The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States, the Midwestern state of Missouri, and the Mid-Atlantic states of Virginia and West Virginia (which all have significant Southern influence), where evangelical Protestantism exerts a strong social and cultural influence. The region has been described as the most socially conservative across the United States due to a significant impact of Protestant Christianity on politics and culture. The region is known to have a higher church attendance, more evangelical Protestant denominations, and greater emphasis on traditional religious values compared to other parts of the country. The region contrasts with the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes and the Mormon corridor in Utah, southern Idaho, and northern Arizona.
Whereas the states with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious are in the West and New England regions of the United States (with Vermont ranking the highest at 46%), in the Bible Belt state of South Carolina it is just 16%; Mississippi and Arkansas both report 18% of their people to be religiously unaffiliated. Arkansas has the highest proportion of evangelical Protestants, at 50%. The evangelical influence is strongest in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Missouri, Western North Carolina, the Upstate region of South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Louisiana, northern and eastern Texas, southern and western Virginia, and West Virginia.
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."Fred R. Shapiro (ed.). Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press (2006). . In 1927, Mencken claimed the term as his invention. The term is now also used in other countries for regions with higher religious doctrine adoption.
In the United States 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.Brunn, Stanley D., Gerald R. Webster, and J. Clark Archer. "The Bible Belt in a changing south: Shrinking, relocating, and multiple buckles." Southeastern Geographer 51.4 (2011): 513–549. online It encompasses both the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most of Louisiana), the Upland South (North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma), and the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic (the Virginias). 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 affiliations.
The region also includes most of Texas and North Florida, and extends east to include most of Virginia outside of Northern Virginia. In addition, the Bible Belt covers Missouri south of the Missouri River (i.e. the Ozarks), as well as Southern Indiana and Southern Ohio along the Ohio River.
On the other hand, areas in the South which are not considered part of the Bible Belt include heavily Catholic Southern Louisiana, religiously diverse Central and South Florida, overwhelmingly Hispanic South Texas and Trans-Pecos, and Northern Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. A 1978 study by Charles Heatwole identified the Bible Belt as the region dominated by 24 fundamentalist Protestant denominations, (including Baptist and Methodist denominations), corresponding to essentially the same area mapped by Zelinsky.Barry Vann (2008), In search of Ulster-Scots land: the birth and geotheological imagings of a transatlantic people, 1603-1703 , Univ of South Carolina Press, , . Pages 138–140.
According to Stephen W. Tweedie, an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at Oklahoma State University, the Bible Belt was viewed in terms of numerical concentration of the audience for religious television when he first published his research in 1995. He finds two belts: one more eastern that stretches from North Florida through Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Southside Virginia, and the Carolinas; and another concentrated in Texas (excluding El Paso and South Texas), Arkansas, Louisiana, (excluding New Orleans and Acadiana), Oklahoma, Missouri (excluding Kansas City and St. Louis), and Mississippi.Tweedie, S.W. (1978) Viewing the Bible Belt. Journal of Popular Culture 11; 865-76 "[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 Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.
A study by the Pew Research Center in 2016 found that the ten most religious states were Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia, Oklahoma and North Carolina. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found that the states with the highest belief in the Bible as the literal word of God were Mississippi (56%), Alabama (51%), South Carolina (49%), West Virginia (47%), Tennessee (46%), Arkansas (45%), Louisiana (44%), Georgia (41%), Kentucky (41%), and Texas (39%).
The Bible belt roughly coincides with the Diabetes belt,"CDC Identifies Diabetes Belt" Centers for Disease Control and prevention (March 7, 2015) the Teenage Pregnancy belt"Linking Religion and Teen Pregnancy: There’s a Map for That" The Humanist (June 28, 2017) and the Obesity belt."CDC: Map shows Southern obesity belt" Centers for Disease Control and prevention (August 13, 2012)
By state
+ Proportion of Evangelical Protestants per state in the American SouthState Baptist Pentecostal Restorationist Presbyterian Other Total Share indicatingreligion is "Very Important"Importance of religion by state Pew forum 24% 3% 1% 1% 14% 43% 77% 23% 6% 3% 1% 17% 50% 70% 4% 3% 1% 1% 10% 19% 46% 3% 1% 1% 2% 7% 14% 50% 7% 2% 1% 1% 11% 22% 53% 17% 3% 1% 1% 11% 33% 64% 22% 8% 3% 1% 12% 46% 63% 15% 4% 3% 1% 10% 33% 71% 4% 2% 1% 1% 7% 15% 50% 29% 2% 2% 1% 8% 42% 74% 11% 2% 2% 1% 15% 31% 56% 19% 3% 1% 1% 11% 35% 62% 19% 8% 4% 1% 15% 47% 64% 21% 2% 1% 2% 13% 39% 69% 24% 3% 4% 1% 13% 45% 71% 10% 4% 2% 1% 10% 27% 63% 11% 3% 1% 1% 9% 25% 60% 17% 6% 2% 1% 11% 37% 64%
Other Bible Belts in the United States In addition to the South, there is a smaller Bible Belt in West Michigan, centered on the heavily Dutch-influenced cities of Holland and Grand Rapids. Christian colleges in that region include Calvin University, Hope College, Cornerstone University, Grace Christian University, and Kuyper College. Much like the South, West Michigan is generally fiscally and socially conservative.
There is also a Bible Belt in the western suburbs of Chicago (especially in DuPage County), centered on Wheaton. Christian colleges in that region include Wheaton College, North Central College, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Elmhurst University. Christian publishing houses in that region include Crossway, InterVarsity Press, and Tyndale House. Carol Stream is home to the headquarters of Christianity Today.
Colorado Springs, Colorado, could be considered a Bible belt due to the large amount of prominent evangelical organizations headquartered there including Focus on the Family, Compassion International, The Navigators, David C. Cook, Young Life, Biblica, and others, even though it has low church attendance compared to other Bible belts.
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 Methodist and Baptist denominations, gained great popularity in the region.
The northern colonial Bible Belt (especially New England with its Puritan heritage) frequently performed missionary work in the South. The centre of Baptist activity in early America was in the Middle Colonies. In 1707 five churches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware assembled together and established the Philadelphia Baptist Association, one of the oldest Baptist regional associations in America, and through the new ecclesiastical body they embarked upon vigorous missionary activity. By 1760 the Philadelphia Baptist 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 regional associations, the Warren Baptist Association in New England and the Ketochton Baptist Association in Virginia. The Philadelphia Association also provided leadership in organizing the Charleston Baptist 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 P. 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". 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 of the Bible Belt"
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.
Several locations are occasionally referred to as "the Buckle of the Bible Belt":