Why do more people in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina believe that Jesus is the Christ than other states beside Utah.
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Why do more people in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina believe that Jesus is the Christ than other states beside Utah.
We have a smaller infestation of northern "liberals". Sadly, that's changing.Quote:
Originally Posted by dtknowles
Where do your statistics come from?
Assuming your figures are correct, I'd say nominal Christianity is a cultural thing. Mental assent is not necessarily life changing faith though.
It's the bible belt after all.
And sweet tea nirvana.Quote:
Originally Posted by frkelly74
AKA nectar of Nazareth.
Can I get an A-men?!
If it ain't sweet - and cold - it ain't tea ... and that's a well known fact!
Hollywood girly men sip hot tea from dainty little china teacups with flowers on them, real men swaller real tea from ice filled quart Mason jars.
I think you are correct. It is cultural. Why is the bible belt culture not more wide spread? Why is it a belt and not a blanket?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ickisrulz
Tim
I think there is a clue in this response. While sweet tea goes beyond the Bible Belt it is not taking over the world.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1hole
Tim
Jesus, our Creator; gives eternal life to whom He is pleased to give it. A man is enabled to come to Him and be healed by our Father. A man must be born from above by the Spirit in order to see the spiritual kingdom of our Creator. John 1v13, 3v3, 5v21, 6v65
It is interesting that a geographical region of a country might seem to hold more of those who have been chosen to receive our Creator’s gift of salvation. It’s also interesting that the “ front lines “ of the spiritual war seem to be in Africa and Asia rather than this country,
There's just more plain old common sense in those parts of the world :)
It seems to be where the persecution is the greatest, Christianity thrives the most, which is now the middle east, or Africa.
Gentle climate?
When you're shoveling out from under four feet of snow in a frozen wasteland or jumping from one air-conditioned building or vehicle to another in a parched desert - - or more to the point, losing crops and family members to those weather extremes - maybe it's harder to accept the notion that there is a god that gives two poops about your physical or spiritual well being?
Of course, in the Southern states, God sends humidity, fire ants, and malaria-packing mosquitoes, so the same interpretation could be equally valid there.
It could also be economic and cultural. A lot more trade, rapid exchange of ideas, and science went on up north back in the day. More chance that folks up there had easier access to books other than the Bible.
We have plenty of God fearing people up here in Minnesota too. Churches all over the place. We are rather quiet about our faith, not so much "in your face" as when I lived in VA. Thank God for you all, love to read all the replies!
DT, those are states with healthy regard for tradition and respect for the near universal acceptance that there really IS a loving God somewhere in the Heavens, that created this world and all in it, including us. And it's where money is NOT the chief goal of our efforts. Mostly, we seek a good family life and relationships with our friends. Up north and sometimes west, the citizens' regard for the eternal is not generally or typically so great as it is in the south. It's really just that simple. We southerners were largely farmers, historically, and farmers always have closer ties to the land, and must depend on the weather for our crops to make good, so we're naturally more attuned to being in close personal contact with the Lord. Elsewhere, industry and working cattle dominated the cultures, and that can never bring the average person into quite as close a contact with the eternal things as we Southerners have historically experienced.
It's just a natural result of our history, though there are certainly great and mature Christians, as well as heinous disbelievers and miscreants all over in any culture. Sim brings these types of things everywhere. Areas where Christianity predominates seem to be more effective at dealing with these things, though lynchings and other things still raised their ugly heads occasionally in all areas. My grandfather attended the last lynching in my county in the very early 1900's (1901 I believe?) Sin is everywhere, and it's no accident that cultures that honor our forebears and truly seek Him, wind up with more churches. Churches are gathering places for sinners, not angels, but even so, they STILL make a MUCH nicer place to live and raise a family.
You really should not jump to strange hypotheses based on a single statistic.
For example there are a lot of Jewish people that have been awarded Nobel prizes. The number is all out of proportion to the number of Jewish people in the population. Based on that little statistic someone might think that Jews were smarter than both Muslims and Christians. Or you could take the gross domestic product of the bible belt states, their SAT, GRE, GMAT and ACT scores, plus their graduation rates from high school and college programs and you might want to hypothesize those folks are lazy and dumb. Or you could use those same data to calculate the correlation coefficient between Christianity and poor performance in school. There are a lot of ways to lie with statistics. There was even a little booklet titled "How to Lie with Statistics". You can find the text of it on line.
You might want to credit Christians with a lot of things but they did not cure polio.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are both Jewish. So were Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. You can also look up the statistic on religious affiliation in US prisons and find that a significant majority of the criminal population profess to be Christians.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackwater
The original reason for migration to the now United States (Eastern Coast) was for religious reasons. In Europe the Catholic Church and the Church of England were the controling forces up till the Reformation. When the Bible was printed on the printing press, instead of hand copied, it became much more available to the "common" man. After that the Protestants sought a place where they could worship according to their interpretation of the Bible. These seperate beliefs are now what we call denominations.
Many of the original colonies were granted on denominational basis by the English kings. So the original roots of religion was in the original 13 colonies. The Bible Belt is roughly one state over from the original 13. Sure there are Christians everywhere.