Abstract

This study examines Ethiopianism as an Afro-Atlantic literary-religious tradition that challenged European colonial denials of African historicity by constructing counterhegemonic narratives of divine election and civilizational precedence. Drawing on qualitative historical document analysis, the research analyzes primary texts from 1767 to the present including sermons, political writings, and institutional records to investigate how Psalm 68:31 functioned as the hermeneutical anchor for Black theological self-affirmation across Afro-America, Southern Africa, and the diaspora. Theoretically grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic capital, Erving Goffman’s spoiled identity, and Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic framework, the study operationalizes three analytical dimensions: discursive identity construction, institutional routinization, and transnational circulation. Findings reveal that Ethiopianism emerged not as rejection of Christianity but as reclamation of its prophetic core against colonial distortion, generating what Anthony Giddens terms ontological security for marginalized populations. However, the movement’s reliance on imperial symbolism and biblical narrative created unresolved tensions between liberatory promise and exclusionary potential, particularly evident in contemporary Ethiopia’s ethnopolitical fragmentation. This research contributes methodological innovation to qualitative religious studies by demonstrating how systematic document analysis, combined with critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, can illuminate the generative tensions between liberation theology and identity politics in postcolonial contexts.

Keywords

ethiopianism, symbolic capital, spoiled identity, decolonial religion, PanAfricanism