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 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[link]

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[link]

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

A Mormon meeting house in Uruguaiana, Brazil, used for weekly services.

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
• Christadelphians
• Provisional Movement

References[link]

Notes

Sources

• 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[link]

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

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