mother church

Meaning

Noun

• The Church regarded as nourishing and protecting its members.
• A church with oversight over another or others, now especially a cathedral or metropolitan church.
• The original church of a denomination, regarded as having birthed the others.
• The original denomination or community of believers from which other denominations and communities of believers sprang.

Origin

• 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.