Mixing
Meeting house
The Town House of the small Vermont town of Marlboro was built in 1822 to be used for Town Meetings, which had previously been held in private homes. It is still in use today. Nearby is an example of a religious building called a "meeting house", the Marlboro Meeting House Congregational Church.
A meeting house (meetinghouse,[1]meeting-house[2]) is a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place.
Contents
1 Meeting houses in America
2 The meeting house in England
3 See also
4 References
5 Sources
Meeting houses in America
Old Town Friends Meetinghouse in Baltimore
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]
Buckingham Friends Meeting House in Pennsylvania
Sheep-pen pews, Old Ship Meeting house, Hingham, Massachusetts, ca. 1880
A Mormon meeting house in Uruguaiana, Brazil, used for weekly services.
Many nonconformist Christian denominations[citation needed] distinguish between a
Church, which is a body of people who believe in Christ
Meeting house or chapel, which is a 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:
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.[7][8] A meetinghouse differs from an LDS temple, which is reserved for special forms of worship.[9][10]
- 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
The Oxford English Dictionary states that a meeting house in England is always a "...nonconformist or dissenting place of worship..."[11]
See also
- Moot hall
Wharenui, the meeting house in New Zealand English, the focal point of a marae
References
^ "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. 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..mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output q{quotes:"""""""'""'"}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}
^ 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
^ Seymour, Nicole (March 2006), "Standardized Meetinghouses Give a Place for More Members to Meet and Worship", Ensign, retrieved 2012-10-10
^ "Of Chapels and Temples: Explaining Mormon Worship Services" (News Release), Newsroom, LDS Church, 15 November 2007, retrieved 2012-10-10
^ "Topics and Background: Templaes", Newsroom, LDS Church, 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.
Media related to Category:Meeting houses at Wikimedia Commons
Media related to Category:Meeting houses at Wikimedia Commons
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