Bible Belt

A Bible Belt is an area in which socially conservative Christian Evangelical Protestantism is a pervasive or dominant part of the culture.

In particular, in the United States, it is the region where the Southern Baptist Convention denomination is strongest. It includes the entire South and nearby areas. Bible belts can also be found in other countries, including Canada and some parts of Europe. The name is derived from the heavy emphasis on literal intepretations of the Bible in Evangelical denominations.

The American region is usually contrasted with the pervasive socially liberal Christian denominations of the northeast and the relatively agnostic western United States, where the percentage of non-religious people are the highest in the nation, reaching its maximum in the northwestern state of Washington at 27%, compared to the Bible belt state of Alabama, at only 7%.

Geography

Although exact boundaries do not exist, it is generally considered to cover much of the area stretching from Texas in the southwest, northwest to Kansas, northeast to part of Virginia, and southeast to northern Florida.

Buckle of the belt

Several locations (sometimes humorously) are occasionally referred to as the "Buckle of the Bible Belt" :

Nashville, Tennessee, home to the headquarters of many denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church's Publishing House, is most frequently termed the "Buckle of the Bible Belt" (in addition, it is referred to as the "Protestant Vatican").
Greenville, South Carolina, home of Bob Jones University
Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of Oral Roberts University and the ministries of Kenneth Hagin and the late Billy James Hargis
Dayton, Tennessee, site of the Scopes Monkey Trial and home of Bryan College
Abilene, Texas, home of Abilene Christian University
Dallas, Texas, home of the conservative Dallas Theological Seminary
Fort Worth, Texas, home of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the ministry of Kenneth Copeland
Cleveland, Tennessee, home of Lee University and the Church of God International Offices
Springfield, Missouri, home of the Assemblies of God
Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Jerry Falwell's ministry and Liberty University
Virginia Beach, Virginia, home of Regent University and the 700 Club with Pat Robertson
Charlotte, North Carolina, home of Billy Graham and his Center

There are also several locations outside the Bible Belt which are centers of evangelical Christian activity. They include Colorado Springs, Colorado; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Wheaton, Illinois; and parts of Southern California.

Outside the U.S.

In Canada, the term is also sometimes used to describe several disparate regions which have a higher than average level of church attendance.

These include the majority of rural southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, parts of southern Manitoba, the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and the Saint John River Valley of New Brunswick.

In Australia, the term usually refers to tracts within individual cities, for example the north-western suburbs of Sydney focusing on Baulkham Hills and the north-eastern suburbs of Adelaide focusing on Paradise, Modbury and Golden Grove.

The Netherlands has a Bible Belt (Bijbelgordel) as well, stretching from Zeeland to Overijssel.

In Sweden, there is a Bible Belt covering the area around the city of Jönköping, with a particular high concentration of non-conformists (Protestant congregations not affiliated with the Church of Sweden), especially Pentecostals and Congregationalists.

In Norway, the Bible Belt covers the coast on the southern parts of the country, where there are a high consentration of Pentecostals, Free Churches and conservative members of the Church of Norway.

In Northern Ireland, the region of North Antrim is often referred to as Northern Ireland's Bible Belt. This is because the area is rural, conservative, mainly born-again Christian and predominantly Protestant. The MP for this constituency is Ian Paisley, a notoriously extreme conversative Protestant. The town of Ballymena, the seat of the Paisley family, is often referred to as the 'buckle' of the Bible Belt.

In England, two Bible Belts have been suggested. The first is to the south-west of London, particularly in the county of Surrey, where there are numerous large evangelical churches of both traditional (especially Anglican and Baptist) and "new church" denominations. This is the wealthiest region of the country and commentators have noted with a degree of irony that it also the area in which Christianity has been most successful.

A second English Bible Belt, larger but less dense, has also been observed along the south coast between Eastbourne and Southampton. Here, the new churches are prevalent. It is questionable as to whether these areas fit the stated definition of Bible Belt as, even within them, church attendance is limited to a small proportion of the population. However, both of them have been described as such in the Christian press, indicating their recognition within the Christian subculture.

Geographical extent

Tweedie (1978) defines the Bible belt in terms of the audience for religious television. He finds two belts, one more eastern that stretches from northern Florida through Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and into Virginia, and another that is more western, moving from central Texas to the Dakotas, but concentrated in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Mississippi.

In terms of demographics, the belt may in fact be most accurately described as extending westward to include most of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, and perhaps even farther into New Mexico.

The accuracy of this expanded schema, however, rests on the question of whether demographic proportion of evangelical Christians (or "fundamentalist Christians") is sufficient to include an area as being part of the Belt, or whether other cultural characteristics are necessary.

Even with the presently accepted boundaries (as indicated on the map in this article), it is possible to theorize that the Bible Belt could be divided into two or more sub-regions, at least one of which could include the westernmost section -- including Texas -- as being distinctive from the deep South and most of the Southeastern United States.

It is possible that the extent of the Bible Belt has grown in recent decades, expanding northward and westward; indeed, evangelical Christianity has grown significantly in the United States in recent years.

It is also possible, however, that populations in these areas more recently recognized as heavily evangelical have not substantially changed but were not previously acknowledged as forming part of the Belt.

Political, Cultural Context

The term Bible Belt is used mainly, but not uniquely, by detractors of or negative anti-Protestant commentators about region that is very religious, and allows religion to spill over into what the commentators believe are inappropriate areas, such as politics, science and education.

The term was coined by H.L. Mencken. Reporting on the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee to the Baltimore Evening Sun on July 15, 1925, Mencken wrote of the region as "this bright, shining, buckle of the Bible belt".

In 1950, President Harry 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 Amanda Smith, Hostage of Fortune (2001) p 604.

References

Randall Balmer; Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism Baylor University Press, 2004
Denman, Stan. "Political Playing for the Soul of the American South: Theater and the Maintenance of Cultural Hegemony in the American Bible Belt" Southern Quarterly (2004) v. 42, Spring, 64-72.
Heatwole, C.A. "The Bible Belt; a problem of regional definition" Journal of Geography (1978) 77; 50-5
Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Knopf, 1997)
Samuel S. Hill, Charles H. Lippy, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. Encyclopedia Of Religion In The South (2005)
Charles H. Lippy, ed. "Religion in South Carolina" (1993)
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (1980).
Jeffrey P. Moran; "The Scopes Trial and Southern Fundamentalism in Black and White: Race, Region, and Religion" Journal of Southern History. Volume: 70. Issue: 1. 2004. pp 95+.
Chris C. Park; Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion Routledge, 1994
Randy J. Sparks. Religion in Mississippi University Press of Mississippi for the Mississippi Historical Society, . 2001. ISBN 1-57806-361-2.
William A. Stacey and Anson Shupe; "Religious Values and Religiosity in the Textbook Adoption Controversy in Texas, 1981" Review of Religious Research, Vol. 25, 1984
Tweedie, S.W. (1978) Viewing the Bible Belt. Journal of Popular Culture 11; 865-76

Arts

Southern Arts Federation

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Bible Belt