White Fields

M. Rowton

May 8th, 2026

Author’s note: 

Ethiopia’s Pentay are among the largest evangelical communities in the world, having grown from about 5% of the population in the 1980s to roughly a quarter today. In the years following the 2015–2018 protest movement and the civil war that began in 2020, they have become increasingly visible in public life. This is the first of three pieces based on conversations with members of my wife’s evangelical family. The settings of some conversations have been adjusted for narrative continuity.

Part 1: Hannaa

“There seem to be periods of special urgency in history when it can be said with peculiar relevance, ‘The fields are white unto harvest’. I believe that we are now in such a period of history […] We stand at the heart of a world revolution.” Rev. Billy Graham, 1982

It’s a hot day; a bright sun hangs in a clear sky.

Far below, I’m being driven through the chaotic Addis Ababa traffic in a little, beaten-up taxi. The side windows are open, allowing the grainy sound of the Muslim preacher coming through the radio to mingle with the smell of petrol fumes and powdered concrete.

‘The city must have changed a lot,’ I say, turning to the young woman next to me.

‘It has,’ she replies, putting down her phone and straightening out a fold in her long summer dress, ‘you wouldn’t recognise it from a few years ago.’

Driving through Addis, I find that entire neighbourhoods have been ripped out of the ground, and in their place glossy office towers and shopping malls are springing up.

In some areas, this process is close to completion, but many linger in a partially demolished state that makes them appear like they are part of a warzone.

This is not too far from the truth.

I remember being told four years ago, as the Tigrayan military — the leading power in the old government — marched south, that Addis would fall and the new government with it.

Today the new government is still standing, and I read reports that, in Tigray region, hundreds of thousands are dead.

In Addis, uniformed men with guns stand on street corners, and armoured vehicles guard the entrances to major attractions.

“They’re all the same,” my companion told me earlier in the day, “the old government, the new government. Gangsters.”

Her name is Hannaa. She’s my wife’s cousin, and today she’s offered to show me around the city.

Like my wife, Hannaa was raised as part of one of the largest evangelical movements in the world, colloquially known as ‘Pentay’.

For most of their history evangelicals were a marginal force in Ethiopia, expanding quietly under the shadow of state suppression. But they are not in the shadows anymore, and Ethiopians everywhere know it.

Asking an Orthodox friend for his opinion on the movement, I was told only that: “There are too many of them now.”

From the perspective of Ethiopia’s ancient Orthodox Church, he does not seem wrong. Travelling around the city today, I’ve already seen several large buildings adorned with the Protestant cross, and Hannaa tells me there is due to be a massive evangelical festival in the central square a few days from now, with Ethiopian gospel singers, preachers, and an American speaker as its headliner.

As we turn a corner, she points to a bright blue billboard featuring a cast of Ethiopian preachers and Pentay influencers. Behind them, an older white man wearing a smart charcoal suit looms.

“That’s it, the event,” she says, “it’s called Encountering God.”

“Oh,” I say, only half listening to her, because I’m grappling with the limits of my remedial Amharic, trying to read the name of the headliner.

F-RA-N-K-L-I-N

G-RA-H-A-M.

I feel like I’ve heard the name before.

As I struggle with my memory, the taxi slows to a halt, pulling up in front of a building resembling something between a sports centre and a warehouse.

This is Hannaa’s church, added to our itinerary on my request. I have an ambition to get to know the Pentay a little better while I’m here, out of interest, but also as a way of getting to know my wife better.

These days, though still a self-described evangelical, she is fairly distant from the movement, but I know how much more central it was to her back in Ethiopia.

Handing the driver what is probably too many crumpled paper notes, I follow Hannaa towards the entrance to the church. It’s quieter than I expected, and the building looks almost empty.

“There won’t be any services until later in the day,” she explains.

“Can we still take a look inside?” I ask.

It turns out that this is not a difficult proposition. After a brief but apparently friendly conversation with a man sat outside the front door, we are let into the empty main hall.

I’m a little taken aback by the scene in front of me. Hundreds of blue plastic seats, arranged along raised galleries that run along the walls.

At the centre, a film screen is suspended above a wooden stage, flanked on one side by a wooden cross, and on the other by the painted image of an open bible with a dove flying out from between its pages.

I’ve always been aware of the existence of this kind of church, but actually being inside one is oddly exciting; like stepping onto a spaceship.

Hannaa tells me that she and her ‘Fellowship’ come here several times a week to worship, and sometimes to act as back-up singers for the gospel choir.

I’m curious as to what a Fellowship is, and am told that it’s a group of Pentay students that get together to do various religious activities.

“Does the church organise it?”

“No, we organise it ourselves,” Hannaa says. “We’re in different teams and each one focuses on different activities. We have a big meeting once a month between all the teams and we tell each other what we’ve been doing.”

She tells me she is on what she calls the ‘Action’ team. They go out into the city several times a week to minister to Addis’s poor, helping out at local orphanages and providing some basic education to the children in the poor neighbourhoods that the government hasn’t yet managed to demolish.

“I like doing it,” she says, “but I like the monthly meetings the most—we get to share bible verses we’ve read that month and talk about preachings we’ve heard.”

“We talk about the future of the country too,” she adds. “We’re always out in the city, helping people and preaching to them, so we see what’s going on.”

Seeing that she’s caught up in the flow of her own thoughts, I stand quietly and listen, expecting her to tell me about the obvious poverty I’ve seen, swept off into the margins of the expanding city.

Instead, she begins to talk about something else.

“The problem is there’s no freedom in the country. The government wants to stop people speaking, and they try to get their hands on everything.”

She pauses for a second before adding, “The old church is a problem too. They teach people to follow the law, and not the gospel.”

I’m reluctant to interrupt, but this last part confuses me.

“Why is that a problem?”

Hannaa looks at me like I’ve just said something stupid.

“Because to be free you need to be able to decide, and to decide you need to know the gospel. The Orthodox don’t know the gospel. The Muslims are the same. All they’ve ever been taught is to follow the law.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “It makes them lazy.”

I’m surprised to hear Hannaa call the majority of Ethiopians lazy and ask what she means by it.

“I mean that the country needs free people. People who want to work.”

I’m aware that Hannaa’s experience must have taught her the value of both freedom and hard work.

She’s from the poorer part of my wife’s extended family, but has made it to what must be the best, or at least most prestigious, university in the country.

I decide I’d like to know more about how she sees her future, and ask her about her studies.

“I heard you’re studying engineering. That seems like a smart choice, lots of construction going on at the moment.”

She shrugs. “I thought so, but they don’t hire Ethiopians for any good jobs, just the Chinese and the Arabs.”

I haven’t seen any Arabs since I arrived in the city, but I have noticed a few Chinese families with children. Like me, they stand out in a city with almost no foreign tourism.

Hannaa tells me that most of the new roads in the city, and across the country, are being built by the Chinese.

“Most of the new buildings too,” she adds, “all Chinese.”

I ask what the prospects are for young Ethiopians more generally, and she tells me that there are none.

Like a lot of young people in my wife’s family, Hannaa has ambitions to leave the country—she tells me she’s applying for scholarships so that she can study in America.

I know of others who’ve taken a more informal route, flying to South America and attempting to cross the border.

Given that she wants to go there, I’m curious to know what Hannaa thinks about America.

“I’d be very excited to go, it’s a place where you can do well for yourself,” she tells me.

“But I’m less excited than I used to be.”

I ask her why, and she says she thinks America might be “going down the wrong road.”

“I used to think it was a Christian nation, but now I’m not sure.”

This ambivalence comes as a surprise, so I probe a little. In response, she asks if she can show me a video from an influencer she likes.

“They’ll explain it better than I can.”

Taking out her phone, she finds the video on Instagram and then passes it over to me.

When I look at it, I find myself unable to contain my surprise, because what she’s showing me is a Candace Owens video.

“Do you know her?” she asks, picking up on my reaction.

I admit that I do. 

“I’m surprised that Ethiopians know who she is, though. Didn’t she become a Catholic or something?”

She shrugs. “The American church is failing.”

She gives me a serious look before adding, “they need renewal.”

Renewal.

I’ve often heard the Pentay project described this way; restoring Ethiopian Christianity to its original form.

Talking with Hannaa, though, I find myself feeling that the Pentay look less like the return of something old, and more like the arrival of something new.

As we leave the church, she stops to pick up a flyer from the front desk, and hands it to me.

“This is for the festival, take a look.”

I do and see a picture of the same American man from the billboard.

Franklin Graham. Finally, something clicks.

I remember reading about Billy Graham’s visit to Addis in the 1960s, where he attracted something like ten thousand believers to hear him speak.

Sixty years later Franklin Graham, who must be his son, is back in the city.

I ask Hannaa how many people she thinks will attend, and she tells me she doesn’t know, but that it will be big.

“Maybe hundreds of thousands.”

Folding the flyer away into my backpack, we head out. I hail another, slightly less dented taxi, and we begin to make our way back across town.

As we pass through the centre of the old city, now a shabby cast-off overshadowed by the nearby high-rises, I notice a concrete monument adorned with a faded red star.

“What’s that?” I ask, turning to Hannaa.

She looks at it for a moment and then shrugs.

“That? I don’t know.”

The car turns, and we head towards the outskirts of the city, where my parents-in-law, the first members of the family to convert to evangelical Christianity, are waiting to host us for lunch.