If someone asked you to summarize the history of Western Christianity by naming cities, there are many options: Jerusalem, Rome, Wittenberg and Geneva to name a few. Our focus usually stays on the Middle East, where our faith started, and then Europe, where Western Christianity centered in the following centuries. This is the history I was taught. So I was surprised to learn when writing and researching the Protestant Reformation that Martin Luther was very interested in and inspired by the Ethiopian Church — and he wasn’t the only one.
During the time of the Reformation, it was a pretty widespread belief that Ethiopia was the first nation to convert to Christianity. Think about the story from Acts 8 about the Ethiopian eunuch who serves the Queen of Ethiopia. He’s moved by the gospel and baptized by Philip. There are also church legends that the Apostles Bartholomew and Matthew traveled to Ethiopia to share the gospel. Then there are stories about the legendary Christian ruler of the East Prester John and his mythic, ideal Christian kingdom far from the European church.

Though some accused Luther and other Protestants of tearing the church apart, that’s not how the reformers saw it. They were concerned about corruption in the Catholic church (even the pope), about doctrines and practices that ran counter to Scripture as they understood it, and about vulnerable people being harmed. Luther’s end goal was to restore the church, ushering in a return to the historic church, the biblical church, the church of the Apostles, but how could he prove it to naysayers? When he heard about the church in Ethiopia, he understood it as a church that was unconnected from popes, a church that developed without the influence of the Catholic church. It held great promise for him.
In 1534, Luther regularly had dialogues and debates with other reformers and Catholic theologians. That year, to his surprise, Abba Mika’el sought him out. He was a deacon from the Ethiopian church, sometimes referred to as Michael the Deacon. He didn’t speak Greek or Latin, but he did speak a little Italian. Excited, Luther invited an interpreter to join them. Luther, Mika’el, and several other reformers continued to meet over a period of five weeks.
By the end of this time, Mika’el and Luther agreed that they shared beliefs on the most important questions of Christian teaching and theology. They saw eye to eye about the Trinity, about Scripture being translated into the language that regular folks spoke, and about clergy having the right to get married. They believed that everyone present at a church service should receive both bread and wine at communion. In the end, they said that even though they had differences in their liturgies and ceremonies, those differences were not major enough to “undermine the unity of the Church [or] conflict with faith,” as Luther wrote in a 1534 letter. They both believed so deeply in the one church of Jesus Christ that they declared Lutheran churches and Ethiopian churches to be in full communion. Luther wrote Mika’el a letter of recommendation so he would be welcomed by reformers as he traveled on to Strasbourg, hoping to meet German theologian Martin Bucer.
We choose which stories we tell and how we tell them.
Meeting and speaking with Mika’el had a great impact on Luther. He mentioned it in letters and in sermons, which were then copied and published to a wider audience. Here was confirmation that Protestants were not destroying the unity of the church; they were restoring the church! One copy of a letter by Luther even describes Mika’el as a bishop rather than a deacon, lending his voice more weight.
Over the years, due to racism and nationalism, many Protestants became less than enthusiastic about their legacy of embracing the Ethiopian church. In the late 18th century, new translations of these documents downplayed the encounter and referred to the foreigner as part of the “Greek Church.” By the late 18th and 19th centuries, there was a greater emphasis on highlighting Germany’s central place in the origins of the Protestant movement. It is only recently that the writings have been retranslated and brought to light.
From the beginning, the church has been an intercultural experience of gathering together in the love of Christ.
My takeaway from this history: We choose which stories we tell and how we tell them. Learning about Luther and Mika’el reminds us that Christianity did not spread from one culture, one theology, one human power outward. God’s good news is global, shared by people all over the world. We should let go of the idea that our thread of belief and practice is a culmination of a unified path to the present moment. From the beginning, the church has been an intercultural experience of gathering together in the love of Christ. As Luther wrote in his letter of recommendation for Mika’el, “the Kingdom of Christ is spiritual righteousness of heart, fear of God, and trust through Christ.” What a great blessing that we find this kin-dom all over the world!
Author’s note: If you would like to learn more about this story, read Stanislau Paulau’s article “Re-Envisioning Ecumenism and World Christianity in the Age of Reformation: The Theological Dialogue of Abba Mika’el and Martin Luther” in Ecumenical Trends (May/June 2021).
Other sources:
- Daniels, David D. “Martin Luther and Ethiopian Christianity: Historical Traces.” The University of Chicago Divinity School. 2017.
- Daniels, David D., “Honor the Reformation’s African roots.” Commercial Appeal. 2017.
- “Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church,” Wikipedia. Accessed 2023.
- , . “An Ethiopian Orthodox Monk in the Cradle of the Reformation: Abba Mikaʾel, Martin Luther, and the Unity of the Church.” In Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity in a Global Context. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2022.
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