Caught in the Storm of Progress: Timoteos Saprichian, Ethiopia, and the Modernity of Christianity

Abstract

This article examines how European concepts of progress and race transformed relations between non-European Christians in the nineteenth century. The travel narrative of Timoteos Saprichian, an Armenian visitor to Ethiopia from the Ottoman Empire, suggests that some Orthodox Christians set themselves apart from their African coreligionists by using new ideas about the hierarchy of human communities to reorder the Christian ecumene. The article concludes by using Walter Benjamin’s model of progress to understand changes in religious identity during the imperial age.