Depenia administrativament de l’església copta fins que el 1959 se’n va independitzar.
Al concili de Calcedònia es separà amb la copta seguitn el miofisitisme.
El 333 va ser declarada religió d’estat. Actualment té 45-50 milions de fidels (dels 76 de l’esgésia ortodoxa oriental).
Oriental Orthodox Christianity became the established church of the Ethiopian Axumite Kingdom under king Ezana in the 4th century when priesthood and the sacraments were brought for the first time through a Syrian Greek named Frumentius, known by the local population in Ethiopia as “Abba Selama, Kesaté Birhan” (“Father of Peace, Revealer of Light”). As a youth, Frumentius had been shipwrecked with his brother Aedesius on the Eritrean coast. The brothers managed to be brought to the royal court, where they rose to positions of influence and baptized Emperor Ezana.
Ezana sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the Patriarch, St. Athanasius, to appoint a bishop for Ethiopia. Athanasius appointed Frumentius, who returned to Ethiopia as Bishop with the name of “Abune Selama”. From then on, until 1959, the Pope of Alexandria, as Patriarch of All Africa, always named an Egyptian (a Copt) to be Abuna or Archbishop of the Ethiopian Church.