Abstract:
Ethiopia is an old society often confronted with new ideas and foreign values. As a result,
social changes and modernisation were important contentious points especially in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some wanted change and progress at the expense of
indigenous values, specifically cultural and political independence, while others opted for a
more cautious approach. Inasmuch as Ethiopia’s context was one in which the church and the
state were accustomed to seeing themselves as two sides of the same coin, the discourse of
modernisation had both a political and religious flavour to it. This article therefore aims to
examine the volatile dynamics between religion (especially the Protestant churches of the
‘southern peripheries’) and the Marxist regime in modernising Ethiopia. Specifically, the
article intends to explore how state-church relations transformed social thinking in Ethiopia.
I begin by sketching the historical background and proceed to unravel the dilemma of
modernisation. In the final part, I discuss how Protestantism contributed to modernising three
aspects of social structure: the understanding of the human person, state-church relations and
social organisation.
