Oritism
The case for Religious State and For Restoring
Our Ancient Orit religion
“You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” Exodus 19.6.
Isaiase Afewerki and our devout radical atheist elites believes our religion is a personal choice and our country is for all means our faith and our country are separate entities. Ancient Egyptian civilization was about literature, ancient Greek civilization was about philosophy, ancient Roman civilization was about Pagan good governance, the ancient Chinese civilization is about Confucianism, and our ancient Ge’ez civilization was about our Orit religion. Our contribution to the world civilization is our ancient indigenous religion. It is impossible rationally, factually and logically to separate Ge’ez/Tigrigna nationalism/culture/ideology from our father faith and tradition.
We never have been Pagans or savages like Arabs, Europeans, Persians, Africans and most Asians in our entire 3000 years civilization history. We practice Oritisim as religion for over 3000 years. Don’t take my words go to Adulis and Kuhayto to see, touch, and smell the remains of our ancient Orit Temples and study our present traditional society value system, tradition and culture. We don’t choose our faith when became adults, it is our proud heritage. The essence of our cultural national identity is our Orit religion.
After over 1000 years Amhara, Egyptian Coptic and Islam forced conversion, European Catholics and Protestant exploitations and oppression, and PFDJ brutal 25 years ethnic and cultural cleansing that today our ancient value system that make us love our land, make us responsible for each other and the tradition that shape our common habit may be they are weaken but still with us in our blood, bones and minds. Like our forefathers still we are yearning for the promise land. Keeping and sustaining our identity against odds for 3000 years is our biggest achievement that we should be proud of.
Joseph made Israel’s sons swear an oath. He said “God will definitely take care of you. So be sure to carry my bones back with you.” Genesis 50:25. After 430 slavery the bible said in Exodus 13:19 “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”
Like the biblical Israelite we want to be buried in our forefathers land even we are dying in Australia, Alaska, Addis Ababa or South Africa. When we asked to donate money for fellow Tigrigna remains send back home for boreal that we donate very generously from the little money we have because we deeply value burying in our land. For EPLF fighters leaving their dead body of their comrades behind unburied was source of shame and regrets.
Still like our Orit ancestors men and women that we seat separately in church, mourning, baito etc. Still like our Orit ancestors we do men circumcision. Still many of our farmers and mother they don’t do farming work, washing clothes or even roasting coffee on Saturday. Still our Ge’ez Menorah is in our church buildings including in Asmara Mariam Zion church.
But above all Eritrean and Tigray Orthodox church with Jewish sects who have the five Moses books ( The Torah) as canon. Eritrean and Tigray Orthodox church are the only religion that have ታቦት with deep emotional and psychological attachment. Like any African Christianity Amhara Christianity is mix with their pre-Christianity believe system like voodoo, superstitious and witchcrafts. Amhara never know and understand the meaning of Orit and ታቦት.
Still our church priesthood model is the same like what was the first priest and high priest Aaron with his five children. Even our Jewish brothers had changed the priesthood to rabbinate after they expelled from Zion in 70 AD by Romans. The priest was there for the people when they are ill, dying, depressed, having family feud, when they go to war, he teaches them ethics, how to love and serve their land, family, community as additional job with looking after his own family. The EPLF and TPLF model of serving ተጋዳላይ was modelled on our priesthood model. ተጋዳላይ like our priest is a servant who doesn’t ask any payment at all. Our people worship true servants.
The Eritrean Tewahdo Orthodox Church monks, Catholic priests, protestant pastors, Muslim Imams etc. were the highly paid careerist in society either by the fertile land they owned, tax they collect or by being part of the corrupt political elite. But our today priests and religion is led by Monks that a tradition nothing to do with the bible special with the old Testaments. All these Eritrean and Tigray Orthodox church practices are nothing to do with Christianity. Eritrean Orthodox Church has more similarity with Israeli Orthodox Judaism than with Egyptian Coptic church but it call itself Orthodox Christian church because Eritrean Orthodox Church forcibly imposed confused religion.
There is no clear evidences that prove how and when the Monks tradition started in our country but institutional Christian monasticism seems to have begun in the deserts in AD 4th century Egypt as a kind of living martyrdom. Scholars such as Lester K. Little attribute the rise of monasticism at this time to the immense changes in the church that had been brought about by Constantine‘s acceptance of Christianity as the main Roman religion. This ended the position of Christians as a small group that believed itself to be the godly elite. In response a new more advanced form of dedication was developed to preserve a nucleus of the dedicated. The end of persecution also meant that martyrdom was no longer an option to prove one’s piety. Instead the long-term “martyrdom” of the ascetic became common.
Even the Catholic Church priesthood celibacy is not ancient. Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) had an illegitimate son before he took holy orders. Pope Clement IV (1265–1268) was married, before taking Holy Orders, and had two daughters, who both entered a convent.
There are four million video cameras in the UK to record every movement to prevent crime. Every one movement and communications are easy to trace by the website he/she surfaces, mobile phone users, bank card uses, etc.. UK society is a big brother society. There are hundreds of thousand police officers and private security personnel. Police and other internal security budget of the UK represent significant percentage of the national budget which is more than defence in addition of the government budget to prevent crime. There is a multi-billion worth private securities industry in the UK. If all this security machine has stopped operating just for one hour looting and anarchy can take within minutes immediately.
The social services budget of the UK represents 5% of the national budget. There is 10 billion privately funded charitable social service industry in the UK .There are tens of thousands government social workers who work to prevent children from alcoholic and violence parents, helping children from broken families, helping disabled people, old people, etc. Without social workers the UK could be hell for those who are weak and vulnerable.
The UK use to be like this especially since its industrial revolution.
There is a criminal law in the UK that is much respected worldwide for its toughness and fairness. There is a tax law, accounting persuaders and management law for state and private companies to make them accountable and transparent. Despite these tax law accounting procedure and asset management and its enforcer bodies there is a lot of tax avoidance and corruptions in the UK.
The biggest struggle in the west is between free marketers who wants almost no tax and no regulation and regulated marketers who want regulated economy and higher tax to pay for education, deference infrastructure etc. The overwhelming majority hates taxes and regulations. They pay taxes and abide by regulation because they fear of the consequence of breaking the law.
The UK and western experience teach us law and law enforcement institutions are not enough to create fair, crime and corruptions free society and to help and protect the weak and vulnerable members of the society, and it is very expensive and unsustainable way to maintain fair, stable and prosperous society using only law and law enforcement institutions.
African and Arab tribes and clans protect their own community from other tribes or clans using revenge as deterrence, but looting asset of the outsider and committing crime against the weak tribe/clan is fair game.
Western society obey the law, especially the last 30 years because of law enforcement forces and consequence of fallout of law. Throughout our three thousand years we enforce the law only by prompting and educating our virtues. The educator was our priests and our virtues comes from our religion specially from our Orit (Old Testament). The curriculum was the Bible. Our biggest achievement was creating crime free, social justice, creating stable and happy families without multibillion of police forces, social services, auditors, lawyers, etc.
The Marxist and atheist leaders of our nation are committed to dismantle our nation value system by separating its soul from its flesh in order to create a circular multi – nation (multicultural) or a country with many different conflicting national identities. This will kill our social covenant and our social trust.
Since EPLF under Isaias Afewerki become in charge of our nation, the fabric of our society is eroding fast, we become greedy, dishonest, individualistic and corrupt society, our families are breaking down, and we become extremely poor, disenfranchised refugees who lives in fear without dignity because of PFDJ’s and atheist secular elites brutal social engineering to create secular society. What our last 20 years history has proved clearly is universalism and multiculturalism/secular in Eritrea means is greediness, dishonest, individualism and corruption and family breakdown.
Secularism is the principle of separation of government institutions, and the persons mandated to represent the State, from religion and religious dignitaries. In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state that is neutral on matters of belief. In another sense, it refers to the view that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be unbiased by religious influence.
Secularism draws its intellectual roots from Greek and Roman philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus; medieval Muslim polymaths such as Ibn Ruishd; Enlightenment thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine; and more recent freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists such as Robert Ingersoll and Bertrand Russell.
Secularism is a strange foreign concept to our people and region. Unlike Arab, Western and African peoples we don’t have pre-religion history or civilization like Roman Pagan civilization. Our civilization, culture, and identity from the start till this day, it is about religion. EPLF/PFDJs cadres and some western educated liberals think that our religion as the cause of our backwardness, and poverty, without providing any evidence or facts. That’s why their modernization idea depends on social engineering instead empowering our people with technology, science and modern management know how. Our religion is not against science and reason, by contrast our religion is compatible with science and reason.
If we ask Abune Dioskoros the fourth patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Church, or any high ranking monks or priests, politicians, intellectuals, and elder that they will tell you the Eritrean Orthodox church is part of the Oriental Orthodox that founded by The Apostle and Evangelist Mark in Alexandria Egypt and they we tell you our church is a Christian church. But if you look the facts in details specially the canon of the Eritrean Orthodox Church it is not Christian church or Orit/Judaism.
There is no a Christian church in our world that has the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy as a canon except Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox church. The gospels most widely known examples are the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John which are included in the New Testament are written to replace the five books of Moses. Christianity means to believe The New Testaments is written to replace The Old Testament. In the case of Eritrean Orthodox church The Old Testament never replaced by The New Testaments. Just it added The New Testaments Conon over The Old Testament.
Our religious leaders tell us we are orthodox Christians but by looking the canons which is the entire bible, new and old testaments that is it not clear if we are Christians or still Orit/Jews. There is sharp and clear contradiction between the five books of Moses (Torah) and the gospels. It is impossible to practice and believe at the same time the five books of Moses and the gospels.
The canon of the Egyptian Orthodox Coptic Church contains 27 books, the Protestant canon has 66 books, the canon of the Catholic church contain 72, the canon of the Greek orthodox church contain has 77 while the canon of our Orthodox contains 81 books. The Ge’ez Old Testament comprises the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as all of the deuterocanonical books listed above, along with Jubilees, I Enoch, and Joseph Ben Gorion’s (Josippon’s) medieval history of the Jews and other nations. The New Testament in what is referred to as the “broadest” canon is made up of thirty-five books, joining for the usual twenty-seven books eight additional texts, namely four sections of church order from a compilation called Sinodos, two sections from the Ge’ez Book of the Covenant, Ethiopic Clement, and Ge’ez Didascalia.
Our oppressors such as the Egyptian Coptic Church and European Catholics Church using their proxy the Amhara were very successful in imposing their religion on us but they failed to force us abundant our Orit religion and tradition. That’s why we have now a religion mix of Christianity and Orit/Judaism that is full of sharp contradictions with no defined canons, doctrine and identity.
In short Christianity is about faith and securing place in heaven or entering God kingdom in heaven, and Orit/Judaism is about action/deed and creating kingdom of God on earth.
Ethiopian Orthodox Church was led and managed by Egyptian Coptic monks until 1929. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church founded by Egyptian Coptic monks in 1270 Eccage Shewa እጨጌ-ሸዋ. There is no a single evidence that prove there was Christianity in Amhara before 1270. In fact most Amhara people evangelized between 15-17 centuries.
These newly converted Amhara under the Egyptian Coptic monks leadership that who destroy the Ge’ez people Orit religion simply by implementing like a Nazi German final solution formula that is by killing the Deqiqa Ewostatewos ደቒቀ ኤዎስጣቴዎስ (Sons of Ewastatewos) and all other Ge’ez religious leaders and priests one by one until they finished them and burning their holy books 100%. Like what was in the last 800 years that still The Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a vehicle that advance Amhara and Egyptian Coptic’s cultural, economic and political interests through its fabricated history, ideology and doctrine.
Emperor Yohhanes IV was the last Ge’ez leader who tried to salvage the ancient Ge’ez belief system or doctrine by organizing conference in 1878 in Boru Meda. Because the current Ethiopian orthodox church officials refused to give us what was the doctrinal difference that Emperor Yohhanes IV wanted to address and how it addressed it in Boru Meda conference. But nobody dispute that Emperor Yohhanes IV had appointed separate independent 4 Abun that one for Aga’azian, one for Gondar, one for Shewa and one for Gojam. Any political leader that came up in every Ge’ez generation had tried to defend our Ge’ez religion doctrine from Amhara ተዋሕዶ doctrine without success because like all generations leaders before him that Emperor Yohhanes IV never had aces to research and read history to understand why or what happened 100 or 600 years before himself. If Emperor Yohhanes IV knows why and what happened factually from 1270 to 1878 the outcome of our history of 19 century would be about freedom and dignity instead of humiliation and famines. But after his martyrdom ተዋሕዶ doctrine became the doctrine of the so-called Ethiopian Orthodox Church and preaching in church in Tigrigna had forbidden in Tigray. Ethiopian Orthodox Church founded independently from Egyptian Coptic church just 1929.
After 10s of thousands Tigrains martyred to defend and to restore their cultural identity still to this day preaching in Tigray or Tigray Diaspora church is by Amharic language. The priests who gone/went to Tigray from Eritrea for priesthood training manage to import ተዋሕዶ doctrine to the newly created state of Eritrea and became the Eritrean church doctrine too.
History proved it is impossible to prevent crime, corruption and poverty using tax law, police force and prison. Our history proved we can created society that have no crime, corruption, poverty, inequality without police force and prison only by having clear social covenant and social contract. If our people to believe on this cause it has to own the cause authentically and sincerely because only authenticity and sincerity give originality. We need to have original, authentic and sincere social covenant and social contract if we want build fair, peaceful/stable, prosperous and sustainable society.
If you don’t own it, if it’s not yours and you don’t control it. The Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox church doctrine is drafted by Amhara Emperors from Yukuno Amlak (1270) to Menelik II/Haile Selasie (1974) and still it is owned by Amhara despite for the last 23 years the leadership in both churches has been ተጋሩ/ትግርኛ. We can’t draw/draft a social covenant from a religions we couldn’t own and control. We don’t own and control The Catholic church, Lutheran Church, Pentecostal and Islam etc. This religions created and controlled by foreigners to serve their people cultural, social and economical interests. The Catholic church and Lutheran/protestants Church are the main tool that Westerners use to spread their values and advance their economic and political interests. There is no difference between Arab culture and Islam. Arabs used Islam to advance their cultural, economic and political interest effectively than westerners did use Catholic church and Lutheran/protestants.
We have our own ancient original and authentic Ge’ez religion we created to serve our people spiritual, cultural, social and economical interests. We couldn’t renew our ancient social covenant and social contact without restoring our original ancient religion. Our ancient social covenant and social contracts are products of our ancient Orit religion. There is no prosperity, peace/stability, democracy and fairness without social trust. There will be no social trust without social covenant and social contract. There is no social covenant and social contracts without common authentic, original indigenous religious doctrine or value system.
USA and Europe started to suffer deeply from lack of social trust after they introduced multiculturalism to their country to get cheap lobour. Lack of social trust is the main cause of inequality, extreme polarization and other social illness in USA and Europe.
We need to have religion with clarity and convincing canons. No one can explain what we believe to our youth because there is no clear believe system or religious doctrine in Eritrean Orthodox Church. That’s why our educated youth are converting to Islam, atheism, Pentecostals etc in their tens of thousands every year. We have to choose Oritism/ታቦት-the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy or ክርስትና /መስቀል the gospels most widely known examples are the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John which are included in the New Testament.
As secular nationalist movement our opinion is we should choose Oritism/ታቦት to be my region because
A, because it is unique, authentic and original religion of our forefathers
B, Because Oritism is rational and nationalist
C, Because Oritism is about creating kingdom of God in earth by having fair laws, social justice, family, community and country.
D, Christianity doesn’t work in hostile area like Horn of Africa and Middle East that all Middle East Christians are marginalized and they are in process of elimination from middle east.
E, Christianity is a religion designed first for Roman empire slave master then used by West slave masters and colonialist to enslave and colonize Africans.
F, Christianity is a religion that prepare the oppressed for the kingdom of God in heaven and it teach its followers not to resist oppressor and to forget their daily humiliations, pain and suffering because they will reward in heaven.
We need to take out those backwards Canons, texts and traditions that contradict the Orit bible and imposed on us by the Amhara, Egyptians Coptic and Catholics like the feudal papacy monks leadership to our religion. They add by force a contradictory canons to our Orit bibles over centuries and introduced backwards practices like secrecy, corruption, women circumcision etc. First we have to rid-off those contradictory canons that forced on us by genocides religious wars. We have to reinstate all our ancient traditions like Sabbath (Saturday) as the seventh holy day (family day), reinstate our dietary law and male circumcision etc.
We have to reinstate priesthood leadership to our religion and rid-off the secretive, self-cantered, isolated and corrupt monks leadership system of our religion. Our religion leader must be married priests, patriotic (Agaazianists), transparent, accountable and must be democratically elected for 10 year term by the priesthood community.
Let’s train and groom young youth from early childhood for priesthood training and except the ethics and qualifications of the religion we need to train them too as professional as a medical doctor, social worker, teacher, lawyers etc. To attract the best and brightest members of our society to priesthood that the government must make them exempt from national service and must fund their lifehood when they get married at 17 and 18 years old until they graduated and starting earning.
We need to build over 10, 000 new betemekdes/temples that will be place of worshiping God and community centres. Lest set-up religious universities and lets recruit and train over 200,000 new competent and principled priests. Let’s make one priest serve as family priest ኣባት ነብሲ only for 30-40 families to help them whenever they wanted it either in hospital prison or celebration in order to bless them, educate and counsel them in everything that affect them spiritual life.
All government department, publicly owned companies, every level of administrations (village, local, regional and national administrations) should hire priests to teach and council our ethics and values. We will appoint priests in every Army battalion, brigade, division etc who will teach and enforce our ethical values. We need tens of thousands highly educated competent priest teachers in our schools who will teach virtue, ethics, and the meaning and history of forefathers traditions.
25 years EPLF/PFDJ secularism has turned our people purposeful life to meaningless life, our people hope to despair, our stable families to be broken families, our people pride to shame, our people dignity to humiliation, our people virtue to corruption, our peoples patriotism to greed, and our sense of community to individualism.
Our 3000 years religious nationalism and patriotism politics has created a fair, crime and corruption free proud and confident society who manages to sustain its ancient cultural identity against all odds for over 3000 years. We are the only civilization that we never had slavery and feudal exploitations.
The great achievement we had like to have the only alphabets in black people, our social trust, our value system, sustaining the same civilization for 3000 years without fundamental change while much more powerful civilization of our region like Persian and Egyptian disappeared etc is because of our religious nationalism and patriotism.
Secularism is a foreign ideology that never tried as policy in Ge’ez/Tigrigna 3000 years civilization history. Religious patriotic politics are a proven policy in Ge’ez nation’s history. Secularism is wishful thinking base policy. Religious patriotic political policy is historical facts and evidence base policy in the Ge’ez nation’s history.
Religious patriotic political policy is the only way to create society with that has a high standard of virtue, sense of belonging and patriotism because there is no social trust without virtue and patriotism. Religious patriotic political policy is the only way to redeem and revive our broken society and strength our common national identity because over 90% of Eritreans have these ancient Ge’ez Orit heritage even though some of us are now Muslims, Catholics and Protestant.
Our indigenous religious patriotic politics is the only way to create confident generations because it can teach us we have our own common civilization, history, and culture that developed by our own evolution. We can’t create a new proud and confident generation by Geek or Egyptian civilization. We can create new proud and confident generation only by our own ancestors great civilizations. Our ancestors civilizations his Orit religion base. Our Orit religion is based on reason and wisdom. Let’s be our self’s.
Our own indigenous religious patriotic politics policy the only way to modernize our society without losing independence/freedom, our values, culture and tradition, and to create corruption and crime free society. Our own indigenous religious patriotic politics policy the cheapest way to prevent crime, corruption, cultural decaying and family breakdown in our community that setting up expensive social services, prison system and criminal court system. It is proven overwhelmingly that prevention is effective than cure.
Christianity is a dying religion in Middle East and Europe, USA. Christianity is a profitable business and a manipulation tool in Africa that failed to transform African societies. Islam dominated Middle east almost to 100% and it is conquering Europe and USA fast, smoothly and peacefully because of Christianity pacifist canon or doctrine.
It is impossible to believe in Christianity Canon or doctrine and defend your family, community and land from violent jihadist because Christianity is pacifist. Matthew 5:39 said “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If slaps on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheeks also.”
Christianity is a borderless religion. Like communism Christianity destroy national, local identity and dismantle families and communities. Christianity as internationalist and universalist religion it destroying our social trust. Eritrean Tigrigna who convert to Catholicism and Protestantism at the end of 19 century and the beginning 20 century stop intermarrying with any Tigrigna who is not from their new European religion. And they became new Tigrigna tribes who made big damage to our social trust to this day.
Today Eritrean Tigrigna Pentecostals are brainwashed to believe by their pastors and the Christianity bible or New Testament that a redneck Pentecostal or a Nigerian polygamist is a brother more than non Pentecostal Tigrigna to them.
The objectives/doctrine and goals of our religion must be centralized but the decision making process must be decentralized to individual betemkdes ቤቴ መቅደስ/temples. The management committee of every village, urban and Diaspora betemkdes must be elected democratically. These elected betemkdes management committee will have the power to hire, discipline and fire priests and manage betemkdes finance and assets in professional, transparent and accountable manners.
We will have fundamental differences and fundamental similarities with the Jewish.
1, Our differences
A, We will have ancient priesthood system and they have Talmudic rabbinate system.
B, Jerusalem is their Zion and holly city and Akusum and Debre-Bizen is our Zion and holy land.
C, Hebrew is their prayer language while Ge’ez/Tigrigna is our prayer language.
D, They call themselves Jewish-Hebrew and we call ourselves Orit-Ge’ez.
Our commonalities
A, We both believe that Orit/Torah is written by God.
B, We both obey the Orit/Torah laws
C, Abrham, Isack and Jackob are our common forefathers.
C, We both believe in the ancient history and land of Israel.
The chief priests of local administration will be elected by village’s chief priest and by local Baito members (LBM) and the regional administrations chief priest will be elected by regional Baitos members (RBM) and local administration chief priests.
The high priest of our nation should be elected democratically by members of national boito (MB), all regional and local high priests.