Staffan Grenstedt

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Longstanding Relations in a Process of Change

The Swedish Evangelical Mission’s (SEM) A-plan was to reach the Oromo People in Ethiopia with the Gospel. By the cooperation of evangelical Christians from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sweden this was made possible. Early important pioneers were the previously freed slaves Onesimos Nesib and Aster Ganno Salbana. Their translation of the Bible and a hymnbook into the Oromo language made the Oromo people “to feel at home” in the evangelical faith. Emmanuel Gebre Selassie and Emmanuel Abraham were two later important leaders. Their unity in the Christian faith made differences in ethnic background irrelevant. Step by step, strong relations developed between Ethiopian evangelical Christians and the SEM missionaries in Ethiopia. A decisive step was the founding of the Mekane Yesus Church in 1959 with 20 000 members. This church has now grown to become the largest evangelical Lutheran church in the world with approximately 12 million members. In this book you will follow the longstanding relations between Ethiopian evangelical Christians and the SEM missionaries. The relations survived dramatic external factors such as: the Italian occupation, the two larger famines of the 1970s and the 1980s, the Ethiopian revolution, the “Red terror” with persecution of Christians and closed churches. Rev. Dr. Staffan Grenstedt is a retired senior lecturer at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala. He worked in the Mekane Yesus Church and the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology for ten years.