Christian Century offered an eye-catching headline this week, “God big in the South, not so much in New England and Pacific Northwest.”
The article goes on to provide results of a new Gallup Poll that identifies the most and least religious states in the country. And, as one might expect, “Bible Belt” states continue to have the most religious residents—Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Just as persons residing in the New England area—Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts—are least likely to consider themselves as people of faith.
Although these somewhat predictable poll findings may corroborate the “red state value voter” versus “blue state Godless liberal” binary that has come to characterize America’s political imagination, we should be careful not to confuse professions of faith with lived practices. The values that many associate with the southern region and its brand of Christian piety—strong families, personal responsibility, moral instruction and education—belie the less than sublime material conditions on the ground.
For instance, southern states have the highest rate of teenage births while states in New England have the lowest. Massachusetts, which allows same-sex marriages, typically has the lowest divorce rate in the country compared to Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas that are perennially among the top. And, in terms of both median income and underperforming schools, states comprising the Bible Belt are disproportionately at the bottom of the rankings. This is in stark contrast to states in the Northeast that have both higher median incomes and among the best public school systems in the nation.
To be sure, I do not point out such data to mock the Christian sensibility or sincerity of my Southern friends and neighbors. Nor do I offer it as a means to provide a functionalist explanation as to how there is a direct correlation between social chaos and religious devotion, though I do believe there to be a correlation. My purpose is to simply challenge the hubris and self-righteous sentiment that pervades much of the religious and regional discourse concerning where God can be found in the United States. I was always told that we should identify a tree by what it produces. And while poll results show that the South may be rooted in God, it continues to bear, er um, some strange fruit indeed.
