PLACE OF WORSHIP

A place of worship or house of worship is a building or other location where a group of people (a congregation) comes to perform acts of religious praise, honour, or devotion. The term temple is often used as a general term for any house of worship. Different religions have different names for their places of worship:

• Church – Christians
  • In Western Christianity, some "private" temples are called chapels, while major public ones are designated by a term reflecting its ecclesiastical status, such as cathedral (seat of a diocesan bishop), basilica, or minster, and/or proper to a cultural tradition, including kirk (Scottish–cognate with church) or dom.
  • In Orthodox Christianity (both Eastern and Oriental) a temple is a church with base shaped like Greek cross. See Orthodox temple.
  • Protestant denominations installed in France in the early modern era use the word temple (as opposed to church, supposed to be Roman Catholic); some more recently built temples are called church.
  • Mormons uses both church and temple to denote different types of buildings. Normal worship services are held in churches (sometimes also called ward meetinghouses) while Mormon temples are reserved for special ordinances.
  • Quakers call their places of worship meetinghouses.

• Synagogue – Judaism
  • Some synagogues, especially Reform synagogues, are called temples, but Orthodox Judaism considers this inappropriate as they do not consider synagogues a replacement for the Temple in Jerusalem. Some Orthodox Jewish congregations use the term 'shul' to describe their place of worship.

• Mandir – Hinduism
  • Variously called a mandir' (Hindi), a koyil (Tamil), and an gudi/devalayam/kovela (Telugu).
• Mosque – Islam
• Buddhist temple – Buddhism
• Temple – Taoism
• Jinja – Shinto
• Bahá'í House of Worship – Bahá'í Faith
• Gurdwara – Sikhism
• Fire temple – Zoroastrianism
• Roman temple – Roman mythology
  • Templums for native deities
  • Fanums for foreign deities
• Wat – Buddhism (in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos)
• Temple in Jerusalem – Judaism
• Greek temple – Greek mythology
• Temple at Uppsala – Norse mythology
• Derasar – Jainism

See also

• Altar
• Reliquary