Background of the study sites

Ethiopia has been chosen as an appropriate study site due to its long history of robust religious pluralism and peaceful co-existence as it can be rarely found in another country context and if so rather in regional dimensions than nation-wide. Numerous studies label the country as a model of religious tolerance (Braukämper 2004, Zeleke, 2012). According to Levine (1974), Ethiopia’s religious traditions have at least two distinguishing features: First, the country received three world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – at a very early point in history; and second, these religions grew side by side, intertwined in many ways, and co-existing in a very tolerant

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atmosphere over wide periods. These characteristics compose a quite unique point of departure for research on social dimensions of religion, because religion does not have the immigration – and, thus, often outsider – connotation, like in many other country contexts where adherents of other than the predominant religious group settled in the country only at a later point in time.

While the eastern regions of Ethiopia (including Somali and Afar) are characterized by a predominantly Muslim population, the north-western and western regions are mostly inhabited by Orthodox Christians. Oromiya, the largest region in Ethiopia surrounding the capital of Addis Ababa, is rather balanced concerning the distribution of religious affiliations. The Ethiopian constitution guarantees the separation of church and state as well as freedom of religion since 1975. Secularity is also deeply rooted in people’s opinions as 85% of Ethiopians state that government and religion should be separate (PEW Forum, 2010).

The experiments were all carried out with adherents to the Orthodox Christian belief. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo is the largest oriental Orthodox Church community worldwide and constitutes a rare exception of Christian churches in Sub-Saharan Africa due to its pre-colonial origin. Home to 13.9% of all orthodox Christians globally, Ethiopia ranks second after Russia (39%) in this respect. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church is characterized by highly ritualized religious services according to a strict calendar of fasting days (200 per year) and religious holidays, rigid protocols and liturgy for religious services (Chaillot, 2002; Yesehaq, 1997).

Within Ethiopia, we chose the capital city Addis Ababa and Jimma, situated south west of Addis Ababa, as suitable study sites. Addis Ababa is a predominantly peaceful scenery featuring co-existence of Orthodox Christianity (64.7%), Islam (28.2%), and the two largest minority religious groups of Protestantism and Catholicism. Inter-religiously motivated unrest and conflict between Orthodox Christians and Muslims has remained almost entirely absent in Addis Ababa throughout history and recent years.

The second study site Jimma experienced severe unrests between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in March 2011 after rumor spread that a Christian person destroyed a Qur’an and used it as toilet paper. The reports of the unrests and conflicts vary across sources but convey the picture that thousands of Orthodox Christian living around Jimma left their homes after more than 50 churches and houses had been destroyed in the region. According to media estimations about 15,000 Muslims participated in the riots. An important side effect of this event is that local

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authorities did not intervene and legislative action was taken by the Ethiopian national government (Heinlein, 2011; Addis Standard, 2011). As part of the post-experimental survey we asked for several indicators of a high potential for conflict (see part 3 of this Appendix). The results reveal that religious tensions are the only significant difference between Addis Ababa and Jimma, even though they are reported as only applying slightly. This points either to a successful appeasement of the potential for conflict induced by religious factors since the described incident or towards a general aversion to raise the issue of religious conflicts. To further explore the role of religion we posed a set of questions regarding the contact with other religions in daily life (see Table A1). The difference between answers in Addis Ababa and Jimma are highly significant at the 1% level for all questions asked. The perception of the prevalence of religious tensions in Jimma is significantly higher compared to Addis Ababa.. However, despite the conflicts and religious tensions, we found that in Jimma contact to people adherent to other religions is significantly higher than in Addis Ababa, and so is the related opinion that it is possible to be good friends with people from other religions. Furthermore, participants in Jimma are more likely to promote a multi-religious society compared to participants in Addis Ababa.

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Table A1: Contact to and opinion about other religions in daily life

Addis Ababa Jimma

Before After Before After

(1) How often do you have contact with people from other religions or non-believers in your daily private and working life?

3.85 3.71 4.46** 4.35**

(2) People from different religions can be good friends

3.34 3.63 4.23** 4.05**

(3) Religious tensions 1.61 1.72 2.04** 2.08**

(4) I think it is good for a society if it is multi-religious

3.29 3.48 4.05** 4.07**

Coding for question (1): 1. Never, 2. Seldom, 3. A few times a year, 4. Once or twice a month, 5. Once a week, 6.

More than once a week

Coding for questions (2) and (4): 1. Strongly disagree, 2. Disagree, 3.Neutral, 4. Agree, 5. Strongly agree

Coding for question (3):. 1. Doesn‘t apply at all, 2. Applies slightly, 3. Applies moderately, 4. Applies mostly, 5.

Applies completely

** denotes statistically significant differences at the 1% level between the Before and After church samples, Mann-Whitney rank-sum tests

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Table A2: Attendance frequency of religious services

Freq. Percent Cum.

Every day 52 14,81 14.81

More than three times

a week 20 5,7 20.51

More than once a

week 40 11,4 31.91

Once a week 67 19,09 51.00

Once or twice a

month 85 24,22 75.21

A few times a year 87 24,79 100.00

Total 351 100

Table A3: Number of Observations per Church

Number of obs before Number of obs after

Jimma Church 1 17 21

Jimma Church 2 18 22

Jimma Church 3 14 17

Jimma Church 4 19 21

Jimma Church 5 8 22

Addis Church 1 20 21

Addis Church 2 15 20

Addis Church 3 30 23

Addis Church 4 16 26

Addis Church 5 6 15

TOTAL 163 208

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