Jörg Haustein: Missionaries, Socialism & Ethnocentrism: Global Protestantism & Ethical Dilemmas in Revolutionary Ethopia

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 20th-century global Christianity while documenting how East-West German anxieties about church and socialism became inseparable from Ethiopian revolutionary debates. A lecture by Professor Jörg Haustein (University of Cambridge) as part of the "Global Histories" event series. Weniger lesen