The single most common church name is “First Baptist Church,” followed by “St. John,” and “St. Paul.”
But there are a lot of First Baptist churches because there are a lot of Baptist churches, period. When it comes to percentage of Firsts, Baptists are positively modest compared to Presbyterians.
It seems to me that the terms “high church” and (especially) “low church” are not very relevant outside Anglicanism.
I grew up in Texarkana, in the largest Baptist church on the Arkansas side of town, Beech Street Baptist Church (Mike Huckabee was pastor for a few years in the 1980s). First Baptist [of Texarkana] was on the Texas side. In the 1970s, Beech Street church leaders decided to rename it Beech Street First Baptist. Their reasoning was that a Baptist newcomer to town, seeking a church that was likely to have good preaching/music/fellowship, would indeed start by visiting the “First Baptist” church.
Indeed, when I went off to college, that’s how I chose to (most frequently) attend services at the First Baptist Church of that city.
My community has the First Presbyterian Church and the Second Presbyterian Church practically across the street from each other. I had assumed until now that they were from separate denominations, but they’re both Presbyterian Church (USA). According to #2’s website, it split from #1 in 1836 because its minister told a grieving mother that her child had been eternally damned as it had not yet been baptized. I guess they’re still mad.
I’m 99.9% sure that there’s no “First Catholic” church that’s Roman Catholic. In 50+ years that include living in 5 majority Catholic countries and doing a number of volunteer gigs that involve getting in touch with Catholic churches, I’ve never heard of one.
Church naming tends to follow tradition, and the oldest churches in Rome are named for saints–St. Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore.
Missed the edit window to add, I just looked at the list of churches in the Catholic Archdioceses of New York and Los Angeles, the 2 biggest dioceses, and there’s no church there called anything that’s not a saint’s name or an event in the life of Jesus (like Epiphany) or a concept (like Holy Trinity).
Similarly in the UK, and IME most of the European countries I have visited. The only numbering I’m aware of in the UK are the Christian Scientists (presumably for the reason mentioned upthread). Churches in the various nonconformist/dissenting traditions (i.e., not CofE or Roman Catholic or Church of Scotland) don’t usually hold with special veneration for saints and such and will just call themselves Anytown Methodist. But some independent congregations, and particularly newer, often Pentecostalist or largely African, ones, may have all sorts of names. I know of one called the Possibility Assembly.
“The First Catholic Church of Anytown” would in fact be a violation of the Official Rules for Picking the Name of A Church. From an official website of the Catholic Church in England and Wales you can obtain a PDF file of the Rite of Dedication of a Church and an Altar; according to “Chapter Two (Dedication of a Church)”, “II. Titular of a Church and the Relics of the Saints to be Placed in it”
But Baptists, of course, are a lot more loosey-goosey about these things. I doubt the Southern Baptist Convention (for example) even has Official Rules for Picking the Name of A Church, and the SBC is far from the only group of “Baptists” out there. If you play around with the official church-finder of the Southern Baptist Convention–or just Google–you get everything from “First Baptist Church of [Name of Town]” and “[Street Name] Baptist Church”; to more abstract names like “Faith Baptist Church” or “Fellowship Baptist Church”; or “[Ethnic or National Group] Baptist Church”; or even [Ethnic or National Group] Fellowship Baptist Church". You can also find names like “St. Paul Baptist Church” which sound just like a Catholic Church (well, except for the “Baptist” part). These days, some of them don’t even have the word “Baptist” in there–something like “Soul Harvest Community Church” may actually be a Baptist church (Southern Baptist Convention) instead of a “non-denominational” evangelical church like you might think.
Yeah, gkster, I was just hedging my bets because I don’t know the name of every Catholic church everywhere in the world.
EDIT: And I didn’t know that the Church had official rules for names, but I’m not in the least surprised.
43 “First” Church names on the list, representing 15,563 total churches.
4 “Second” Church names on the list, representing 482 total churches.
1 “Third” Church name, representing 26 total churches.
Thanks, Bear_Nenno.
Calling oneself “first” confers an advantage vs any rivals. For banks it was important, but with Churches it might also have been. You are the oldest and most conservative venue in the area.
There used to be a church just off the 5 between Mount Vernon and Seedro Wooley that called itself the “Fifth Baptist Church, Reformed.” My first thought was “You people can’t get along with anybody.”
You should read up on the dissensions and splits in the Church of Scotland
There’s an old joke about a Scottish shipwreck survivor picked up from a desert island. He prould shows his rescuers round the huts he’s built for himself, his bedroom, kitchen and so on and even his own wee kirk.
“And what’s that one over there?”
“Aye well, that’s the kirk I don’t go to”
You should read up on the dissensions and splits in the Church of Scotland
There’s an old joke about a Scottish shipwreck survivor picked up from a desert island. He proudly shows his rescuers round the huts he’s built for himself, his bedroom, kitchen and so on and even his own wee kirk:
“And what’s that one over there?”
“Aye well, that’s the kirk I don’t go to”
I would hazard a guess that, after seeing the pattern repeat enough, people would start anticipating the eventual establishment of another church. Having your church already be “First Baptist” means that you don’t have to rename, change the signs, the logo, the letterhead, the bulletins, word of mouth, etc.
And I would also guess that, once the above becomes established, it would just be tradition taking over even in areas where a second Baptist church would seem unlikely.
And, finally it could be that people think it sounds good, whether because they’ve heard of so many other “First Baptist” or “First [Denomination]” churches (aka the mere exposure effect) , or because of the prestige sound of “first” that others mentioned.