History & overview · every faith gets one
Thirty years old and sixteen centuries old at the same time.
The Tewahedo church of Eritrea, autocephalous since the Coptic synod granted it independence from Addis Ababa after Eritrean independence, with its own patriarch since 1998. Same Ge'ez liturgy, same fasting calendar, same tabot as the Ethiopian church — in a state that deposed its third patriarch in 2006 and held him under arrest until he died in 2022.
Why it is filed this way
Living, and constrained: the government supervises appointments, and the patriarch it deposed in 2006 was held until his death in 2022.
The founding
Eritrea became independent in 1993, and the Eritrean bishops asked Alexandria rather than Addis Ababa for their own head. Pope Shenouda III consecrated Eritrean bishops in 1994 and the patriarchate was established in 1998, with the Ethiopian church consenting. The two churches remain in communion and have never agreed on what the separation cost.
No single founder — The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church accreted rather than began.
What it holds
Reality. Made and sustained by God, and read for signs — the same world the Ethiopian church reads..
The divine. One God in three persons; the incarnate Word in one united nature. The doctrine is identical to the Ethiopian and Coptic confession — the separation was jurisdictional, not doctrinal..
Death and after. Resurrection and judgment; long commemoration of the dead by the family and the parish..