Leaving Calvinism: Free to Decide

Free to Decide: Confessions of a Former Calvinist by Brandon Cox

 This pastor tells us honestly how he was influenced into Calvinism, how it affected his ministry and pride, and how he came out of Calvinism.  

 He also shows us how all the points of Calvinism hinge on each other, making it stable in itself but fragile if any one of those points should be disproven.  (Calvinism, I believe, hinges on Total Depravity and a wrong view of God's sovereignty.  And therefore, they will guard these doctrines with all they've got, which is what gives rise to all their word games, mind games, twisted verses, double meanings, etc..)

 I appreciate that he took the time to share his story of how Calvinism gets entrenched, as well as how people can come out of it.  (I still have hope for those at my ex-church.)

 I think this line says a lot:  "Formerly I had sought proof of Calvinism, now I simply wanted God's answers to my deepest questions."

 If more Calvinists adopted this principle, a lot more of them would see the light.

 (Also read the that first long comment from Dawn at the bottom.  It's good.)

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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" posts).  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.]    And so here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinists," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify as a Calvinist, I tried to figure it out based on the statements of faith of the groups/churches they belong to, the books they write, the things they say o
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Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous? (re-updated)

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Because it  appears  to teach biblical truth while actually teaching  the opposite  - while using  manipulation and cult-like tactics to suck you in!  And it's spreading.  Stealthily, fast, aggressively. (We watched it happen firsthand in our church, which is why I wrote this blog.  See  "What's the best way to make people agree with your Calvinist views?"    Sadly, we ended up  leaving that church , a place we attended almost 20 years.) [ I updated this November 2022 to try to shorten it.  I failed.  But I hope it's more readable and streamlined at least.   If you only read one anti-Calvinism post of mine, I think it should be this one.  But I'm warning you, this post is long.  Very long.  So pack a lunch and bring a sleeping bag.  But it has to be long because Calvinism is so deceptively convoluted that it takes time to peel off the layers so that you can see it for what it really is.  My hope is that with this one long post, I can show the deceptiveness of
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Snippets to Ponder, part 2 (#9-13)

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[Topics in this post: The lack of God's love; spiritual PTSD; what's sin and injustice for us to do is okay and justice for God to do; liar; and "non-Calvinism is disgusting and immoral."  Click here for part 1 ] #13:   This is not a snippet from anything but just a thought I want to add, now that you see what Calvinism teaches.  Calvinist pastors preach often about how depraved and wretched and sinful we are, about how we should fall on our knees in gratitude that God chose to save anyone at all when we are all so terrible, and how we should be okay with God's right to predestine people to hell because  (according to them) God gets glory for it and because  they deserve it even though God predestined it.  Blah, blah, blah. But do you know what we don't hear much about from Calvinists: God's love (unless it's for "the elect").  The two greatest commandments: Love God and love others. Calvinists are so overly-focused on their doctrines of tota
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (simplified version)

(For the extended version of this post, which I recommend, click here .  It is loaded with lots more information.  This simplified one is just the highlights.  And feel free to copy this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this blog so that they can find the original post.  Thank you.  New : For the super-short version, click here .  And FYI: I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed their article after I linked to it.  So if their article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.  ( Read my "Letter to Our Elders Regarding Calvinism Growing in Our Church" here.)   And I was thinking about what precautions I might take to make sure we didn't end up in another Calvinist church (that is, whe
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Leaving Calvinism: Comments from Ex-Calvinists #11

Here is the last of the ex-Calvinist testimonies.  The first one is from this post:  X-Calvinist Corner .   (It's an Arminian website, but I am not Arminian.)  I am going to highlight some of the comments that stood out to me the most.  If you want to read everything that everyone said, click on the link above: Dana Steele writes: I grew up in a Calvinistic Baptist church from age 11.  The 5-points of Calvinism (TULIP) were taught regularly with great enthusiasm ... But it wasn’t until college that I began to understand and embrace the “Doctrines of Grace” and TULIP more fully....  I also learned to love the doctrine of election because it meant that God loved me personally and specifically in a unique way.  Though it made me a little embarrassed to think that God did not love everyone this way, I was content to leave this as a mystery.  Who am I to question God?  I was just glad I was one of the lucky (I mean chosen) ones. ... [As A Calvinist]   I had developed a sense of theologi
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Here are links to a few posts that reveal the cult-like side of Calvinism: "Why Calvinism is a Cult" "Calvinism is a Counterfeit Christian Cult" "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" I left a comment at Hoppers Crossing Christian Church about their post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control."  I will also print my comment here for your information: I was reading your post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" (2/02/20) and so much of what you said fits the Calvinist church we recently left.  Here are some of the cult-like things that happened after a Calvinist pastor took over our non-Calvinist church: 1.   From the beginning, he started laying the groundwork that disagreement with him (about his Calvinist view of predestination and God's sovereignty, in particular) was not allowed and that anyone who did disagree with him was unhumble and disagreeing with God.   Things like (paraphrases): "Humble people have no problem with God's sovereignty
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Before we left our church because of Calvinism, we sent a long letter to the elders , expressing our concerns.  However, none of the elders cared enough or were concerned enough to do anything about it.  And so we left our church home, the place we had been at and loved for almost 20 years, the church we raised our kids in. After awhile, I became concerned that maybe the Evangelical Free Church, in general, didn't realize that there were dogmatic Calvinist pastors taking over their churches, blocking other views, manipulating people into agreeing with them.  And I thought maybe they would want to know this, especially since it seemed to contradict their "official stance" about this issue, which I believed was supposed to be a middle-of-the-road approach, falling under the heading of "significance of silence" (where they don't let the small controversial issues become big divisive issues).  I figured that if a pastor in one of their churches was manipulat
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I wasn't looking for this and usually don't watch videos like this, but it was in a list of suggested videos and caught my interest.  And since it's Halloween, I thought it was worth sharing on my other blogs, especially because she's so real, honest, humble, and matter-of-fact about it.  (I don't like overly sensationalized stories.  And FYI: I haven't watched any other videos of hers but these.) "Halloween warning from an ex-witch (warning heavy talk)"  (26 minutes long) And even better is her testimony about coming to Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior:  "From the occult to Christ"  (8 1/2 minutes long).  So awesome to see her testimony and her journey of faith!   But what really caught my attention - what made me think to also share this video on my anti-Calvinism blog - is when she said that during a Reiki session, some witches told her that they saw her spirit guides and that the spirit guides want to "help align your chakra about
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