primitive church

noun

1. the early Christian church, especially in reference to its earliest form and organization.
2. this church, especially as representative of Christianity in its supposedly purest form.

Word History and Origins

Origin of primitive church¹

First recorded in 1520–30

Example Sentences

They fled Europe to build a “city upon a hill,” a new and “primitive” Church in which equality reigned and private property was abolished.

From The New Yorker

Before this, argues the philosopher Anthony Kenny, “people looking for ideals had looked backwards in time, whether to the primitive church, or to classical antiquity, or to some mythical prelapsarian era. It was a key doctrine of the Enlightenment that the human race, so far from falling from some earlier eminence, was moving forward to a happier future.”

From The Guardian

Building materials for the primitive church came by mule from Loreto.

From Seattle Times

I am with a documentary-film crew that records this moment, and am reminded of the “sadness and majesty” that Chateaubriand found in the “remnant of the ancient singing of the primitive church.”

From Wall Street Journal

The transition from the almost Quaker tenets of the primitive Church to the essentially military Christianity of the Crusades was chiefly due to another cause—to the terrors and to the example of Mohammedanism.

From Project Gutenberg