The Impact of Christianity on the Cultural Identity of the Oromo (Horro Guduru Oromo in focus)

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of Christianity on the cultural identity of the Oromo since its introduction to Oromia (the Oromo land). The paper begins with the brief summing up of the Oromo history and some of the peculiar cultural practices that differentiate them from other nations and nationalities in Ethiopian and the horn. An attempt thereafter has been made to analyze the cultural, social and religious impacts of Christianity (Orthodox and protestant) on the indigenous Oromo in general and Horro Guduru Oromo in focus. The paper ends with a short note on the economic interference of the Orthodox Church by holding the peasant's land which in turn reduced the status of the local peasants in to tenancy, and the systematic approaches that the protestant missionaries used to extend the their new religion at the expense of the indigenous Oromo religion.