. The investigation is an attempt to develop a prescriptive template for the interaction of religion with statecraft, and in addition, weighing the pros and cons of an implied religious-statecraft upon a modern state.