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] Most communities in modern New England still have active meetinghouses, which are popular points of assembly for town meeting days and other events.
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:
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.
^Wakeling, Christopher (August 2016). "Nonconformist Places of Worship: Introductions to Heritage Assets". Historic England. Archived from the original on 28 March 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
^Jones, Anthony (1996). Welsh Chapels. National Museum Wales. ISBN 9780750911627. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
^Samuel J, Rogal (January 2006). "Legalizing Methodism: John Wesley's Deed of Declaration and the Language of the Law" (PDF). Methodist History. 44 (2): 105–114. Retrieved 30 January 2022 – via United Methodist Church General Commission on Archives and History.
^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.