As a young man, Lincoln enjoyed reading the works of deists such as Thomas Paine. He drafted a pamphlet incorporating such ideas but did not publish it. After charges of hostility to Christianity almost cost him a congressional bid, he kept his unorthodox beliefs private. The one aspect of his parents' Calvinist religion that Lincoln apparently embraced wholeheartedly throughout his life was the "doctrine of necessity", also known as predestination, determinism, or fatalism. It was almost always through these lenses that Lincoln assessed the meaning of the Civil War.