About Us:

Since 1877, the Antioch Baptist Church North has stood in Atlanta as a beacon of hope and a place of refuge. For five generations, the congregational family has reached out and nurtured thousands of persons who have been counted among the least, the last, and the lost. As a Church Family, we celebrate our 133rd Anniversary with a renewed commitment to build upon the remarkable record of charitable Christian Service that has made Antioch one of God’s best churches. The journey from 1877 to 2010 has not been easy, but it certainly has been rewarding! Those rewards and God’s promise of eternal life, gives our ever growing congregation inspiration and meaning to continue the journey “to see what the end would be.”

The Congregation remembers those eight former slaves-who in search of a safe and secure place to praise God-loosely formed a prayer band that eventually evolved into the beloved Antioch Baptist Church North, an Atlanta landmark known nationally as a flagship church in the struggle for human dignity and the plight of the less fortunate and the unsaved. The Antioch Congregation’s earliest meetings and worship services were held outside under the stars or in shanty one-room structures that the founding brethren called home.

To fully appreciate the historical significance of the Congregation’s founding, one must remember all the unsettling circumstances that were happening in the South during the 1880’s when the Antioch Congregation was founded. President Abraham Lincoln had recently freed the slaves when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In 1864, General Sherman destroyed and burned every building in Atlanta during his vivid march across Georgia during the infamous Civil War. With their new freedom gained at the end of the Civil War, thousands of former slaves with only the rags on their backs emerged into Atlanta from the great south and central Georgia cotton plantations. Included in those numbers were the founders of our congregation. They all were traveling north searching for the new promise land.