This map of the US(ht: Richard Florida) explains a bit why I felt like I entered a different country when moving to Virginia. We moved into Baptist country apparently.
Religion map of the US 4
Posted by Daniel
on February 27, 2008
Trackbacks
Use this link to trackback from your own site.
Yeah, I saw that map just recently. Definitely baptist in population. I grew up in the bible belt, but to you this must feel strange being from somewhere so close, only to cross the line and realize “one of these things is not like the other”.
dang! no wonder i’m so screwed up… when i was a baptist i was in catholic country and now i’m an antibaptist in baptist country… what next?!
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, which was not a “Bible belt” society - although I do remember the Blue Laws during my childhood. There was great diversity in the local churches - Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. There was also religous bigotry and discrimination against the members of these other religions taught to the youth by the local church - which eventually drove me away from the Baptist church. The rest of Virgina is another story… two weeks ago, driving diagonally across Virginia from Winchester to Richmond, the Baptist churches greatly out numbered all other denominations. The final comment in the text under the map is the most important one, in my humble opinion - “Quite puzzling finally is the denomination labelling itself as Christian, dominating in central Illinois and Indiana. I thought they all were. Christian, that is…”
WOW that is one solid mass o’ Baptists down South.