Missionaries, Socialism, and Ethnocentrism: Global Protestantism and Ethical Dilemmas in Revolutionary Ethiopia

Glob­al His­to­ries Lec­tures on Cris­tian­i­ty and Reli­gions

This lec­ture stud­ies how Cold War-era Protes­tant mis­sion work became entan­gled with rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­tics and eth­nona­tion­al­ist move­ments in Africa. Focus­ing on the the­olo­gian, schol­ar of Islam, mis­sion­ary, and polit­i­cal cam­paign­er Gun­nar Has­sel­blatt (1928–1997), the lec­ture traces transna­tion­al flows between Social­ist Ethiopia and West Berlin, carv­ing out the eth­i­cal dis­putes aris­ing in this are­na. After the 1979 mur­der of Gud­i­na Tum­sa, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Ethiopi­an Mekane Yesus Church, Hasselblatt’s advo­ca­cy for the Oro­mo lib­er­a­tion strug­gle led to a rift between the Berlin Mis­sion and the Ethiopi­an church cen­tring on eth­nona­tion­al­ism, co-oper­a­­tion with social­ist gov­ern­ments, and the nature of church part­ner­ships. The case illu­mi­nates broad­er trans­for­ma­tions in 20^th-cen­tu­ry glob­al Chris­tian­i­ty while doc­u­ment­ing how East-West Ger­man anx­i­eties about church and social­ism became insep­a­ra­ble from Ethiopi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ary debates.