When the Sanctuary Empties Quietly: Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church and the Human Rights Crisis No One Wants to Name
Much has been written about violence, persecution, and instability in the country, and rightly so. Blood has been spilled, churches attacked, civilians displaced. But violence, for all its horror, is rarely the final stage. It is usually the blunt instrument that accompanies something more methodical: the slow dismantling of institutions that once stood between power and the individual. In Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the world’s oldest continuous Christian institutions, is beginning to look less like a protected faith community and more like a structure being patiently taken apart, beam by beam.