From the Social Contract to the Gospel Covenant: Eschatology and the Rebirth of Prophetic Politics in Ethiopia

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary Ethiopia is witnessing a fundamental transformation of its political foundation, moving from a secular social contract toward a sacralized Gospel covenant. It critiques the emergence of an “eschatological statecraft” under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, wherein the regime strategically mobilizes Pentecostal-Charismatic theological concepts - particularly prophetic destiny and redemptive suffering - as a core technology of governance. Employing a qualitative research design grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study systematically examines a corpus of 47 political speeches, policy documents, media broadcasts, and visual propaganda materials from 2018 to 2024. The analysis reveals how the regime constructs a narrative framing the Prime Minister as a divinely chosen leader told by his mother at his age of seven, his rule a preordained chapter in a national divine plan. Within this paradigm, crises such as war, economic collapse, and social fragmentation are narrated not as governance failures but as divinely permitted trials necessary for national purification. Concurrently, the state’s developmental rhetoric employs a potent eschatology of suffering, urging the present generation to embrace sacrifice as a civic duty for a future prosperity that only their children will witness. Drawing on political theology and postcolonial theory, this paper analyzes how this discursive fusion constructs a moralized political order that sanctifies authority while systematically depoliticizing accountability.