Dynamics of the Ethiopian Religious Landscape during Democratic Transition

Abstract

The article defines the patterns of development of the Ethiopian religious landscape in the context of a significant expansion of religious freedoms that began after 1991. The country’s population censuses for 1994 and 2007 were used as the statistical base of the study. It contains information on the religious affiliation of the population of Ethiopia as a whole and its administrative-territorial units up to the Woredas–the 3rd level of administrative units. The directions of shifts in the distribution of followers of the country’s largest faith-groups (Orthodox, Muslim, Protestant, ethnic religions) were determined based on the types of religious composition of the population. This allowed us to reveal the features of the Ethiopian religious landscape with a high level of detail. The defined trends in the development of the Ethiopian religious landscape are reflected in the maps illustrating the dynamics of the types of confessional structure of the woreda population for 1994 and 2007. Based on cartographic information, the author determined the patterns of reconfiguration of the geospaces of the largest faith-groups in the country, that provoked an increasing polarization in the Ethiopian religious landscape. Determined that the religious structure of the population of the regions dominated by Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Protestantism has become more homogeneous, while the main direction of the development of their geospaces was their expansion towards the capital of Ethiopia. As a result, specific spatial structures, such as frontiers, were formed. The intensification of religious competition in Ethiopia, which until recently was considered the “standard” of peaceful inter-communal relations in Africa, was accompanied by the growth of religious and ethnoreligious conflicts. It is established that it was partly due to the change in the religious structure of the urban population, resulted from a sharp increase in the proportion of Protestants and Muslims. Ethiopia faced the growing involvement of religious organizations in socio-political processes against the background of the aggravation of religious competition and interethnic rivalry. This contributed to the strengthening of centrifugal tendencies in the political life of Ethiopia, which have serious implications, for instance the unbundling of several administrative-territorial units in the southwestern and central parts of the country.