this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
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i know its not a denomination but more like a current in "americhristianity" but isnt this part of what calvinism was about or tried to do?
No, exactly the opposite. A core element of Calvinism is "unconditional election," the idea that what you do fundamentally doesn't have any causal factor in the decision of going to Heaven or Hell, but in fact it was God's totally sovereign choice, his arbitrary will without constraint by any sort of other rule or principal, though I believe it was said that who was chosen could be known by God bestowing them with grace to have genuine faith and be redeemed in Christ (i.e. someone who dies a miserable heretic goes to Hell not because of their own agency but because God chose not to redeem them, which was reflected in their lack of faith in life).
It is true that culturally there would still be ideas among Calvinists that good people are economically productive (a perversion of the idea of "works" in the Bible), and it's debateable how committed the popular audience was to the true meaning of "unconditional election", but still none of them would say that work is enough, that you don't need the grace (unearned reward) of God regardless. So functionally, many people did believe in a combination of grace and works, but never in works alone beyond like an individual's idiosyncrasies that would be cursed as heretical arrogance by the rest of the community.
Some of this is definitely disconnected from a meaningful portion of Calvinist culture, but that's to be expected when one talks about the opinions of theologians.