The area roughly considered to constitute the Bible Belt
The Bible Belt is an informal region in the Southern United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a strong role in society and politics, and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average.
The region is usually contrasted with the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes, the Mormon Corridor in Utah and southern Idaho, and the relatively secular Western and New England regions of the United States. Whereas the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious is the New England state of Vermont at 37%, in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 12%. Tennessee has the highest proportion of Evangelical Protestants, at 52%. The Evangelical influence is strongest in northern Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, southern Virginia, South Carolina, and eastern Texas. The earliest known usage of the term "Bible Belt" was by American journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken, who in 1924 wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune: "The old game, I suspect, is beginning to play out in the Bible Belt." In 1927, Mencken claimed the term as his invention.
Geography
The
name "Bible Belt" has been applied historically to the South and parts
of the Midwest, but is more commonly identified with the South. In a
1961 study, Wilbur Zelinsky
delineated the region as the area in which Protestant denominations,
especially Southern Baptist, Methodist, and evangelical, are the
predominant religious affiliation. The region thus defined included most
of the Southern United States, including most of Texas and Oklahoma, and in the states south of the Ohio River, and extending east to include central West Virginia and Virginia, from the Shenandoah Valley southward. In addition, the Bible Belt covers most of Missouri and Kentucky and southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. On the other hand, areas in the South which are not
considered part of the Bible Belt include heavily Catholic Southern
Louisiana, central and southern Florida, which have been settled mainly
by immigrants and Americans from elsewhere in the country, and
overwhelmingly Hispanic South Texas. A 1978 study by Charles Heatwole
identified the Bible Belt as the region dominated by 24 fundamentalist
Protestant denominations, corresponding to essentially the same area
mapped by Zelinsky.
According to Stephen W. Tweedie, an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at Oklahoma State University, the Bible Belt is now viewed in terms of numerical concentration of the audience for religious television. He finds two belts: one more eastern that stretches from Florida, (excluding Miami, Tampa and South Florida), through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and into Southern Virginia ; and another concentrated in Texas (excluding El Paso, and South Texas), Arkansas, Louisiana, (excluding New Orleans and Acadiana), Oklahoma, Missouri (excluding St. Louis), Kansas, and Mississippi.
"[H]is research also broke the Bible Belt into two core regions, a
western region and an eastern region. Tweedie's western Bible Belt was
focused on a core that extended from Little Rock, Arkansas to Tulsa,
Oklahoma. His eastern Bible Belt was focused on a core that included the
major population centers of Virginia and North Carolina.
Bible-minded cities map
A study was commissioned by the American Bible Society
to survey the importance of the Bible in the metropolitan areas of the
United States. The report was based on 42,855 interviews conducted
between 2005 and 2012. It determined the 10 most "Bible-minded" cities
were Knoxville, Tennessee; Shreveport, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Missouri; Charlotte, North Carolina;, Lynchburg, Virginia; Huntsville-Decatur, Alabama; and Charleston, West Virginia.
In addition to the South, there is a smaller Bible Belt in West Michigan, centered around the heavily Dutch-influenced cities of Holland and Grand Rapids. Christian colleges in that region include Calvin College, Hope College, Cornerstone University, Grace Bible College, and Kuyper College. West Michigan is generally fiscally and socially conservative.
History
During the colonial period (1607–1776), the South was a stronghold of the Anglican church.
Its transition to a stronghold of non-Anglican Protestantism occurred
gradually over the next century as a series of religious revival
movements, many associated with the Baptist denomination, gained great
popularity in the region.
It seems a link between the colonial Bible Belt (the North, especially New England
with its Puritan heritage) and the later Southern Bible Belt may be
seen in the impact which some Northern figures had on the religious
development of the South (perhaps not incomparable to the origins of Mormonism in the North, in spite of its later association with Utah). "The centre of Particular Baptist activity in early America was in the Middle Colonies.
In 1707 five churches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were
united to form the Philadelphia Baptist Association, and through the
association they embarked upon vigorous missionary activity. By 1760 the
Philadelphia association included churches located in the present
states of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Virginia, and West Virginia; and by 1767 further multiplication of
churches had necessitated the formation of two subsidiary associations,
the Warren in New England and the Ketochton in Virginia. The
Philadelphia association also provided leadership in organizing the
Charleston Association in the Carolinas in 1751." An influential figure was Shubal Stearns:
"Shubael Stearns, a New England Separate Baptist, migrated to Sandy
Creek, North Carolina, in 1755 and initiated a revival that quickly
penetrated the entire Piedmont region. The churches he organized were
brought together in 1758 to form the Sandy Creek Association".
Stearns was brother-in-law of Daniel Marshall, who was born in Windsor,
Connecticut and "is generally considered the first great Baptist leader
in Georgia. He founded Kiokee Baptist Church, the oldest continuing
Baptist congregation in the state". Also, Wait Palmer, of Toland, Connecticut,
may have influenced African American Christianity in the South: "The
Silver Bluff, South Carolina, revival was a seminal development, whose
role among blacks rivalled that played by the Sandy Creek revival of the
Separate Baptists, to which it was indirectly related. It was probably
the same Wait Palmer who had baptized Shubal Stearns in 1751 who came to
Silver Bluff in 1775, baptizing and constituting a church. Abraham
Marshall, who encouraged the later offshoots, was a Separate Baptist of
the Sandy Creek school. The revival at the Silver Bluff plantation of
George Galphin (some twelve miles from Augusta, Georgia) had brought
David George to the Afro-Baptist faith and had provided a ministry for George Liele".
According to Thomas S. Kidd, "As early as 1758, Sandy Creek
missionaries helped organize a slave congregation, the Bluestone Church,
on the plantation of William Byrd III, which may have been the first
independently functioning African American church in North America. The
church did not last long, but it reflected the Baptists' commitment to
evangelizing African Americans".
And according to Gayraud S. Wilmore, "The preaching of New England
Congregationalists such as Jonathan Edwards about the coming millennium,
and his conviction that Christians were called to prepare for it,
reached the slaves through the far-ranging missionary work of white
evangelists such as Shubal Stearns, Wait Palmer, and Matthew Moore - all
of whom left Congregationalism and became Separatist Baptist preachers
in the plantation country of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia".
Buckle
A billboard near the center of Alabama
Several locations are occasionally referred to as "the Buckle of the Bible Belt":
- Abilene, Texas a city of 117,000, is home to three radically reformed Christian universities: the Baptist affiliated Hardin-Simmons University, the Church of Christ's Abilene Christian University, and Methodist founded McMurry University.
- Nashville, Tennessee, sometimes referred to as "the Protestant Vatican", has over 700 churches, several seminaries, and a number of Christian schools, colleges and universities, including Belmont University, Trevecca Nazarene University, Lipscomb University, Free Will Baptist Bible College and American Baptist College. Nashville is the seat of the National Baptist Convention, USA, the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Free Will Baptists, the Gideons International, the Gospel Music Association, and Thomas Nelson, the world's largest producer of Bibles.
- Tulsa, Oklahoma is a city where Protestant and, in particular, Southern Baptist and other evangelical Christian traditions are very prominent. Tulsa is home to Oral Roberts University, and RHEMA Bible Training College (in Broken Arrow). A number of prominent Protestant Christians have lived or studied in Tulsa, including Joel Osteen, Kenneth E. Hagin, Carlton Pearson, Kenneth Copeland, Billy Joe Daugherty, Smokie Norful and Billy James Hargis. Tulsa is also home to a number of vibrant Mainline Protestant congregations. Some of these congregations were founded during the oil boom of the early twentieth century and their facilities are noted for striking architecture, such as the art deco Boston Avenue Methodist Church and First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa.
- Greenville, South Carolina is a city where many Baptist, particularly Independent Baptists are located. Greenville has 124 Baptist churches in the Greenville area. It also is the home of WTBI radio station which plays old-fashioned Christian Music 24 hours a day.
Political and cultural context
There has been research that links evangelical Protestantism with social conservatism. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman told Catholic leaders he wanted to send an ambassador to the Vatican.
Truman said the leading Democrats in Congress approved, but they warned
him, "it would defeat Democratic Senators and Congressmen in the Bible
Belt."
In presidential elections, the Bible Belt states of Alabama,
Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas have voted for the Republican
candidate in all elections since 1980; Oklahoma has supported the
Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1968. Other
Bible Belt states have voted for the Republican presidential candidate
in the majority of elections since 1980, but have gone to the Democratic
candidate either once or twice since then. However, with the exception
of Mississippi, historical geographer Barry Vann shows that counties in
the upland areas of the Appalachians and the Ozarks have a more
conservative voting pattern than the counties located in the coastal
plains.
Outside the United States
Australia
In Australia,
the term "Bible Belt" has been used to refer to areas within individual
cities, which have a high concentration of Christians, usually
centralised around a megachurch, for example:
- the north-western suburbs of Sydney focusing on The Hills District, where Hillsong Church is located
- the outer-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, where CityLife Church, Crossway Baptist Church, Stairway Church and Discovery Church are located.
- the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide focusing on Paradise, Modbury and Golden Grove, where Influencers Church is located
- the south-eastern region of Queensland comprising the towns of Laidley, Gatton and Toowoomba.
- the Brisbane southern suburbs of Mansfield, Springwood, Carindale and Mount Gravatt. Garden City Assembly of God church, Citipointe church, Clark Taylor's Worship Centre, and Brisbane Hillsong are notable mega-churches in this area.
Toowoomba city in Queensland has long been regarded as fertile ground for Christian fundamentalist right-wing movements
that adhere to biblical literalism, particularly those within the
Pentecostal and charismatic stream of Christianity. This was
exemplified by the highly publicised rise and subsequent fall of Howard Carter and the Logos Foundation
in the 1980s. The Logos Foundation and other similar movements that
have followed it, operate in a controlling, authoritarian and almost
cultish manner, contributing to their notoriety.
Other similarly conservative Pentecostal churches within the city have,
since that time, banded together into a loose federation known as the
Toowoomba Christian Leaders' Network.
(note - most traditional church denominations have their own, separate
ecumenical group) This network views itself as having a divine mission
to 'take the city for the Lord' and as such, endorses elements of
religious right-wing political advocacy, such as the Australian Christian Lobby(ACL). ACL's former managing director who was raised in the Logos Foundation and is a former Toowoomba City councillor is Lyle Shelton. These church groups are strongly associated with North American trends such as the New Apostolic Reformation, Dominion theology, Five-fold ministry thinking, Kingdom Now theology and revivalism.
They support the achievement of a type of theocratic society where
conservative and literal interpretations of the bible are the dominant
drivers of government, education, the Arts, the media and entertainment.
Churches involved in this group currently include the successor
organization to the Logos Foundation, the Toowoomba City Church, along
with the Range Christian Fellowship, Spring Street Assembly of God,
Christian Outreach Centre, Hume Ridge Church of Christ, Revival
Ministries of Australia Shiloh Centre, the Edge Christian Centre and
many others.
Canada
The province of Saskatchewan has been referred to as Canada's Bible Belt with a significant Catholic, Anabaptist population and other Protestants.
Estonia
Census results
show religious belief in the country is more prevalent in the east
running from north to south along the border with Russia, particularly
in those areas with large populations of Russian Orthodox, Estonian Orthodox and Orthodox Old Believers.
Finland
Conservative Laestadianism, a Finnish Lutheran revival, is widespread in northern (Northern Ostrobothnia and Lapland (Finland)) and central parts (Northern Savonia) of Finland.
Germany
Rural portions of Bavaria, approximately stretching from Franconia into Württemberg, constitute Germany's Bible Belt with mostly Catholics, some Lutherans and Reformed Protestants.
An area in Erzgebirge in Saxony has been described also as the "Saxon Bible Belt" with a notable evangelical Protestant/Christian fundamentalist/free church community, as well as some conservative Lutheran parishes that are opposed to homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony approved church resolutions regarding the issue regardless of opinions within those parishes.
Norway
The Bible Belt of Norway is located mainly in the western part of the country and contains numerous devout Lutherans.
Netherlands
The Bible Belt of the Netherlands stretches from Zeeland, through the West-Betuwe and Veluwe, to the northern parts of the province Overijssel. In this region, orthodox Calvinists prevail.
New Zealand
In
New Zealand, Mount Roskill, Auckland, contains the highest number of
churches per capita in the country, and is the home of several Christian
political candidates.
The electorate was one of the last in the country to go "wet", in 1999,
having formerly been a dry area where the selling of alcohol was
prohibited.
At the 2013 New Zealand census,
the Mangere–Otahuhu local board area of Auckland had the highest
concentration of Christians in New Zealand, with 67.7 percent of the
local board's 71,000 residents identifying as such.
Poland
South and East parts of Poland are much more religious than North and West.
Slovakia
In the eastern and northern parts of Slovakia, Christians comprise a majority, in some towns and villages almost 100%.
Soviet Union
Before its independence, Soviet Ukraine was known as the Bible Belt of the Soviet Union with a significant proportion of Baptists.
Sweden
The area normally called the Bible Belt of Sweden is centered on Jönköping in southern Sweden and contains numerous free churches. There are also numerous conservative Lutheran Laestadians in the Torne valley area in the far north of the country.
United Kingdom and Ireland
In Northern Ireland, the area in County Antrim stretching from roughly Ballymoney to Larne and centred in the area of Ballymena is often referred to as a Bible Belt. This is because the area is heavily Protestant with a large evangelical community. From 1970 to 2010, the MP for North Antrim was Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian
minister well known for his theological fundamentalism. The town of
Ballymena, the largest town in the constituency, is often referred to as
the "buckle" of the Bible Belt. In the Republic of Ireland, County Wicklow and western parts of County Cork have the highest population of Protestants.
