They’re still here. The Antiochian Orthodox Church traces an unbroken line from the apostles to today, though the story between then and now is anything but simple.
Antioch was where it all started going global. After Pentecost, after the first believers scattered from Jerusalem, Antioch became the launching pad for the mission to the Gentiles. Peter founded the see there. Paul and Barnabas used it as their base. And it was in Antioch that people first called us Christians. That’s not legend. That’s in Acts.
For the first few centuries, Antioch was one of the great centers of Christianity. It became one of the five ancient patriarchates, alongside Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Bishops like St. Ignatius of Antioch (martyred around 107) shaped how we understand the Church, the Eucharist, and the episcopate. Antioch had theological schools, martyrs, missionaries. It mattered.
But history doesn’t sit still.
The Roman persecutions hit Antioch like everywhere else. Then came the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, which tore at the fabric of the Church. Some communities in the region rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, creating divisions that persist in different forms today. The Orthodox Church of Antioch maintained communion with the other patriarchates and held to Chalcedonian Christology, but the fights were brutal and the wounds deep.
Then the conquests started. Persian invasions. The early Islamic conquest in the seventh century, which changed everything about the legal and social status of Christians in the region. Crusader occupation in the twelfth century, which was often as traumatic for Eastern Christians as it was for Muslims. Mamluk rule. Ottoman rule for centuries. Each shift brought new pressures, new taxes, new restrictions, new reasons to leave.
The physical city of Antioch (now Antakya in southern Turkey) isn’t the center anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. The Christian population there dwindled over centuries of emigration, persecution, and political upheaval. By the twentieth century, population exchanges and nationalist pressures reduced the ancient community to a shadow. Today only a small remnant of Christians remains in Antakya.
But the Church didn’t disappear. It moved.
The Patriarchate of Antioch relocated its administrative center to Damascus, where it’s been for centuries now. The patriarch still carries the title “Patriarch of Antioch and All the East,” because the see isn’t just a city. It’s an apostolic foundation, a living continuity. The Church adapted to survive.
And survive it did. Antiochian Orthodox Christians today live primarily in Syria and Lebanon, where parishes, monasteries, and dioceses continue the liturgical and sacramental life that stretches back to the apostles. The twentieth century scattered many more across the world. Emigration brought Antiochian Orthodox to North America, South America, Australia, Europe. Here in Southeast Texas, we’re part of that story. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America connects us to Damascus, to the Middle East, to that apostolic see founded by Peter.
It’s the same Church. Same apostolic succession, same liturgy (give or take some languages), same faith. We didn’t start over in America. We brought Antioch with us.
The story isn’t over, either. The twenty-first century has brought new trials. The Syrian civil war devastated communities that had worshiped in the same places for nearly two thousand years. Churches were destroyed. Families fled. Some Antiochian Christians became refugees for the second or third time in their family’s history. Others stayed, keeping the faith alive under impossible conditions.
So what happened to the Christians in Antioch? They endured. They moved. They adapted. They didn’t abandon the faith or the apostolic succession or the liturgy. The Antiochian Orthodox Church today, whether in Damascus or Beaumont, is the same Church that Paul and Barnabas knew. We’re still here because Christ promised the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against His Church. Antioch is proof He keeps His promises.
