Why is there greater religiosity in the southern United States than what in the northern United States?

Question

Now most will ascribe this disparity in religious piety to educational difference, but do you think that this is all there is to it? Can anyone think, or has anyone read about the topic, and come up with other reasons, outside of educational disparities, for the greater degree of religious fundamentalism in the South?

Answer 1

besides education maybe because the South is seen as more "traditional"

Slavery, sexism, homophobia, and prejudice against anyone who isn't Christian used to be common all throughout the country.  Well it still is common in the South because they pride themselves on being old fashioned and following the traditions they were taught.

Answer 2

Take a look here: http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/pics/geo200/...

The Bible belt has gone north south instead of east west...

  

Answer 3

Brilliant!

Of course, you meant "than THAT in the northern United States", right? I'm an atheist, and I absolutely abhor spelling errors. How profane!

All I can state, my dear friend, is that the Southern states are lagging behind the Northern states when it comes to the topic of education.

Let's face it. They just are not as smart, or as good, as we are in the North. We understand what a fallacy truly is.  

Answer 4

Education is certainly a large part of it.  And maybe an ancillary part is lack of exposure to differing views - most everyone in the south, especially in localized areas, believes the same thing and to believe something else makes you a pariah.  Other places in the US are more open to more views, thus more tolerant, understanding, and less nuts.

Answer 5

You have a larger influx of immigrants from Latin America who are generally more religious than the natives.  To me, greater religiousity comes out of the western states like California (home of the TBA) and Utah (need I say more).  You also have more wacko doomsday groups out west.

Answer 6

That's hilarious. I'll have to write my southern family members and tell them they'd all better return their college degrees so they can fit with your stereotype.  

Answer 7

Poor education.  Religosity and IQ are directly correlated:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics...

Answer 8

The dumber you are the more religious you will be

Answer 9

Only people who suffer from an inferiority complex feel the need to try and keep convincing everyone that they are somehow smarter. A smart enough person would know he is smart and not have to try and force down everyone else's throat. Some of the comments here are an exercise in absurdity. They always fail to account for atheists or theists who change their opinion. Do they truly expect us to believe there is a physical transformation in the persons brain. The need to convince everyone they are smarter may stem from the lack of confidence in what they believe to be true. If people think someone is less intelligent simply because they believe something different that is a testimony to their own stupidity as well as a an example of a complete lack of understanding  elementary logic.

Answer 10

People do everything they do to feel more alive. So if you live in N.Y. or L.A busy places you are more likely to have a self-actualized (fully functioning life) You know more people. You are less lonely, etc...If you live in an area where people live far apart you are more likely to bet lonely & feel disconnected. Religion offers you a connection to spirit or it pretends to do that. Church offers community. There is safety in numbers so you feel if you belong then your church is better than the church down the street. So the dualism gives the ego a great feeling of being alive. People who are not growing much such as people who are living in a area where there are more sophistacated will need to feel they are growing which is a part of being alive. Where do you get wisdom of you don't have enough children around or elderly around but just a few same people. You put your trust in someone who claims to know it all....then you have the southern cities but they don't have much productive things for people to do the same as N.Y. for example so the city is different. Low pay, drama they create, bored to death, go to church so you have something in life besides the factory & the diner.

Answer 11

There are probably several reasons. I would think that one is the fact that the northern states (and west coast for that matter) have more ethinic and religious diversity.  Places that are more cosmopolitan tend to be less religious.

Answer 12

Obviously, my brothers from the North are not educated enough to read the rest of the question or if they did perhaps read it they did not understand.  The question asked for reasons "outside of educational disparities."  The majority of the answers relate an answer of religiosity and educational differences, although one of the highest per-person PhD percentage in the United States is in a city in North Alabama (that is the deep south folks).  Add to this that the little town I live in (population 942) is the birthplace of Dr. Davidson of NASA's Saturn Rocket fame and the one-time highest ranking female general in the US Airforce.  Both recently visited our local highschool.

The best answer so far may be the idea of tradition.  The diversity of ethnicity issue is moot.  I live in a very rural agrarian and coal-mining community.  In our local school there are Hispanics, Caucasians, Asians, African-Americans, and Middle Easterners represented.  Where I worship (A Christian group) we have a variety of ethnicities and a Muslim from Pakistan that attends regularly with his wife's family.

A second possible answer that is closely related to tradition is family cohesion.  In rural Southern settings families still live close-by.  Religious assemblies are a gathering place where family and friends can associate with each other.

A third possiblity is what I observe in my estimation to be a slower-paced lifestyle that affords Southerners more time to read and reflect carefully on matters of religion as well as be involved in a religious group to the point that their religion impacts their daily life.

Answer 13

I have lived in the south and I feel I am qualified to answer this question based on my experiences. When I was there I noticed a great intolerance with in the culture. As we already know along with the lack of education is the lack of tolerance they cling to the Bible like a fat kid to a cupcake. The Bible tells them all there ignorant views about g**s and other groups that they dislike are correct. It is ok to bash g**s, women and even those who were once slaves. When you have that kind of intolerance coupled with another great Bible attribute, lack of education you are left with a bunch of hate mongering ignorant Christians, reproduce and pass on the hate.

Answer 14

is religiosity a word? i guess for the same reason(s) they hate black people, sleep with their relatives and drink moonshine

Answer 15

I've been saying for sometime now that the North needs to become the mission field.  LOL  Go into Canada and I think about 90% of the people are unbelievers.  Just sad.  

Just My Thoughts!

Answer 16

Leftovers from the Civil War. There was no back door on the Alamo, sadly.

Answer 17

Mira Che!

The answer is long and more complicated that I initially thought.  I don't want to post pages worth of stuff here that no one - including you - will read but here's a great book that explains it all in detail:  "Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt" by Christine Leigh Heyrman

Answer 18

I am frankly offended by some of the answers to this question. Why is it that people assume that a religious person must be stupid? Why is it necessary to bring back more of the false stereotypes about inbreeding to answer this question.

For the record, I was born and raised in Chicago and have lived my adult life in the west.However, my father was from Tennessee near the Georgia border. In all the years, I traveled down south, the only ignorance I saw was their racism.

You don't have to have a college degree to be intelligent! The simpler answer is in my opinion:

1. After the Civil War, the North ignored Lincoln's desire to rebuild the south and instead ravaged it further with carpetbaggers and other such offensive policies. The south was left without its industrial foundation. It became dependent on agriculture.

2. Contrary to the arrogance that the industrial cities of the north bring greater peace and happiness, people in the city have a tendency to lose themselves in " busyness". So they ignore or bury their inner spiritual need with "things" and "excitement". People down south, outside the major cities live closer to the land and have a deeper appreciation of the inner spiritual need. They spend more time in prayer, scripture reading and other means to nurture that hunger instead of burying it.

3. Thirdly, the people down south have suffered hardship that no major northern industrial city had known until New York and 9/11. After the Civil War the people were broken. Their children were killed, their homes and farms burned, their industrial cities destroyed, their railroads broken. They learned to turn to something greater than themselves to find help. They have never lost that deep faith.

I had no intent to answer this question, but as a lifelong northerner, some of these answers offended me.

Pastor John

Answer 19

I would say culture.

Answer 20

My guess would be old habits die hard.

It may be true that educational differences started this segregation, but that certainly isn't as much of a reason (if one at all) now.

Answer 21

Faith is as strong in the northern states.  I think what you mean is "why are the loud and annoying sects primarily Southern?"

The Southern Baptist Convention, who are VERY loud and annoying IMHO got a jump start in the south by coming out strongly in favor of slavery  years before the Civil War, and for a good long time after by preaching a fairly racist doctrine.

To borrow from Wikipedia; "Baptists struggled to gain a foothold in the South, the next generation of preachers accommodated themselves to the society. Rather than challenging the gentry on slavery, they began to find that the Bible supported its practice. In the two decades after the Revolution, preachers abandoned their pleas for manumission.[2] They even wanted to preserve the rights of ministers themselves to hold slaves.[3] The Triennial Convention and the Home Mission Society reaffirmed their neutrality concerning slavery."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ba...

So what you're thinking of is the classic "we're better than others, we're saved and white" crowd.

Answer 22

closer to slavery in the south. Only a slave wishes for life after death.

Answer 23

tornadoes... and the fact that much of the northeast is a burned over district in light of all the cults that have originated there.

Answer 24

Historically the South had to convince white voters of the moral correctness of slavery and segregation.  That took a lot of brainwashing in the pews several nights a week and Sunday morning.  Now that they can't make a believable argument on those two points, they have swung their hate toward liberals.  Its all about mind control to keep things from changing.

Answer 25

Lack of higher education, plain and simple.

Answer 26

I don't know.  But, on a similar note, why is there a higher concentration of extremely good colleges, and a higher percentage of college graduates in the North?