Antioch is in modern-day Turkey, near the Syrian border. The ancient city sat on the Orontes River in what was then Syria, and today it’s called Antakya. It’s not a place most Americans could find on a map without help, but it’s the reason our parish carries the name it does.
When people hear “Antiochian Orthodox Church,” they sometimes think it’s an ethnic designation like Greek or Russian Orthodox. It’s not. Antioch is a place, and that place matters because it’s where the story of Christianity as a distinct faith really took off.
The Third City of the Empire
In the first century, Antioch was huge. We’re talking about the third-largest city in the Roman Empire, with maybe 300,000 people. Only Rome and Alexandria were bigger. It sat at the crossroads of major trade routes, which meant it was cosmopolitan in a way that Jerusalem never was. Jews lived there. Greeks lived there. Romans, Syrians, merchants from everywhere. That mix turned out to be exactly what the early Church needed.
After St. Stephen was martyred in Jerusalem around A.D. 34 or 35, persecution scattered the believers. Some fled north to Antioch. They didn’t stop preaching just because they’d left town. They preached to Jews first, then to Greeks. And something happened that hadn’t quite happened before, Gentiles started becoming followers of Jesus in significant numbers, and nobody was requiring them to become Jews first.
The church in Jerusalem heard about this and sent Barnabas to check it out. He saw what God was doing and went to find Saul of Tarsus, who’d been cooling his heels in his hometown after his dramatic conversion. Barnabas brought him to Antioch, and they taught there for a year. It’s in Antioch, according to Acts 11:26, that believers were first called Christians. The name probably started as mockery. It stuck.
Where We Come From
St. Peter himself is traditionally said to have founded the church at Antioch. There’s a grotto there, carved into rock, where he’s supposed to have preached. Whether that specific cave is the right one doesn’t matter as much as the fact that Antioch became Peter’s see before he went to Rome. St. Paul launched his missionary journeys from Antioch. It was home base. When he and Peter had their famous dispute about whether Jewish and Gentile Christians should eat together (you can read about it in Galatians 2), that happened in Antioch. The Jerusalem Council’s decision about Gentile converts came partly because of questions raised in Antioch.
After Jerusalem fell in A.D. 70, Antioch became even more central to Eastern Christianity. By the time of the First Ecumenical Council in 325, Antioch was recognized as one of the great patriarchal sees, ranked third after Rome and Alexandria. The theological school there was known for reading Scripture literally and carefully, which balanced out Alexandria’s more allegorical approach. When the Church hammered out what we believe about Christ, fully God and fully man, two natures in one person, Antiochian theologians were in the thick of it.
The Patriarchate of Antioch has had a complicated history since then. Invasions, schisms, political upheaval. The patriarch doesn’t actually live in Antakya anymore. But the see continues, and the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America is under its canonical authority. When you’re part of St. Michael’s, you’re part of a living tradition that goes back to that multicultural, missionary-minded church where believers were first called Christians.
Why It Matters Here
You might wonder why a parish in Beaumont, Texas carries a name connected to an ancient city in Turkey. It’s because Antioch represents something essential about who we are. The church there wasn’t ethnically uniform. It sent missionaries out rather than just staying put. It wrestled with hard questions about how Jews and Gentiles worship together, and it didn’t split over the answers. It was apostolic, founded by the apostles themselves, teaching what they taught.
That’s what the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America has tried to be: missionary-minded, willing to bring Orthodoxy to people where they are, committed to the apostolic faith without wrapping it in a culture that’s foreign to the people hearing it. If you’ve ever been to a Greek festival or a Russian parish and thought, “This is beautiful, but I don’t know if I could ever really belong here,” that’s part of what the Antiochian jurisdiction has worked to address. We’re not trying to make you Lebanese or Syrian. We’re trying to connect you to Antioch, to that first generation of believers who heard the apostles preach and went out to tell everyone else.
The next time you see “Antiochian” on our sign, remember it’s not just a name. It’s a place where the faith you’re learning was lived and taught and fought for two thousand years ago.
