Does having the name ‘Antioch’ in church name indicate anything significant about that church?
Assuming that the church is not located in a town named Antioch, I would suspect that its name is a reference to the “Church of Antioch,” one of the major churches in the early years of Christianity, in the Greek city of that name – it is said that the term “Christian” originated there, and it was a church where Christianity first began to spread to Gentiles. It might also be reference to various doctrinal councils/synods of the early Christian church, which were held in that city in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE.
I’m not sure that using that name for a modern-day church says anything significant about that church, other than the reference to the history of early Christianity.
Fairly sure that most, if not all, of the US places named Antioch took their name from the local church, rather than the other way around.
Possibly, or it may simply be that settlers or early residents wanted to use a name from the Bible (see: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jordan, etc.)
For example, regarding Antioch, California, as per Wikipedia:
I just did a quick run through of the places named Antioch on the Wikipedia disambiguation page. Most of the places are small unincorporated comunities and don’t have an etymology. Of those that do, those named after the local church outnumbered those named directly from the Bible by a count of 5 to 3.
Either way, it very likely comes down to the town, or the church, being named for the city that was a key location for the early Christian church – that’s the significance (to the extent that there is one), as per your question in your first post.
Just on a quick word search it seems that most of the local churches who use Antioch in their formal names are associated with Eastern rites and flavours of Orthodoxy. It may be different in OP Land, but here, with a lot of historical migration from the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and the Middle East, they would look to the eastern centres of Christianity rather than to say Rome and its an easy way of flagging that they re not Catholic or Anglican.
There’s also an Antioch Presbyterian [Korean] church, which seems to be covering a lot of other bases.
And Antioch is, of course, from whence the Holy Hand Grenade came.
Upon further review, I stand slightly corrected.
When googling “significance of Antioch name for a church,” I discovered that there is a group called the “Antioch International Movement of Churches,” a small, non-denominational network of Evangelical Christian churches. Many (but not all) of their churches are specifically named “Antioch.”
I noticed that movement too, but then found that it’s fairly recent, dating to the 1970s, IIRC. Based on the places named for Antioch churches, they’ve been around for a long time. And this being the US, they aren’t Eastern Orthodox. Many of them are Baptist.
Just to note that there are quite a lot of Eastern Orthodox churches in the U.S., though there may not be many in your area.
This Wikipedia article indicates that there are between 3 million and 6 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in North America — definitely a small minority, but they’re out there.
I have no idea how many are in this area. But considering the places named after their church, the vast majority of towns in the US were named between 1790 and 1910. There were very few Eastern Rite churches in the US in that period, and I expect the few the existed were in large cities, not small towns.
At any rate, churches named “Antioch Baptist Church” (sometimes with the word Missionary stuck in there) seem to be common and many are older than that Antioch movement. Ditto for Antioch Methodist Church. Haven’t check any other denomination.
So, is your question, “why is ‘Antioch’ a common name for a Protestant church?”
I suppose it’s a matter of “they have to name it something.” Many Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are named after saints; most Protestant denominations don’t venerate specific saints in the way that those older denominations do (with the exception of, in some cases, the original disciples/apostles, such as “Saints Peter and Paul”), and so, you don’t see a “St. Barbara Baptist Church.”
Protestant denominations which trace their founding back to specific individuals sometimes use their names, so you have Methodist churches named “Wesley” or “Wesleyan,” and Lutheran churches named “Luther” (my church in college was an ELCA Lutheran church, named “Luther Memorial Church”).
Beyond that, a lot of Protestant churches either take their name from the town where they are located; others take their names from a religious term (e.g., “Faith,” “Ascension,” “Grace,” etc.), or after a term for Jesus (e.g., “Christ the King,” “Immanuel,” “Lamb of God,” etc.)
And, some take their names from cities or locations named in the Bible (e.g., Nazareth, Mount Hebron, Jerusalem, Galilee, and, yes, Antioch). I can’t find anything to indicate that “Antioch” is particularly special for a name for a Protestant church, or particularly symbolic of something about that specific church, other than, as already mentioned, it’s an important city in church history.
For what it’s worth, when I google each of the above place names, along with “Baptist,” I find a bunch of churches in this area (Chicago) and nearly all of them also have “Missionary” or “Evangelical” in their names, too, which, I think, says something more about Baptists, than it does about “Antioch.”
I think there are also a few saints from or otherwise associated with Antioch, so you might have a church named after “St. So-and-So of Antioch”.
Such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, though again, any churches named specifically after a saint like him are far more likely to be Catholic or Orthodox than Baptist.
Under the radar and staying there!
The Antiochian Orthodox Church in the u s tends to be less insolationist than the others. Most churches are on the coasts (Greek shipping in the east coast and gulf coast, Russian trading west coast and Alaska.) the big surge was before and after world war 1.
D’oh, I knew there was one I ought to be remembering. The local St. Ignatius of Antioch isn’t far from here, and their bell tower is visible from most of the West Side. And yes, Catholic, but the OP doesn’t specify denomination.
They also have a school, which can be confusing because there’s also a high school named after St. Ignatius (of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits).
Looking at vintage aerial photos that have been identified on https://vintageaerial.com/ it looks like most of them are Baptist and the other are independents like Church of Christ. Plenty of roads and towns and at least one motel.
And (presumably) also the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large chulapas
I just saw a replica of The HHoA in a comic book store over the weekend
A small piece of recent trivia: Ken Starr’s funeral services will be held at Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas this coming Saturday.