# What is Calvinism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068 "2008-11-04T16:17:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2008, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/41 "2008-11-04T21:59:13Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Having a Theology with nothing in it doesn’t mean you don’t have one, any more than having an equation which equals “0” means there’s no equation. You have specific, definite views about the existence and nature of the divine. That is a theology. You will not that I did _not_ include agnostic. > > The Smack, She is Laid Down and Sexified. You have confused “theology” with “paradigm.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/42 "2008-11-04T22:03:10Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Lotsa Calvinists in my area. Most of my relatives are Calvinist, my dad was raised Calvinist. TULIP theology is (or was, at least) a major part of youth religious education there. > > They schismed a lot in our area, though. One town of 2000 has 4 Calvinist churches: Orthodox Presbyterian, Conservative Presbyterian (the regular Presbys got too liberal for them), Reformed, and Christian Reformed. I’m surprised there is no American Reformed church in your area, the church I was raised in. They are tied to the Canadian Reformed Church I was raised in, and having relatives on my mothers side in the Christian Reformed Church, I can tell you that the American Reformed are way more extreme than the Christian Reformed. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2008, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/43 "2008-11-04T23:08:07Z")
> [@WoodenTaco](#): > > Once Calvinism started spreading, social factors kept it alive. In practice, Calvinist culture was extremely religious, since those who aren’t members of the elect (ie, people who won’t be saved) are shunned by the religious community. So, to stay within the society, people want to prove that they are part of the elect by living extremely religious lives. By merely saying “it doesn’t matter what I do,” you are indicating a lack of religiosity and an apathy towards God. Calvinism emphasizes praising God for his mercies as well as his punishments, not because of a belief that this will lead to salvation but because it should show that you are living a saintly life, and therefore a member of the elect. > People who didn’t follow a godly life were quickly shunned by the entire community. Think Hester Prynne in _The Scarlet Letter_: she’s seen as a sinner, and so she is completely exiled. Even being seen with her is a scandal. Yes, but it’s more than just fear of shunning for nonconformity. A lot of people nowadays, when talking about Calvinism and the early Calvinist movement specifically, tend to overemphasize its sobriety and strictness. (And remember, The Scarlet Letter was written by someone who’s relationship with Calvinism was troublesome at best, and often openly hostile) There was a kind of joy and optimism there. As Paul Seaver said about Wallington and the Commonwealth: > [@](#): > > It may be the Wallington’s politics always a greater reality in the minds of the godly than in the affairs of men. Nevertheless, while that dream had at least the substanc that came of its being widely shared by the members of the godly community, it permitted quite ordinary Englishmen to imagine a radically different world where the whole community would unite in disciplined work and mutual support, where elected leaders who shared their concern for the creation of a godly commonwealth would stand firm for God’s cause, and where the whole community would voluntarily and naturally submit to the spiritual guidance of the prophetic and healing ministry of “God’s ambassadors and messengers”. If it was hard to imagine London without its poor, its idle, it’s drunkards, and its profaners, the existance of Boston Massachusetts, “Wherein all things are done in the form and pattern shewed in the Mount,” suggested that the realization of such an ideal godly commonwealth was not a human impossibility. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2008, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/44 "2008-11-04T23:34:17Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > I’m surprised there is no American Reformed church in your area, the church I was raised in. They are tied to the Canadian Reformed Church I was raised in, and having relatives on my mothers side in the Christian Reformed Church, I can tell you that the American Reformed are way more extreme than the Christian Reformed. ARC? Never heard of it. There’s a lot of variety to CRC churches, or so I’m told by a good friend who’s a Predikant for the RCA, and quite the scholar on the church(es) too. I’d lay odds some of our local CRC congregations would be more conservative than the CRC congregations you experienced. Some were even looked on askance by a few of the more ‘liberal’ CRC congregations (oxymoron tho that is) for being a little too into it. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/45 "2008-11-05T00:03:39Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > You have specific, definite views about the existence and nature of the divine. No, I do not. My whole philosophy is that the case for the supernatural is weak to nonexistent and I’m not accepting anything on faith. > [@](#): > > You will not that I did _not_ include agnostic. ‘Agnostic’ means someone who believes we can’t know anything about the supernatural. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/46 "2008-11-05T00:26:54Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > ARC? Never heard of it. Here’s their website (It’s actually the “Canadian and American Reformed Churches”) > **[Canadian Reformed Churches](https://canrc.org/)** ---
**Author:** ![WoodenTaco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/45deac/32.png) [@WoodenTaco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WoodenTaco)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/47 "2008-11-05T07:43:10Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Yes, but it’s more than just fear of shunning for nonconformity. A lot of people nowadays, when talking about Calvinism and the early Calvinist movement specifically, tend to overemphasize its sobriety and strictness. (And remember, The Scarlet Letter was written by someone who’s relationship with Calvinism was troublesome at best, and often openly hostile) There was a kind of joy and optimism there. As Paul Seaver said about Wallington and the Commonwealth: Yeah, the Scarlet Letter is far from a historical document, but I don’t think it’s actually that exaggerated. I’m not sure of the application of that Seaver quote, but have you read any of Wallington’s journals? He’s not kidding around. He would write letters to neighbors if he saw them drinking to chastise them - and this wasn’t particularly odd, it was expected. He was convinced that people who didn’t go to Church on the Sabbath would all be killed sooner or later by God, and wrote pages and pages and pages explaining in gruesome detail the deaths of various people who failed to follow the Sabbath. And I’d emphasize the “gruesome” part: there was a drunk woman he watched get thrown under a cartwheel of a moving carriage so that “her brains did fall on her neck cloth,” to quote one of the tamer passages. Now, there’s no question that the Puritans this devout were a minority, and in Britain they didn’t always form a distinct, discrete community like they often did in the colonies (but even there it could get murky). But I don’t think its a stretch to say that socializing factors were involved. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/48 "2008-11-05T08:43:57Z")
> [@Great\_Dave](#): > > Well, I’m not entirely up on the details, but IIRC, this was the church of the Boers that helped justify apartheid. > > I started having my doubts in catechism class one Sunday morn before the service (I was raised CRC) when the pastor explained thusly- imagine that all of us sinners are drops careening over Niagra Falls to Hell. God sticks out a bucket and catches some of us- but only the ones that he has preordained to be the elect. Why not just get a bucket big enough to catch everyone? I was raised Presbyterian, but not in any sense in what you would call a strict religious household. I never did understand the TULIP theology, and I don’t remember anyone ever trying to impress it on me. As I understand it, most Christian sects require the person to _accept_ the grace of God in order to be saved, with allowances for cases where that might be impossible. The whole idea of ‘elect’ seems to run counter to that. Of course, most religions, somewhere along the line tell believers not to evaluate divine justice by human standards, but it still seems bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/49 "2008-11-05T08:50:45Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Yes, but it’s more than just fear of shunning for nonconformity. A lot of people nowadays, when talking about Calvinism and the early Calvinist movement specifically, tend to overemphasize its sobriety and strictness. (And remember, The Scarlet Letter was written by someone who’s relationship with Calvinism was troublesome at best, and often openly hostile) There was a kind of joy and optimism there. As Paul Seaver said about Wallington and the Commonwealth: The genuine intellectual drive within the religious leadership of the Massachusetts Colony is hard to comprehend nowadays when we are so quick to associate religious ardor with suspicion towards learning, and even bald anti-intellectualism. But they did found Harvard–true, at first for the purposes of educating clergy, but then they did want their clergy to be extensively and thoroughly educated by the standards of the time, rather than simply comprising men who could read the Bible and speak of sinners, buckets, and waterfalls. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/50 "2008-11-05T18:15:59Z")
> [@WoodenTaco](#): > > Yeah, the Scarlet Letter is far from a historical document, but I don’t think it’s actually that exaggerated. I’m not sure of the application of that Seaver quote, but have you read any of Wallington’s journals? He’s not kidding around. He would write letters to neighbors if he saw them drinking to chastise them - and this wasn’t particularly odd, it was expected. He was convinced that people who didn’t go to Church on the Sabbath would all be killed sooner or later by God, and wrote pages and pages and pages explaining in gruesome detail the deaths of various people who failed to follow the Sabbath. And I’d emphasize the “gruesome” part: there was a drunk woman he watched get thrown under a cartwheel of a moving carriage so that “her brains did fall on her neck cloth,” to quote one of the tamer passages. There certainly was a good deal of social and religious pressure to conform. I’m not disagreeing with you there. The Puritans believed both that God would punish evildoers and that it was the duty of every Christian to encourage others, which included chastizing and denouncing them if they sinned. There was also, of course, excommunication for public and notorious violation of church laws.(And yeah, Wallington’s journals are cheerfully gruesome) However, all that being said, there were more reasons to become Calvinist and stay Calvinist than simple fear of ostracism. The English Puritans weren’t a people walking around in fear all the time. There was a kind of hope and optimism there…they were God’s elect, living according to God’s laws for His holy purpose, a beacon to the nations. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068/51 "2008-11-05T18:44:36Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Here’s their website (It’s actually the “Canadian and American Reformed Churches”) > > [http://www.canrc.org/](http://www.canrc.org/) Thanks. Interesting that they’re not in Wisconsin. But I didn’t note a lot of difference in their beliefs from that of our local CRC. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-calvinism/471068.md?page=2)