Calvinism, Arminianism, and a Call Back to Unity: We Met the Same God in Different Ways

A Call Back to Unity

The church needs to come back together. Calvinists and Arminians have argued for four hundred years, and the argument has hardened into walls. I am calling both sides home. My case is simple. Most of our differences on this question come from the different ways we met God. Calvinists say God chose, God called, and God will keep. Arminians say God offers, the sinner answers, and the believer must keep walking. Each side has verses. Each side has saints. Each side has written books calling the other side dangerous. A man who was knocked flat by the Spirit in a tent meeting reads the Bible with God’s power in front of him. A man who came to faith slowly, through a brother, a Bible, and a stack of sermon tapes, reads the same Bible with God’s steady faithfulness in front of him. Both men met the same Lord. Both men are telling the truth about what happened to them. Neither man has seen the whole of what God does. I do not say this explains every Calvinist or every Arminian. I see it often enough to say it out loud. Jesus prayed for His people “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). He did not pray that we would all be converted the same way.

We Met God Differently

Sam Storms has lived on both sides of this wall. In January 1991 he went to a Vineyard conference in Anaheim with about seven thousand people, prophecy, and prayer for healing. A few days later he flew to Orlando to speak at R. C. Sproul’s Ligonier conference, where he found worship “without guitars or dancing,” plenty of Bible teaching, and “few if any” prayers for physical healing.¹ His Orlando friends told him that people who speak in tongues “rarely engage in serious theological reflection.” His Anaheim friends feared that his view of God’s sovereignty would “kill my evangelistic zeal.”² Storms says a “serious, and occasionally vitriolic, breach exists between Word-based evangelical cessationists and their more experientially oriented charismatic cousins.”³ Calvinism and Arminianism are not the same fight as cessationism and Pentecostalism. In practice, though, the lines run close together. The study churches lean Calvinist and cautious about gifts. The experience churches lean Arminian and open to gifts. The people on each side often know only one kind of Christian. They judge the other side by its worst preachers and its loudest videos. That is how a family turns into two camps. Each camp then reads the Bible to defend the way it met God. Each camp is half right about God and half blind to its brother.

Theologians use the Latin phrase ordo salutis, the order of salvation. Calvinists usually build it from Romans 8:29–30: foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. William Perkins drew it as a chart in A Golden Chaine in 1591. The chain is in the text. Paul wrote it. Acts does not follow one chain. On Pentecost Peter says repent, be baptized, and receive the Spirit (Acts 2:38). In Samaria people believe and are baptized, and the Spirit comes later when Peter and John lay hands on them (Acts 8:14–17). In Caesarea the Spirit falls on Cornelius’s house while Peter is still preaching, and baptism comes after (Acts 10:44–48). In Ephesus Paul finds disciples who have never heard of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1–6). Luke records four orders in four places. He does not tell us which one is the rule. Conversions differ too. Paul is blinded on a road at noon (Acts 9:3–9). Timothy learned the Scriptures “from childhood” from his mother and grandmother (2 Tim 1:5; 3:15). In Philippi the Lord quietly “opened” Lydia’s heart at a riverside prayer meeting (Acts 16:14). In the same city, on the same trip, an earthquake throws open a jail and the jailer falls trembling at Paul’s feet (Acts 16:26–34). One house was saved in quiet. One house was saved in a crisis. Both were saved by the same Lord in the same week. The man thrown down on the road will read Scripture with God’s overpowering hand in front of him. The child raised on Scripture will read it with God’s patient faithfulness in front of him. I do not think either man is lying about God.

What the Calvinist Sees

Michael Horton is one of the clearest Reformed voices alive. His book For Calvinism was written as a companion to Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism, and the two men wrote each other’s forewords. Horton’s own path to Calvinism runs through study. He thanks his brother Larry “for introducing me to the book of Romans, as well as the books and audio tapes of R. C. Sproul, James Boice, J. I. Packer, Roger Nicole, and others.”⁴ His was a quiet conversion through study. It was a real conversion. Horton knows the stereotype of people like him. He states it himself: “Calvinists are ‘the chosen frozen.’” Critics say Calvinism “is a religion of the head, not the heart or the hands.”⁵ Horton rejects that charge, and he has good history on his side. He also admits a danger. New Calvinists, he writes, often enter “the cage phase,” where “enthusiasm can turn to frustration and even to arrogance and divisiveness.”⁶ The doctrine he defends most strongly here is the perseverance of the saints. He traces it to Augustine and lists the Reformed and Presbyterian confessions, the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, the Savoy Declaration, and the London and Philadelphia Confessions of the Calvinistic Baptists.⁷ In his view, Catholics, the Orthodox, and Arminians all teach “that the believer’s security depends at least to some extent on his or her own cooperation with God’s grace, and this grace may be finally lost.”⁸ Horton does not call them Pelagians. He says outright that “Neither the Roman Catholic and Orthodox nor the Arminian view is Pelagian.” His charge is narrower. He thinks their grace makes “final salvation merely possible.”⁹ He then turns to many Baptists who say “once saved, always saved.” He calls their view “eternal security” and says it is “more appropriately identified as moderate Arminianism,” because it rests security on “the believer’s decision to accept Christ.”¹⁰ Many Southern Baptists would reject that label. Many Arminians would reject it too.

What the Arminian Sees

Roger Olson writes from the other side, and he writes as a brother. “I write this book reluctantly,” he begins; “polemics is not my preferred style of scholarship.”¹¹ He says he grew up in a family that was not Calvinist, but “we knew our relatives were every bit as Christian as we were.”¹² He says “a person can be as marvelously saved and as dedicated a Christian as possible and be a Calvinist.”¹³ His motto is simple: “Before saying ‘I disagree’ be sure you can say ‘I understand.’”¹⁴ Then he says why he cannot accept the system. If God foreordains hell and everyone in it, Olson argues, “God is thereby rendered morally ambiguous at best and a moral monster at worst.” He goes further. He says this kind of Calvinism makes it hard “(at least for me) to see the difference between God and the devil.”¹⁵ He gives his reason: he holds to free will for two reasons, “to preserve human responsibility for sin and evil” and “to preserve God from being responsible for sin and evil.”¹⁶ Horton fears that a sinner will trust his own decision. Olson fears that God will be blamed for evil. Both fears protect God’s glory. Both men believe Scripture must settle the matter. In his foreword to Olson’s book, Horton writes that “the crucial questions involved in this or any other debate must be brought to the bar of Scripture.” He adds, “We are all pilgrims on the way, not yet those who have arrived.”¹⁷ Those two men disagree on almost every point of TULIP. They still wrote each other’s forewords.

Arminius Was Not Sure

Most people who hate Arminianism have never read Arminius. Jacob Arminius was a Dutch Reformed pastor and professor who died in 1609. He did not teach that Christians fall away. Here is what he said in his Declaration of Sentiments in 1608. Those grafted into Christ by true faith “possess sufficient powers” to fight Satan, sin, the world, and the flesh, “yet not without the assistance of the grace of the same Holy Spirit.”¹⁸ Christ preserves them from falling. Satan cannot drag them “out of the hands of Christ.” Then Arminius admits his doubt: “I never taught that a true believer can either totally or finally fall away from the faith, and perish; yet I will not conceal, that there are passages of Scripture which seem to me to wear this aspect.”¹⁹ He also says the passages for the other view “are worthy of much consideration.” He left the question open. His followers wrote the Remonstrance of 1610 in the same spirit. Its fifth article said the question of falling away “must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.”²⁰ The Synod of Dort answered in 1619 with a confident no. Its Fifth Head says that on their own believers “not only easily could” fall away but “undoubtedly would.” Yet “with respect to God it cannot possibly happen.”²¹ One side was not sure. The other side was sure. Both sides agreed that left to ourselves we would fall.

Getting In and Staying In

E. P. Sanders changed how scholars read Paul. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), he studied Jewish writings from 200 BC to AD 200. He argued that the Jews of Paul’s day did not think they earned salvation by works. He called their pattern “covenantal nomism.” His definition is careful: “covenantal nomism is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression.”²² He breaks it into eight steps. God chose Israel. God gave the law. God promised to keep the election. God required obedience. God rewards obedience and punishes sin. The law provides atonement. Atonement restores the covenant. Those kept in the covenant “by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved.”²³ Sanders sums it up himself. Salvation is “by God’s mercy rather than human achievement,” but “obedience is the condition of remaining righteous.”²⁴ Scholars shorthand this as getting in by grace and staying in by obedience. Not every scholar accepts Sanders. Many have pushed back hard. Getting in by grace sounds like the Calvinist. Staying in by obedience sounds like the Arminian. Sanders found both in the Judaism that raised Jesus, Paul, and James.

Paul and James

Paul and James use the same words and land in different places. Paul writes, λογιζόμεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἄνθρωπον χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works of law” (Rom 3:28).²⁵ James writes, ὁρᾶτε ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith only” (Jas 2:24). Same verb. Same noun for “person.” Same pairing of faith and works. Both men also use Abraham. Paul writes, εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰμ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη, ἔχει καύχημα· ἀλλ’ οὐ πρὸς θεόν, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God” (Rom 4:2). James asks, Ἀβραὰμ ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη; “Was not Abraham our father justified by works?” (Jas 2:21). The phrase ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη appears in both. Paul uses it in a condition he rejects. James uses it in a question he affirms. Calvin saw the problem and solved it with definitions. James, he said, “does not speak here of the cause of justification,” but “of the proof he gave of his justification.”²⁶ When Paul says “justified,” Calvin argued, he means counted righteous before God; James means that “he who professes that he has faith, must prove the reality of his faith by his works.”²⁷ That reading may be right. I lean toward it. Even so, God put two writers in one canon who use one word two ways, and He did not add a footnote. Scripture does not flatten the tension. It lets Paul speak to the man who thinks he can earn God, and it lets James speak to the man who thinks he can ignore God.

The Present Verdict and the Future One

N. T. Wright has spent his career on Paul. In Justification (2009), he answered John Piper and other Reformed critics. His conclusion tries to hold Paul’s two tenses together. The verdict of justification, he writes, “is announced both in the present, with the verdict issued on the basis of faith and faith alone, and also in the future, on the day when God raises from the dead all those who are already indwelt by the spirit.”²⁸ Then he connects them: “The present verdict gives the assurance that the future verdict will match it; the spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.”²⁹ Calvinists hear the first half and cheer. Arminians hear the second half and cheer. Many Reformed scholars think Wright gives works too much weight. Many Arminians think he gives assurance too much ground. Wright himself does not claim to be the referee. He says that when a doctrine screens out the call of Israel, the gift of the Spirit, or the renewal of creation, “you can expect distortions. And squabbles between the distorters.”³⁰ He adds, “This is not, of course, a claim that I have got it all right and my critics have got it all wrong.” His point is that “our disagreements need to be mapped on a larger canvas than we have usually done.”³¹ He also writes that a doctrine is established “by the whole scripture, in relation to the whole Trinity, and not by partial readings of scripture or imbalanced reliance on the work of one member of the Godhead alone.”³² Calvinists often lean on the Father’s decree. Pentecostals often lean on the Spirit’s power. Both say they lean on the Son.

Who Stands Where

Brain science has moved past the old picture of a logical left brain and a feeling right brain. The two halves work together far more than the pop books say. The picture still works as a picture, so I will use it. Put the churches of study and certainty on one side. The Westminster Confession says true believers “can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace.”³³ The Southern Baptist Baptist Faith and Message says, “All true believers endure to the end.”³⁴ Presbyterians, Reformed churches, Reformed Baptists, and most Southern Baptists stand here, though Horton would put many Baptists in the other column. Most of these churches are cautious about tongues and prophecy, and some are openly cessationist. The Westminster Confession says “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people” have “now ceased.”³⁵ Put the churches of experience and warning on the other side. The Assemblies of God teach that “The believer’s salvation may be forfeited or abandoned by willfully turning away from Christ.”³⁶ The Church of the Nazarene says that “all persons may fall from grace and apostatize.”³⁷ The United Methodist Articles of Religion say, “we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin.”³⁸ The Free Will Baptists say final salvation is “neither determined nor certain,” so believers “ought, therefore, to watch and pray.”³⁹ These churches put the warnings of Hebrews 6 and 10 in the front window. Hebrews 6:4–6 speaks of τοὺς ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας, “those once enlightened,” who have become μετόχους … πνεύματος ἁγίου, “sharers of the Holy Spirit,” and then παραπεσόντας, “have fallen away.” Some bodies do not fit either side. Lutherans hold that God alone saves, yet the Augsburg Confession condemns those “who deny that those once justified can lose the Holy Ghost.”⁴⁰ Rome teaches that mortal sin brings “the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace.”⁴¹

The Same Lines Run Through the Spirit

The Pentecostal side has its own markers. The Assemblies of God teach that baptism in the Spirit is “distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth.” They teach that it is “witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues.”⁴² The Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, says the same thing about the initial evidence. On the other side, John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference in 2013 said the charismatic movement “dishonors God.”⁴³ Some walls have come down. In 2015 the Southern Baptist International Mission Board dropped its rule against missionaries with a private prayer language. Christianity Today reported that “speaking in tongues does not disqualify missionary candidates.”⁴⁴ That was a small change. It was also a sign that people on the study side had met too many godly people on the experience side to keep the old line. Storms lives on that line. He calls himself a charismatic Calvinist. He says many believers have “abiding love for Scripture” and also “describe stunning supernatural encounters that brought revelation (perhaps through a dream or vision), healing, and even deliverance from demonic oppression.”⁴⁵ He says he has “lived and ministered and mingled in both camps.” His closest friends are “spread equally between them.”⁴⁶ I do not think Storms has settled every question. I think he has shown that one man can hold both without losing his mind or his faith.

How Big the Split Has Grown

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell counted about 45,000 Christian denominations in the world in 2019.⁴⁷ The Center counts a church body once in every country where it exists, so the Catholic Church alone counts as 234 “denominations.”⁴⁸ The same researchers count about 2,000 denominations in 1900, 31,000 in 2000, and 50,000 in 2025.⁴⁹ They expect 64,000 by 2050. In the United States, the 2020 Religion Census identified 372 religious bodies and 356,739 congregations.⁵⁰ Most of those bodies are Christian. Some split over real heresy. Many split over worship style, money, personalities, and the questions in this article. The Pentecostal and charismatic movement grew up inside that split. In 1900 it hardly existed as a movement. By 2015 the Center estimated about 600 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in the world.⁵¹ Pew put the share at about 27 percent of all Christians in 2011.⁵² That is more than one Christian in four. It is no longer a fringe that the older churches can ignore. The older churches are not a dead husk that the Pentecostals can ignore either. Each side has something the other side lacks. Each side has spent most of a century saying so in the worst possible tone.

Two Sons in One House

Jesus told a story about two sons (Luke 15:11–32). The younger son demanded his inheritance, wasted it, and ended up feeding pigs. Then “he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). He walked home rehearsing a speech. His father saw him far off and ran to him. The father kissed him before the speech was finished. That son’s salvation was a crisis, a turning, and an embrace. The older son never left. He worked the fields every day. He came home and heard music and dancing, and he would not go in. He said, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29). His father answered, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). Both sons are sons. The father loves both. The older son is right that faithfulness matters. He is wrong to despise the party. The younger son is right that the father runs. He would be wrong if he went back to the pigs and called it freedom. The story ends with the older son still outside. Jesus does not tell us if he went in. I think that is on purpose. The question is put to every faithful church that hears music coming from the house and stays in the field.

What the Split Has Cost

Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste” (Matt 12:25). He prayed for His followers “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). Paul told the Corinthians to stop saying, “I follow Paul,” and “I follow Apollos” (1 Cor 1:12). He told them, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor 12:21). He told the Thessalonians, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess 5:19–21). The study side needs the first half of that sentence. The experience side needs the second half. Both halves came from the same apostle in the same breath. If I were Satan, I would not need to destroy the church. I would only need to split the people who test everything from the people who expect God to move. The first group would grow careful and cold. The second group would grow warm and careless. Each would point at the other’s worst members and feel safe. I think that has happened. George Whitefield and John Wesley split publicly over predestination in 1740. Whitefield was a Calvinist. Wesley was an Arminian. Thirty years later Whitefield died, and Wesley preached his funeral sermon. Wesley praised Whitefield’s “Catholic love” for “all those in every persuasion, who fear God and work righteousness.”⁵³ He named the two doctrines Whitefield preached everywhere: “The new birth, and justification by faith.”⁵⁴ I do not think every view is equal. I think Scripture is clear enough to save us and honest enough to humble us. Horton and Olson wrote each other’s forewords. Wesley buried Whitefield. Paul and James are bound in one Bible.

What I Am Asking

Calvinists, stop calling Arminians Pelagians. Horton, one of your best scholars, says that the Arminian view is not Pelagian.⁵⁵ Read Arminius before you reject him. He said he never taught that true believers fall away. Pray with Pentecostals. Sit in their services and watch them love Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit because you fear the excesses of some charismatics. Arminians and Pentecostals, stop calling Calvinists the chosen frozen. Olson, one of your best scholars, says a person can be “as marvelously saved and as dedicated a Christian as possible and be a Calvinist.”⁵⁶ Read the confessions before you mock them. Learn why the study churches test every prophecy. Do not despise doctrine because you fear the coldness of some Calvinists. Pastors on both sides, swap pulpits. Hold joint prayer meetings in your towns. Work the same food pantry and the same prison ministry. Teach your people the other side’s best case before you teach them your answer. Keep your convictions. I keep mine. But hold them as a brother, not as a soldier against your own family. Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Notes

1. Sam Storms, Convergence: Spiritual Journeys of a Charismatic Calvinist (Kansas City, MO: Enjoying God Ministries, 2005), 7. ↩
2. Storms, Convergence, 7. ↩
3. Storms, Convergence, 8. ↩
4. Michael Horton, For Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 11. ↩
5. Horton, For Calvinism, 13. Horton states the stereotype in order to answer it. ↩
6. Horton, For Calvinism, 13. ↩
7. Horton, For Calvinism, 121. ↩
8. Horton, For Calvinism, 121. ↩
9. Horton, For Calvinism, 122. ↩
10. Horton, For Calvinism, 122. ↩
11. Roger E. Olson, Against Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 12. ↩
12. Olson, Against Calvinism, 12. ↩
13. Olson, Against Calvinism, 12. ↩
14. Olson, Against Calvinism, 12. ↩
15. Olson, Against Calvinism, 23. ↩
16. Olson, Against Calvinism, 23. ↩
17. Michael Horton, foreword to Olson, Against Calvinism, 11. ↩
18. James Arminius, “A Declaration of the Sentiments of Arminius,” in The Works of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols and W. R. Bagnall, vol. 1 (Auburn and Buffalo: Derby, Miller and Orton, 1853), 254. ↩
19. Arminius, “Declaration of the Sentiments,” 254. ↩
20. “The Five Arminian Articles,” art. 5, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iv.xv.html. ↩
21. Canons of Dort, Fifth Main Point of Doctrine, art. 8, Christian Reformed Church in North America translation, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dort. ↩
22. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion, 40th anniv. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 75. ↩
23. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 422. ↩
24. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 422–23. ↩
25. Greek text is from The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010). Translations are my own. ↩
26. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 314. ↩
27. Calvin, Catholic Epistles, 314. ↩
28. N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 223. ↩
29. Wright, Justification, 223. ↩
30. Wright, Justification, 222. ↩
31. Wright, Justification, 222. ↩
32. Wright, Justification, 223–24. ↩
33. Westminster Confession of Faith 17.1, Orthodox Presbyterian Church text, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.opc.org/wcf.html. ↩
34. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, art. 5, accessed October 28, 2026, https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/. ↩
35. Westminster Confession of Faith 1.1. ↩
36. General Presbytery of the Assemblies of God, “Assurance of Salvation” (position paper adopted August 5–7, 2017), archived January 4, 2026, https://web.archive.org/web/20260104225848/https://ag.org/Beliefs/Position-Papers/Assurance-of-Salvation. ↩
37. Church of the Nazarene, Manual (2009–2017 editions), Articles of Faith, art. 7, as reproduced at https://www.crivoice.org/creednazarene.html, accessed October 28, 2026. The 2023 Manual may word this differently. ↩
38. The United Methodist Church, Articles of Religion, art. 12, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.umc.org/en/content/articles-of-religion. ↩
39. National Association of Free Will Baptists, Treatise of the Faith and Practices of the Free Will Baptists (2026), “Perseverance of the Saints,” accessed October 28, 2026, https://nafwb.org/site/wp-content/uploads/NAFWB-Treatise-2026.pdf. ↩
40. Augsburg Confession, art. 12, accessed October 28, 2026, https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-xii/. ↩
41. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1861, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P6C.HTM. ↩
42. Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths, arts. 7–8, archived January 8, 2026, https://web.archive.org/web/2026/https://ag.org/Beliefs/Statement-of-Fundamental-Truths. ↩
43. Nicola Menzie, “Strange Fire Conference: John MacArthur Calls Out Charismatic Movement as Unfaithful,” Christian Post, October 17, 2013, https://www.christianpost.com/news/strange-fire-conference-john-macarthur-calls-out-charismatic-movement-as-unfaithful.html. ↩
44. “IMB Drops Ban on Speaking in Tongues,” Christianity Today, May 14, 2015, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2015/05/imb-ban-speaking-in-tongues-baptism-baptist-missionary/. ↩
45. Storms, Convergence, 8. ↩
46. Storms, Convergence, 8. ↩
47. Center for the Study of Global Christianity, “Quick Facts,” Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, accessed October 28, 2026, https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/research/quick-facts/. ↩
48. Center for the Study of Global Christianity, “Quick Facts.” ↩
49. Gina A. Zurlo, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing, “World Christianity 2025: Regional Perspectives,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 49, no. 1 (January 2025): 62–74, table “Status of Global Christianity, 2025,” line 31. ↩
50. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, “2020 U.S. Religion Census,” press release, accessed October 28, 2026, https://usreligioncensus.org/node/1641. ↩
51. Center for the Study of Global Christianity, “Quick Facts.” ↩
52. Pew Research Center, “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” December 19, 2011, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/12/19/global-christianity-movements-and-denominations/. ↩
53. John Wesley, A Sermon on the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield (London: J. and W. Oliver, 1770), 26. ↩
54. Wesley, Sermon on the Death of Whitefield, 25. ↩
55. Horton, For Calvinism, 122. ↩
56. Olson, Against Calvinism, 12. ↩