There are two major religion in Tigrai. Christianity - Many people think of Christianity in Africa as a European import that arrived with colonialism, but this is not the case with the Tigray-Tigrinya (or with the Amhara people). The ancient empire of Axum centered in north Tigray and the central highlands of Eritrea had intimate connections with the Mediterranean world in which Christianity grew. Christianity arrived in the Eritrean and Tigrayan area in the fourth century, growing dynamically in the pre-existing Jewish/Animistic mixed environment. The Tigrayan-Tigrinyas thus converted to Christianity centuries before most of Europe, thereby establishing one of the oldest state churches in the world.

Many Tigrayan-Tigrinya churches were cut out of solid cliffs or from single blocks of stone, just as they were in Petra and as well in Turkey and in parts of Greece. More common, churches and monasteries were built high up in the mountains on flat tops known as ambas.

Religion is a central feature of the communities and of each family's daily life. Each community has its own church and a designated patron saint.

Islam - Early in the history of Islam the Prophet Mohammed's companions found sanctuary in the Kingdom of Aksum. When some of the Prophet's companions returned to the Arabian Pennisula some of these refugees remained while some Aksumites converted to Islam. These people were called, Jeberti (the elect of God). One of their oldest settlements is said to be Negash, in the Tigray Region. Most Tigrinya speaking muslims or Jeberti are today Eritreans. Although many of these claim descent from the neighbouring province of Tigray in the former Kingdom of Ethiopia. In the late 19th century, during the reign of Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia, who was a devoutely christian Tigrayan, muslim Tigrayans were forcibly expulsed from their homes and found refuge in the nearby northern areas in what is now Eritrea out of reach of royal Ethiopian authority. Although they continued to live as a minority among a christian majority of landowning peasants and were denied rights to own land on account of their religion, they were allowed to settle in the market towns and engage in trades which the deeply religious and superstitious landowning christian peasantry either considered taboo or frowned upon, deeming farming the only honorable form of sustenance. The Jeberti thus excelled as Eritrea's earliest mercantile bourgeousie and skilled artisans, engaging in trades such as metalwork, goldsmiths, taylors, pottery as well as shopkeepers.