Writer's Block: Spirits

[fajrdrako]

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There are various things in this world that I don't know the truth of. I've never seen a ghost, but I know people who say they have, and I believe their stories because I know they are telling the truth, and I'm talking about sane, intelligent people. I don't know what it was they experienced, or how it happened, or why. I don't know what a ghost might be.

I do believe that strange, unknown and apparently unreasonable or impossible things happen in this world. I don't believe lack of an explanation means it didn't happen. It just means it can't be explained.

We're a long way from knowing everything about everything.

Comments

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. I can shed some light on "non-Protestant Christian churches" for you, perhaps. Methodism arose about 230 years ago, in America. It remains a separate entity here; I didn't know what the United Church of Canada was until you explained it to me. Now, I'm not sure why "non-Protestant," but I can tell you, starting in the 1810s and going strong for about fifty years, people started taking over their own church activities in a way that has been both deplored and celebrated -- "the democratization of American Christianity," the revivalist movement; versus what Naomi Klein (I think that is the author) who terms it the assertion of the masses of their right to be non-scientific and literal-Bible-creationist-like. Out of these revivalist and camp-meeting church congregations arose all sorts of sects: Baptists, the Church of God, the Church of the Nazarene, and a host of others. "Gospel Churches" and "holy rollers." Some are connected to a wider church organization, others are totally separate. And then there are the Christian Scientists, eh? And I'm not even at the Amish, Mennonite, and Jacobite Brethren yet... yeah, religion fascinates me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Methodism started in the UK in the 18th century; well after the Reformation, but it is still counted as Protestant, because it arose out of Protestantism.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism.) There are still Methodist churches around here, as well as, of course, Presbyterian churches - they didn't all join together.

I had naively thought that all religions that weren't Roman Catholic or Orthodox were Protestant, including all the ones you mention, but obviously it isn't that simple.

There are so many religions - and this is all within the general framework of Christianity.