Mahay Choramo

Mahay Choramo (1920s – April 13, 2014) was an Ethiopian evangelist who planted dozens of churches in remote areas in Ethiopia in the twentieth century.

Background

The exact date (or even the exact year) and place of Mahay Choramo's birth is not known, beyond that he was born in the

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region of Ethiopia in the mid-1920s. His mother, Paltore Posha, was from Humbo in Welayta. Choramo, her second husband and Mahay's father, was from Kucha

.

Choramo named his son "Mahay Choramo." "Mahay" means "leopard" in the local language. However, like many non-

merciful

." Mahay Choramo had three siblings: a sister, Tera, who died when she was two years old, and two brothers, Meskele (d. 1976) and Feteshey (d. 1979).

Up to this point in time, the only

Emperor Haile Selassie

allowed non-Orthodox missionaries into Ethiopia, on the condition that they would not translate their works into Amharic and would focus only on the non-Amharic-speaking population.

As such, the

Scripture Gift Mission pamphlet entitled God Hath Spoken and the Gospel of John. Unfortunately for the converts, the whole Bible was available only in Amharic

, a language which they associated with absentee landlords and greedy government officials.

Conversion and life as an evangelist

Mahay Choramo heard itinerant evangelists preaching and underwent a

Book of Acts also convinced him that persecution

was the lot of a Christian, a message he took to heart since at this time non-Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia were subject to persecution. On one famous occasion in the early 1940s, when a judge sentenced Mahay Choramo to time in prison, Choramo thanked the judge. When the judge asked why he was thanking him, Mahay Choramo replied "I will be able to pray and meditate better on my own." Mahay Choramo's opposition to the Ethiopian authorities brought him into contact with other Ethiopian Christian dissidents.

Over the next fifty years, Mahay Choramo dedicated his life to

Kale Heywet

Church, to which he would periodically return between missions.

Theology

Mahay Choramo's theology was unique to himself, constructed on the basis of his initial contact with SIM converts, his personal reading of the Bible, and, to a degree, his exposure to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.

The major themes of Mahay Choramo's preaching were the love of God and the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

Dark years

The Derg, which overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974, was hostile to Christianity. Between 1985 and 1990, all of the churches founded by Mahay in Welayta were forced to close, with even preaching at funerals banned. Mahay Choramo encouraged his followers to band together in small groups and to take risks in order to continue their worship and resist the Derg repression.

After the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front took over in 1991, Mahay Choramo was able to move about more freely, but he still faced periodic persecution, and was arrested at one point.

Recent activities

Since 1998, Mahay Choramo had been working with local and expatriate missionaries, and foreigners (notably Malcolm Hunter) in conducting missions in the

Borana people until his death on April 13, 2014.^[1]

External links

References

Wondiye Ali, Awakening at Midnight: the story of the Kale Heywet Church in Ethiopia Vol. 2, 1942-1973 (Amharic), published by the KHC Literature Department, Addis Ababa, 2000.
Johnny Bakke, Christian Ministry Patterns and Functions within the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1987).
E. Paul Balisky, "Wolaitta Evangelists: A Study of Religious Innovation in Southern Ethiopia, 1936-1975", (PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1997).
Aaron Belz, "A Leopard among the Bannas: Mahay Choramo Faced down Hardship and Violent Opposition to Minister to the Murderous Nomads of Ethiopia's Southern Frontier", Christian History (August 2003)
Albert E. Brant, In the Wake of Martyrs (Langley, B.C.: Omega Publications, 1992).
Edith Buxton, Reluctant Missionary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968).
Mahari Choramo, Ethiopian Evangelist: Autobiography of Evangelist Mahari Choramo, annotated by Brian L. Fargher, (Edmonton: Enterprise Publications, 1997).
F. Peter Cotterell, Born at Midnight (Chicago: Moody Press, 1973).
F. Peter Cotterell, Cry Ethiopia (Eastbourne: MARCO, 1988).
Raymond Davis, Fire on the Mountain (New York/Toronto: SIM, 1966).
Raymond Davis, Winds of God (Canada: SIM International Publications, 1984).
Clarence W. Duff, Cords of Love. A Pioneer Mission in Ethiopia (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1980).
Brian L. Fargher, The New Churches Movement in Ethiopia 1928-1944 (E.J. Brill, 1998).
Brian L. Fargher, "The Origins of the New Churches Movement in the Hammer Bako Area 1954- 1961", unpublished MS by Brian Fargher with Donald and Christine Gray (March 1996).
W. Harold Fuller, Run While the Sun is Hot (Chicago: Moody, 1967).
Norman Grubb, Alfred Buxton of Abyssinia & Congo (London & Redhill: Lutterworth Press, 1942).
Lucy Winifred Horn, Hearth and Home in Ethiopia (London: SIM, 1960).
Thomas A. Lambie, A Doctor without a Country (London: Fleming & Revell Company, 1939).
Guy W. Playfair, Trials and Triumphs in Ethiopia (Toronto, Canada: SIM, undated, ca. 1943).
A. G. H. Quinton, Ethiopia and the Evangel (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1949).
Ed & Edna Ratzliff, Letters from the Uttermost Parts of the Earth (Privately published, 1987).
Alfred G. Roke, An Indigenous Church in Action (Auckland, N.Z.: Sudan Interior Mission, 1938).
J. Spencer Trimingham, The Christian Church and Missions in Ethiopia (World Dominion Press, 1950).

Specific

^ "Choramo, Mahay (A)". Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved 18 August 2019.

[1] "Choramo, Mahay (A)". Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved 18 August 2019.

[1]