Bible Belt
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===The Poor Health Belt=== | ===The Poor Health Belt=== | ||
| − | Many Bible Belters have poor diets (i.e., "I'm a meat and potatoes man") and rarely exercise. The result is to be expected: This area of the U.S. has the highest [[obesity]] rate in the country. Or, as a doctor conducting a mobile free clinic in | + | Many Bible Belters have poor diets (i.e., "I'm a meat and potatoes man") and rarely exercise. The result is to be expected: This area of the U.S. has the highest [[obesity]] rate in the country. Or, as a doctor conducting a mobile free clinic in New Orleans put it, "What used to be called the Bible belt -- the Southern states -- is now called the stroke belt, the [[HIV]] belt, the hypertension belt. We have a high rate of hypertension, probably the highest rates in the world."<ref>[http://www.neworleans.com/news/local-news/464702.html "Free Health Screenings At The Convention Center"], transcript of an original videotape interview by WGNO ABC26 News, posted 31 August 2010, accessed 2 September 2010.</ref> |
===The Divorce Belt=== | ===The Divorce Belt=== | ||
Revision as of 21:49, 12 September 2011
- No, the Bible Belt is NOT some sort of fashion accessory related to the Bible.
The Bible Belt is the part of the United States where strict fundamentalist Christianity dominates life. If you don't do fundamentalist Christian things like them, and aren't a fundamentalist Christian, they tell you that you are going to Hell. Then they try and make life Hell on Earth for you. If you're unlucky they attack you physically or even attack your kids.[1] This happens especially in the smaller towns and villages.
While the Bible Belt is often considered synonymous with the American South[2], many people will consider themselves from the Bible Belt if their particular town or family followed a Bible Belt-style existence.
Contents |
The buckle
Many different places try to claim to be the "buckle of the Bible Belt," usually intended to mean the most fundamentalist part. Kentucky, Southern Ohio, and Georgia are sometimes considered contenders, but many people also claim that the Florida panhandle is the strongest part. RationalWiki editor Wazza's ex-girlfriend came from Sherman, a town in Texas that claims to be the shiny red ruby in the eye of the armadillo on the buckle of the Bible Belt.
The original "buckle" was Dayton, Tennessee. H.L. Mencken coined the term when he visited the town to report on the Scopes trial.
The rest of the world
Up to the 1990s, people in other countries could say, “It’s sad. Religious people in some parts of the United States are crazy. It’s nothing to do with us and we can’t do anything about it.” Not so today, in the modern world of the Internet where information is easy to find and practically accessible to all.
- The bad side: Today United States fundies from the Bible Belt and from the rest of the United States are active on the Internet. Fundamentalists in other countries are vulnerable to infection with American fundamentalist ideas, along with some more liberal Christians. English speaking countries are especially vulnerable, since English is the only language most American fundamentalists are "fluent" in.
- The good side: Today, rational people from the whole English-speaking world can contact Bible Belt people, and can tell them that their way of thinking doesn’t make sense. Many Bible Belt fundamentalists are too brainwashed to hear the message, but, hopefully, some will listen.
- The completely flip side: Also, today, Americans can see that other countries[3] have their own issues with religious extremists, despite their efforts to conceal it. (I'm looking at YOU, Canada.)
Intolerance of gays
Youngsters who tell their parents that they are gay risk being disowned or even attacked physically.[4]
However, intolerance may have peaked.[5] Only time will tell.
Origin of the Bible Belt
The Bible Belt includes the areas where slavery was very firmly established before the American Civil War. Slave owners in former slave states preferred to devastate their native land rather than give up owning fellow human beings. Maryland was founded as a refuge for British Catholics, though Catholics are not the majority there today. The part of the Bible Belt where Catholicism is strong is called the "Rosary Belt".
Those who owned slaves or profited from other people’s suffering in different ways, hired only religious leaders who taught what they approved of. The Christian message became that slave owners could handle their property as they liked and that white men ruled while slaves, women, Native Americans, and other non-whites should be obedient.
Christian teachings about social justice were ignored, while instead the rich gave money to religious organizations and the rest were required to obey those over them without question. Believers were expected to believe the interpretations of the Bible presented by the preachers hired by the oppressors, however unreasonable that may have been. Morality involved sexual fidelity for women and obedience for women and children. [6]
Or maybe it is this?
Take a belt. A good, stout leather belt is best. Inscribe upon it some appropriate Bible verses, such as:
- "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." (Proverbs 13:24)
- "Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying." (Proverbs 19:18)
- "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." (Proverbs 22:15)
- "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell." (Proverbs 23:13-14)
- "The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame." (Proverbs 29:15)
- "The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?" (Hebrews 12:6-7)
- "And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." (I Kings 12:13-14)
- "And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables" (John 2:15)
This Bible Belt is best used in conjunction with a good old fashioned woodshed.
Dirty little secrets of the Bible Belt
Many Bible Belters will brag about their God-fearin', small town values. However, they do so because they are blissfully ignorant of the drawbacks and inconsistencies of living in socially backwards areas. As another website critical of religious extremism puts it, the Bible Belt "is an area with the highest divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation."[7] (They forgot to mention rape, which is also disproportionately high in Da Belt.)
The Poor Health Belt
Many Bible Belters have poor diets (i.e., "I'm a meat and potatoes man") and rarely exercise. The result is to be expected: This area of the U.S. has the highest obesity rate in the country. Or, as a doctor conducting a mobile free clinic in New Orleans put it, "What used to be called the Bible belt -- the Southern states -- is now called the stroke belt, the HIV belt, the hypertension belt. We have a high rate of hypertension, probably the highest rates in the world."[8]
The Divorce Belt
As you might expect among people who go on and on about the "sanctity of marriage," the Bible Belt leads the nation in divorce.[9] Meanwhile, those liberal heathens in New England tend to have the lowest divorce rates.
The Swinger Belt
You would think that fundy parents would have realized by now that enforcing sexual repression on their kids just makes them hornier. Maybe that explains why the Bible Belt is one of the nation's hotbeds for swingers.[10]
See also
- Chastity belt
- Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? - Coen & Coen
Footnotes
- ↑ http://www.tueursenserie.org/enplus/DeepBibleBelt.htm
- ↑ From residents of California: It's the Southeast, we are not one of them. Wait, are we?
- ↑ Or at least Amerians can see that there are other countries.
- ↑ Young and Gay in the Bible Belt: 'My Mom Came at Me With a Butcher Knife!'
- ↑ Even in Bible Belt states, gays say they begin to sense inexorable shift toward acceptance
- ↑ http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/essays/fundie1.html
- ↑ "The Moral Hypocrisy of the Bible Belt", Stop The Religious Right.org" website.
- ↑ "Free Health Screenings At The Convention Center", transcript of an original videotape interview by WGNO ABC26 News, posted 31 August 2010, accessed 2 September 2010.
- ↑ Belluck, Pam. "To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts", New York Times, published 14 November 2004, accessed 2 September 2010.
- ↑ Wilder, Forrest. "He Who Casts the First Stone", Texas Observer website, posted 24 February 2010, accessed 2 September 2010.
| The Bible Belt | |
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