Meeting house

A secular meeting house in the U.S. state of Vermont is primarily used for a town meeting.

A meeting house describes a building where a public meeting takes place. This includes secular buildings which function like a town or city hall, and buildings used for religious meetings, particularly of some non-conformist Christian denominations.

Secular meeting houses

For more details on this topic, see Colonial meeting house.

In New England towns in the United States, there are meeting houses which serve as a sort of town or city hall, and are used for public meetings, voting, and town offices.

A meeting house may have a dual purpose as a place of worship and public discourse, as in early American Puritan congregations.

Religious meeting houses

Sheep-pen pews, Old Ship Meeting house, Hingham, Massachusetts, ca. 1880

Many non-conformist Christian denominations 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

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,^[1] recreational events, and social gatherings. A meetinghouse differs from an LDS temple, which is a building dedicated to be a House of The Lord and is reserved for special forms of worship.
• Some Unitarian congregations, although some prefer the term "chapel" or "church".
• The Unification Church (Moonies)
• Christadelphians
• Provisional Movement

References

1. ^ "Standardized Meetinghouses Worldwide Give More Members a Place to Worship". LDS Church. 2006-01-10. http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=7cecc8fe9c88d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=e4f19150dfcad010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____. Retrieved 2008-04-30. 

• Congdon, Herbert Wheaton. Old Vermont Houses 1763-1850. William L. Bauhan: 1940, 1973. ISBN 87233-001-X.
• Duffy, John J., et al. Vermont: An Illustrated History. American Historical Press: 2000. ISBN 1-892724-08-1.

Further reading

• Hamilton, C. Mark (1992), "Meetinghouse", in Ludlow, Daniel H., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York, NY: Macmillan, pp. 876–878, ISBN 0-02-904040-X, OCLC 24502140, http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/EoM,3913 .

External links

Media related to Meetinghouses of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Wikimedia Commons