While I often joke and use satire as a rhetorical device against Arminians, one charge that Arminians make that I do take umbrage with is the claim that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism. This has been seen in the comments features of several blogs recently, such as Walter’s claim on Reppert’s blog that “I read somewhere that a Calvinist would rather cross the country to debate their theological system than cross the street to witness to someone” or Johnny Dialetic’s claim on Birch’s blog “We all know it [Calvinism] dampens evangelism and chills churches.”
The reason I take umbrage is because not only do I know more Calvinists than Arminians who are missionaries, but I know I evangelize to atheists far more than these “fine” Arminian representatives do.
In point of fact, my personal blog keeps statistics on the posts that I do. Since most of my main blog articles are cross posted on Triablogue as well (I only keep personal stuff on just my personal blog), a glimpse over them will show a fairly accurate representation of the spread of posts that I write and who the audience is.
Thus, I’ve written a total of 30 articles on Arminianism and 35 on Calvinism (and there are some posts that are archived under both, of course). In contrast, I’ve got 157 on Atheism, including 84 on presuppositionalism alone. There are another 144 on science, 45 on math, and 52 on evolution, but these don’t all fit as apologetics against Atheism. Still, 137 articles on Atheism is more than 5x the number of articles I’ve written about Arminians.
For someone who would rather cross the country to debate Calvinism than witness to someone across the street, I sure engage a lot of atheists.
So I could simply ask, how many atheists have our Arminian detractors engaged? How many people have they witnessed to, those who say that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism? And what are the odds that someone who’s writing a blog called “Classical Arminianism: A FORMER CALVINIST’S CENSURE AGAINST CALVINISM AND PROMOTION OF 5-POINT ARMINIANISM” is going to dedicate five times the volume of posts against Calvinists to posts against atheism? Or even Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, or New Agers?
