Um, What's the Bible Belt?

When I was six, my family traveled to California to visit my mother’s cousin and her family. We were met at the airport by mom’s cousin and her family and we loaded into their panel wagon for the trip back to the house. My cousin, David, turned to my sister and I, and said, “we’re Jewish, what are you?” And I replied, “We’re girls, silly.”

Apparently the magnitude of that question was beyond my first grade education, and I had no idea that my reply should have been, “Catholic, what’s it to you kid?”

When contemplating the move to the South, we often heard the standard north vs. south barbs, but we also heard incredulous shrieks of, “you’re moving to the Bible Belt!” (Thank goodness our reputations did not precede us.) My reply, “um, I guess so…” when I was really thinking, what the heck is the Bible Belt?

Our friends at Wikepdia.com tell us that – “A Bible Belt is an area in which Christian Evangelical Protestantism is a pervasive or dominant part of the culture. In particular it is the region where the Southern Baptist Convention denomination is strongest. It covers a number of southern Middle-West and Southern states in the United States. In the U.S., the stronghold of the Bible Belt is typically seen as the South, due to the colonial foundations of Protestantism in the culture of the region. The major forms were of Tidewater Anglicanism after the Church of England and Appalachia Presbyterianism after the Church of Scotland.”

This definition really hasn’t helped clarify much for me so; I have been pondering this Bible Belt notion for some time now. And, interestingly it came up at a meeting I attended earlier this week. We were discussing a sunrise Easter service. My colleague, Jim, chimed in that yes, he and his wife were attending the sunrise service and then they had two more services to attend.

The idea of participating in three church services in one day was unfathomable to me. (I am one of those kids who was “forced” to attend church each Sunday and catechism classes until my parents stopped making me at about age 14 – and I haven’t been back much since.)

So, after our meeting I pulled Jim (a native Georgian) aside and asked – “do you think that religion is regional?” “Why does religion and the practice of it seem to be more prevalent in the South?

“Courtney,” he said, “I don’t think it has anything to do with North and South. I am a Christian and I believe in the Bible. The Bible, to me, is the only book that is one hundred percent truth. So, I attend a church that preaches the Bible as I believe it.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Jim said. I had to chuckle, Jim loves to tell stories and I love to listen. And, it began. Jim told me the story of the Christmas Celebration at his church in Savannah – he likened it to a Hollywood production - that thousands attend each year.

As people arrive at the celebration, they are given a name tag with a biblical name, and together with members of the congregation they all play a part.

This past Christmas, the church received a call from a gentleman who had attended the Christmas festivities the night before – his first time at that church. This man went on to explain that he had lost his wife and two children that year. He and two of his other children attended the program at the church and when they arrived they were each given name tags – each with the name of one of the three family members they had lost.

Jim finished his story and said, “You see, that was a message that everything would be alright.”

Hmmm, that will make anyone a believer, even a Yankee. I think I can stop asking questions now.