Reformation Day: 7 lesser-known facts about Martin Luther
5. Held a positive view of Ethiopian Christianity
While Luther had issues with the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation leader viewed the Ethiopian Orthodox Church more positively and may have been influenced by its practices.
David D. Daniels of The University of Chicago Divinity School wrote in 2017 that Luther referred to contemporary Christian Ethiopia on at least 15 occasions in his writings.
“Luther held the Ethiopian Church in great esteem,” wrote Daniels. “Uncorrupted by the Roman papacy, Ethiopian Christianity, according to Luther, possessed apostolic practices which were absent in Roman Catholicism and which Protestants would ‘adopt’ through their own reading of Scripture: communion in both kinds, vernacular Scripture, and married clergy.”
“Absent, meanwhile, within the Church in Ethiopia were European practices then under critique by various Protestant reformers: the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, indulgences, purgatory, and marriage as a sacrament.”
In 1534, Luther even met with a traveling Ethiopian cleric known as Michael the Deacon in Wittenberg, with the German religious figure speaking positively of the experience.
