Something occurs to me. Carl told us about the full gospel Episcopalians
and how they conduct their services and until now I had been unaware of
them. If I had ever heard of them I supposed I had just assumed that
they were one and the same as the main Episcopal church. Well, with the
revelation that they are not I found myself questioning another
assumption I have been making. Their is a church in this area called the
Perrow Presbyterian church. Until a certain point I had assumed that
they were just another Presbyterian church, but then I learned
differently. They happen to run a food bank and I know a woman who took
advantage of that food bank. They do not offer the food without strings
attached though. If they give you food they expect you to attend their
services. So one day my acquaintance was telling me a story about one of
their services and the story involved a woman who started shaking and
twitching all over while emitting incoherent sounds punctuated by the
word Jesus. I have always known the Presbyterians to be as stiff and
undemonstrative as the Episcopalians so I told her that what she was
describing didn't sound like Presbyterians to me. She said that they had
nothing to do with the Presbyterian church, but that they just had that
name. So then I switched my assumptions and started assuming that they
were just an independent fundamentalist church that, in their ignorance,
took a name that was already taken. And these fundamentalists really can
be incredibly ignorant, so it wasn't just an assumption picked entirely
out of the air. But now that I have learned about the full gospel
Episcopalians I now wonder if this Perrow Presbyterian church represents
some subsect of the Presbyterians that I didn't know about. And, by the
way, speaking of food banks, a mainline Episcopal church in Charleston,
West Virginia runs a food bank the way I think a food bank should be
run. They have something called Manna Meal. They have a staff of
volunteers who prepare two meals a day, breakfast and lunch, and they
have tables set up in their recreation room where they serve these
meals. Anyone can come in and have a meal, no questions asked and with
no strings attached. Most of the people who do show up are homeless
people or other food distressed people, but Donald Trump could drop in
for a meal if he wanted to. This is the kind of church activity that I
can support. The Union Mission, the Salvation Army and the Perrow
Presbyterian church always attach strings.
--
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David Hume
??? In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable
degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral
evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. ???
??? David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
