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History and ministry
The Bible Academy was located in Adama (then named Nazareth).
The Academy was founded as a boarding school by Mennonite missionaries in 1959. Its first principal was Chester Wenger. He was replaced by Shamsudin Abdo in 1966. The Revolutionist government closed the Bible Academy in 1982. The new Meserete Kristos Seminary and College was established in Bishoftu [formerly known as Debre Zeyt].
Excerpts from Hege, Beyond Prayer:
p. 152: “The new fervor [of Semay Birhan in the 1960s] helped to revitalize the interdenominational Ethiopian University Christian Students Fellowship (EUSCF), started by missions in the 1950s. […] EUCSF students also formed choirs and went to various regions of the country to give testimonies, drama, and singing programs. They often sang in four parts. The Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) Church provided vehicles to transport groups when they went to witness in rural areas.”
p. 153: “By 1966, the fervov at the Semay Birhan chapel in Nazareth was great, and the sounds coming from the rented chapel building were loud. MKC [Meserete Kristos Church] members began to wonder what would happen to this movement unless someone gave mature leadership. The elders of the MKC congregation on the hospital grounds met with the Semay Birhan leaders. They agreed jointly to appoint Gebreselassie Habtamu, who lived near the chapel, to participate occasionally in the students’ meetings.”
p. 155: “An incident in 1966 helped push Semay Birhan closer to MKC. The Semay Birhan group had rented a cinema hall in Nazareth to hold its second spiritual life conference. […] The police broke up their meeting because the local Orthodox Church asked them to do so. […] To finish the conference, the group asked MKC leaders for permission to meet in the hospital chapel. The Nazareth elders granted them permission. After that, Semay Birhan conferences were held at the hospital, and MKC welcomed them. Such cooperative ventures helped allay suspicion and opened the way for Semay Birhan people to eventually join MKC.”
p. 156: “Students leaving the Atse Gelawdeos High School in Nazareth carried the new fervor to the higher educational institutions and colleges in other parts of the country.”
p. 159: “Dagne Assefa, who had been a leader in Semay Birhan chapel at Nazareth, moved to Addis Ababa in 1973 as a fulltime evangelist in the Bole (now Kebene) congregation. Dagne’s coming to Bole became a turning point in the worship life of the congregation. He opened the way for a charismatic type of worship. Many with a Pentecostal experience found it easy to join the worship program. A group from Tsion (Zion) Pentecostal church started to worship at Bole because their small church was closed. Their choir was welcomed to sing regularly during Sunday worship. [….] People carried notebooks to church to copy the words of songs they were hearing for the first time. Those with tape recorders sat on the front benches and held out microphones to record songs the choirs sang.”
p. 166: “The uncertainties on the horizon [raised by the Ethiopian Revolution] caused evangelical Christians to pull together. In September 1976, about a thousand people-church leaders, pastors, evangelists-from a dozen denominations met at the Bible Academy in Nazareth.”
p. 175: “Alemu Checole remembers 1977 and 1978 as the most stressful and difficult years. The authorities would arrest the young people under 30. […] So girls in their late teens or 20s would wear their mothers’ long dresses and give the impression they were 30 or 40. Because the youth choir had to disband, a new one formed that included people above 30 as well as youths who dressed as older people. Some of the church leaders put on choir gowns and participated. Up to that time, choirs were always composed only of young people.
[Fn. 2: Alemu Checole, interview, Nazareth, Apr. 2, 1996]”
p. 176: “However, even during this dreadful time, MKC invited church leaders from all over the country to attend seminars at the Bible Academy. There MKC resource persons taught church leaders the basic beliefs about Marxism and Christianity […] Also during the school vacation each year, large interdenominational conferences were held on the Bible Academy campus.”
p. 190: “Women became active during the underground. In fact, more women than men were leading cell groups. They taught Sunday school and served as elders. The government usually paid little attention to women. In a patriarchal society, officials considered a woman’s influence to be insignificant.”
Choir
Person who might have been a member of the choir:
- Alemu Chekole
(a former student at Merha Ewourran School for the Blind;
later teacher at the Bible Academy)
Q: Did some of the Bible Academy students also sing in the Nazareth Meserete Kristos Choir?
Songs in hymn books
The Bible Academic Choir was one of the four choirs known by name whose songs were included in the hymn book Kelïb inïzemïr.
Picture
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Further reading
Unpublished
Shetler, Jan Bender. “The Nazareth Bible Academy in Retrospect.” Unpublished manuscript, private collection, 1984. [Ref. by Haustein]
Secondary Literature
Hege, Nathan B. Beyond Our Prayers: Anabaptist Church Growth in Ethiopia, 1948-1998. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1998. [On the Bible Academy, see esp. p. 78-84, 166-69, 172, 176, 189]