The Church of the Nazarene is an international Christian denomination in the Protestant tradition. An outgrowth of the Wesleyan Holiness Movement from the mid-1800s in North America, the Church of the Nazarene grew from about 10,000 members at what is considered its official founding in the early 1900s to worldwide membership of almost 2 million in the early 21st century. Doctrinally, it draws on the Arminian tradition of grace and the Wesleyan tradition of holiness.

It is beneficial to examine the church from three perspectives including its history, doctrines and organization. Understanding the Holiness Movement offers important historical context. John Wesley, who was instrumental in founding the Methodist movement in the mid-19th century, preached the doctrine of entire sanctification, which meant for the believer in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit could give the ability to live free of the corrupting influence of sin. This movement gained wide popularity in North America and gave rise to many churches and church groups.

The Church of the Nazarene grew out of a combination of these church groups. A seminal point in the church’s history was the 1907 coming together of the Church of the Nazarene, which was a large group of churches in the western United States, and the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, the group’s counterpoint in the eastern United States and Canada. The combined group was called the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. A year later, with the addition of several smaller groups in Texas and the Midwest, the merged units took the name Church of the Nazarene.

Doctrines of the church center on 16 Article of Faith, which are reviewed and reprinted every four years by the church’s General Assembly in a book called Manual: The Church of the Nazarene. In general, the Church of the Nazarene believes in a trinitarian God, three-fold grace, entire sanctification, healing and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Three-fold grace includes prevenient grace, that is the general grace of God that allows all humans to seek him; justifying grace, which grants the atonement for both a sin nature and personal sins to those who believe in Jesus; and sanctifying grace, which allows for the entire sanctification described above.

Organizationally, the Church of the Nazarene is both congregational and episcopal, that is there are elements of local and denominational control. Women and men can be ordained to serve as church pastors. Churches are grouped into districts, districts into regions and regions in a worldwide general assembly. Three words describe the church’s principal values, Christian, missional, holiness. Under this organization and with those values, the Church of the Nazarene is involved around the world in evangelist missions, social welfare missions, education, publishing, youth ministry and discipleship.