Meanings
plural mother churches
- ChristianityThe Church regarded as nourishing and protecting its members.
Catholics regard Mary as Mother of the Church but an all-male hierarchy as the Mother Church.
- ChristianityA church with oversight over another or others, now especially a cathedral or metropolitan church.
Mothering Sunday arose from the custom of visiting mother churches at Mid-Lent, rather than the usual parish church.
- ChristianityThe original church of a denomination, regarded as having birthed the others.
The mother church of Christian Scientists is in Boston, Massachusetts.
- ChristianityThe original denomination or community of believers from which other denominations and communities of believers sprang.
The Church of England is the mother church of Anglicans around the world.
2 more examples
Not Rome, but Ierusalem should be the Mother Church.
1667, Matthew Poole, Dialogue between a Popish Priest & an English Protestant, page 35Puritanism is the mother church of Western democracy.
1908 February, P.T. Forsyth, Contemporary Review, page 159
Origin
- Old Frenchmere
- Latinmater ecclesia“mother church”
- Englishmother church
From an association of spiritual comfort and hierarchy with familial relationships, probably originally as a calque of similar expressions in other languages, especially 2nd-century Latin mater ecclesia (“mother church”) and 12th-century Old French mere eglise (“mother church”).
More words from Latin, Old French
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
mother church. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mother%20church
“mother church.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mother%20church. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mother church,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mother%20church.
Source: mother church on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.