Meeting house
Topic: Religion
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Short description: Building in which religious and sometimes public meetings take place
A meeting house (meetinghouse,[1] meeting-house[2]) is a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place.
Terminology
Nonconformist Protestant denominations distinguish between a:
- church, which is a body of people who believe in Christ, and;
- meeting house or chapel, which is a building where the church meets.[3][4]
In early Methodism, meeting houses were typically called "preaching houses" (to distinguish them from church houses, which hosted itinerant preachers).[5]
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."[6] As the towns grew and the separation of church and state in the United States matured, the buildings that were used as the seat of local government were called town-houses[7] or town-halls.[8]
The nonconformist meeting houses generally do not have steeples, with the term "steeplehouses" referring to traditional or establishment religious buildings.[9] Christian denominations that use the term "meeting house" to refer to the building in which they hold their worship include:
- Anabaptist congregations
- Amish congregations
- Mennonite congregations
- 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.
- Christadelphians
- 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.[10][11] A meetinghouse differs from an LDS temple, which is reserved for special forms of worship.[12][13]
- Provisional Movement
- Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), see Friends meeting houses
- Spiritual Christians from Russia
- Some Unitarian congregations, although some prefer the term "chapel" or "church".
- The Unification Church
The meeting house in England
In England, a meeting house is distinguished from a church or cathedral by being a place of worship for dissenters or nonconformists.[14]
See also
References
- ↑ "Meeting house" in Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press, 2009
- ↑ Wakeling, Christopher (August 2016). "Nonconformist Places of Worship: Introductions to Heritage Assets". Historic England. https://content.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-nonconformist-places-of-worship/heag139-nonconformist-places-of-worshipi-iha.pdf/.
- ↑ Jones, Anthony (1996) (in en). Welsh Chapels. National Museum Wales. ISBN 9780750911627. https://books.google.com/books?id=k6zjuTAnuzcC. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
- ↑ Samuel J, Rogal (January 2006). "Legalizing Methodism: John Wesley's Deed of Declaration and the Language of the Law". Methodist History 44 (2): 105–114. http://archives.gcah.org/bitstream/handle/10516/6651/MH-2006-January-Rogal.pdf?sequence=1. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
- ↑ 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. JSTOR 1181498
- ↑ Sewall, J. B. "The New England Town-house", The Bay State Monthly, Vol 1, No 5. 1884. 284–290. Print. 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
- ↑ Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings. HarperCollins. 2005. p. 18. ISBN 9780060578725. https://archive.org/details/quakerspirituali00harp.
- ↑ Hamilton, C. Mark (1992), "Meetinghouse", in Ludlow, Daniel H, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York: Macmillan Publishing, pp. 876–878, ISBN 0-02-879602-0, OCLC 24502140, http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/EoM/id/3913
- ↑ Seymour, Nicole (March 2006), "Standardized Meetinghouses Give a Place for More Members to Meet and Worship", Ensign, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2006/03/news-of-the-church/standardized-meetinghouses-give-a-place-for-more-members-to-meet-and-worship?lang=eng, retrieved 2012-10-10
- ↑ "Of Chapels and Temples: Explaining Mormon Worship Services" (News Release), Newsroom (LDS Church), 15 November 2007, https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/of-chapels-and-temples-explaining-mormon-worship-services, retrieved 2012-10-10
- ↑ "Topics and Background: Templaes", Newsroom (LDS Church), 17 September 2012, https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/background-information/temples, retrieved 2012-10-10
- ↑ 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.
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