Talk:Mother church

Different Definition
What's the difference, if any, between the fourth definition ("A mother church is a local church from which other local churches were planted. These churches are known as daughter churches"), and the first ("churches established originally as the first mission of a particular region")? --Apeloverage 10:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The orthography of this term bothers me. I think it should be mother church. I've not been able to ascertain this, but in my well-thumbed tome entitled Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus of the American Language (World Publishing Company, 1970), entries with the prefix "mother" include:


 * mother country
 * motherhood
 * mother image
 * motherland
 * mother lode

But there is no entry for "motherchurch" or "mother church". In the entries where mother is used as an adjective (for country, image or lode), the noun being modified is something tangible. You can visit a country. You can look at an image. You can prospect a lode for gold. In the instances where mother is an integral part of noun, I seem to notice that the resultant noun is "intangible" and descriptive of a concept (motherhood, motherland). Any thoughts on this? Aloysius Patacsil 00:57, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article should be "Mother Church". A Google search for "Mother Church" returns 717,000 hits. "motherchurch" returns 826 hits. At a ratio of more than 860 to 1, I think "Mother Church" wins. --Do go be man 21:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Motherchurch returns more hits now, but well over half of them are attributed or unattributed cribs of this article and many more seem to be related to motherchurch appearing in URLs. None of them are from dictionaries; and the phrasing of mother church, with a long pause between the words, speaks against compounding as well.

Mother Church works fine as a term and idea, but motherchurch as one word is a malformed (and per wiki rules, to-be-avoided) neologism. - LlywelynII (talk) 09:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

A Mess
This article seems to be a complete mess. Can we do something to make it look like an encyclopedic article? Myrvin (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Moved the list here


 * 1) The Universal Church or Church Universal, which is the Bride of Christ. Holy Mother Church - Sancta Mater Ecclesia (Lat.).
 * 2) The first mission church in an area, or a pioneer cathedral
 * 3) A basilica or cathedral
 * 4) The Papal ArchBasilica of Saint John Lateran, the Ecumenical Mother Church of all Roman Catholics
 * 5) The main chapel of a province of a religious order
 * 6) A plantation church &mdash; that is, the "mother" of several "daughter churches",
 * 7) A church of historical importance to a Christian community, including the following:
 * 8) The Catholic Church, as the Mother Church, especially Western Christianity and segments of Eastern Christianity;
 * 9) The Patriarchate of Constantinople, as Mother Church of Eastern European Orthodox churches;
 * 10) The Church of England, as the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion.
 * 11) Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, the "mother church" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church;
 * 12) Cathedral of Christ the King, the "mother church" of the Anglo Pentecostal Communion (The Rt. Reverend Steven Smith, Archbishop)
 * 13) The Mother Church: The First Church of Christ, Scientist (Boston, Massachusetts), the Church of Christ Scientist of which all others are branches;
 * 14) Greater Refuge Temple Church, the Mother Church of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith;


 * 1) The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. which is a Convention of Churches from which the other National Baptist Conventions originate.
 * 2) The main church or cathedral in the area, with the local churches being its "daughter" churches.
 * 3) The church where one was baptized, in widely used expressions, such as "my mother church".

Myrvin (talk) 11:15, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

every OED definition
The lead just seems to be every Oxford English Dictionary definition for "Mother Church". Besides unacceptable plagiarism of the OED, we don't have a topic. Is it possible to salvage a topic for this article? Bhny (talk) 17:44, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Sources & meaning
Adding sources and arranging meanings according to historical and general usage. The first sentence in the introducton must be characterized exactness and brevity. All other follows!Mauri Kunnas (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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