Meeting house
A meeting house (meetinghouse,[1] meeting-house[2]) describes a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place.
Contents
Meeting houses in America
The Colonial meeting house in America was typically the first public building built as new villages sprang up. A meeting-house had a dual purpose as a place of worship and for public discourse, but sometimes only for "...the service of God."[3] As the towns grew and the separation of church and state in the United States matured the buildings which were used as the seat of local government were called a town-house[4] or town-hall.[5]
Many nonconformist Christian denominations[citation needed] distinguish between a
- Church, which is used to refer to a body of people who believe in Christ
- Meeting house or chapel, which refers to the building where the church meets
The nonconformist meeting houses generally do not have steeples, with the term "steeplehouses" being used to describe traditional or establishment religious buildings.[6] Christian denominations which use the term "meeting house" to refer to the building in which they hold their worship include:
- Congregational churches with their congregation-based system of church governance. They also use the term "mouth-houses" to emphasize their use as a place for discourse and discussion.
- Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), see Friends meeting houses
- Mennonite Church
- Amish Church
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) uses the term "meetinghouse" for the building where congregations meet for weekly worship services, recreational events, and social gatherings.[7][8] A meetinghouse differs from an LDS temple, which is reserved for special forms of worship.[9][10]
- Some Unitarian congregations, although some prefer the term "chapel" or "church".
- The Unification Church
- Christadelphians
- Provisional Movement
The meeting house in England
The Oxford English Dictionary states that a meeting house in England is always a "...nonconformist or dissenting place of worship..."[11]
See also
References
Notes
- ↑ "Meeting house" in Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press, 2009
- ↑ Sweeney, Kevin M.. "Meetinghouses, Town Houses, And Churches: Changing Perceptions Of Sacred And Secular Space In Southern New England, 1720-1850." Winterthur Portfolio 28.1 (1993): 59. 1. Print. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1181498?uid=3739800&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103156020293
- ↑ Sewall, J. B. "The New England Town-house", The Bay State Monthly, Vol 1, No 5. 1884. 284-290. Print. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13632/13632-h/13632-h.htm accessed 12/6/2013
- ↑ Whitney, William D. (ed.) The Century Dictionary vol. 8. 1895. 6407. Print. Town-house may also mean a jail, poor-house, or house not in the countryside. See Century Dictionary
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- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) © Oxford University Press 2009
Sources
- Congdon, Herbert Wheaton. Old Vermont Houses 1763-1850. William L. Bauhan: 1940, 1973. ISBN 978-0-87233-001-6.
- Duffy, John J., et al. Vermont: An Illustrated History. American Historical Press: 2000. ISBN 978-1-892724-08-3.
External links
Media related to Category:Meeting houses at Wikimedia Commons
