Funny Names for the Bible Belt
In that location are certain phrases and words that brand their way into the pop American dictionary almost by blow. One of those phrases is, "the Bible Belt." It is a verbal concept that is used repeatedly in the news, in classrooms, and particularly, in dialogue nearly Christianity and culture. Is the phrase, "the Bible Belt" a geographical location, a mindset, a dream, a fading reality, a badge of honor, or a pejorative comment? The answer is – yep. Aye, the phrase is all of those things. 1 of the reasons that we want to engage with this phrase is to be quite clear what we think most it as Christians.
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Who Coined the Phrase "Bible Belt"?
The phrase was beginning used past that derisive and cynical American announcer icon, H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). Mencken, a Baltimore Sun author for his entire career, was no harmless humorist. The son of Baltimore German-American elite by mode of a cigar factory fortune, Henry Louis Mencken was an ideologue, a writer with a controlling idea that shaped every word of a story. It might be asserted that Mencken'due south creed was less atheism and more precisely anti-Christianity.
His ideology was studiously prepare in an inscrutable commitment to the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche was the infamous enemy of Christianity and promoter of an amoral Übermensch — a "Superman" — a human ideal "free" from Biblical moorings. Nietzsche's prototypical person was free from what the academic believed was a repressive Christian concept of "original sin." Nietzsche was the original "God is dead" evangelist. And H.50. Mencken was more than an admirer of such "evangelism." Mencken was a convert. The Baltimore writer wrote The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1907). It is necessary to remember these salient facts every bit 1 considers the origin of the phrase "Bible Belt."
Some phrases were conceived to antagonize. Critics of George Whitefield and John Wesley scolded evangelical Anglicans by calling them "Methodists." Thus also with the phrase "Bible Chugalug." Like the uncontrollable lease of a roaring river, the phrase forged its ain pathway of usage.
So what does it mean? And what does it mean for Christians today? What is the Bible Chugalug?
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i. The Bible Belt Is a Place
When it was first used, the critic who employed the phrase meant to shame those areas of the United States that were populated by bourgeois, Bible believing Christians whom he equated with backwards, ignorant simpletons. Mencken specially meant the Heartland and the Due south. The temperance motion, for instance, had started in Kansas.
Today nosotros might be tempted to retrieve of the Bible Belt as only the quondam states of the Confederacy. However, it originally included Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and then on through the Mid-southward and deep Southward. Information technology then stretches up into the southeastern parts of the United States, up to Virginia, West Virginia, rural and modest-town Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Southern Illinois, and Indiana. Therefore, the Bible Chugalug is a geographical location that includes a large part of the The states.
It is safe to say that in the early on function of the 20th century, well-nigh of the United States (except for the major metropolitan areas in the East, the Upper Midwest, and the Westward Coast) exhibited the traits of what establish the the Bible Belt.
And speaking of traits: that leads us to our second mark of the Bible chugalug:
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2. The Bible Belt Is a Civilization
Mencken intended to cast a drapery of backwardness over those areas called the Bible Chugalug. The belief that the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God struck the urbane and cynical editor and social critic as anachronistic and archaic. Never listen that he was attributing qualities to people he had never met. Yet, he did recognize that the Bible belt has a unique culture that is grounded in conservative Christianity.
Culture is the commonage public and private expression of worldview. The civilization of Christianity has been unchanged since Jesus Christ and even since the days of ancient Israel in several ways. Nosotros might include these historic features of a biblical worldview: there is a God and he created all that is — seen and unseen; God created flesh as male and female and placed them in the Garden of Eden to tend the life-giving soil, and bask the fruits of their labor; humankind sinned confronting Almighty God, violating his sacred arrangement – if they obeyed they would alive and if they disobeyed they would encounter death; the world itself was cast into a fallen country and that is the world that we live in today.
The biblical worldview also teaches that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to fulfill his own covenant that he would exercise for u.s. what we could not exercise for ourselves through his own covenant, the covenant of grace; the mediator of this covenant is God the son, Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered and died for our sins, rose again from the dead on the 3rd day, was seen by over 500 witnesses at ane fourth dimension in addition to many other appearances; he ascended into heaven where he rules his kingdom this very twenty-four hour period, and he is coming once again to approximate the world and institute a new heaven and a new earth.
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Historical and Scientific Influence on Bible Chugalug Culture
I could nigh simply recite the Apostles' Creed to understand the worldview that undergirds the culture of that place and people called the Bible Belt.
A significant role of the descriptive that H.50. Mencken hurled was brought nigh past the Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. The trial exposed the rift between those who believe that Darwinism should be taught in the public schools of Tennessee and those who felt that such a theory was out of place. The famous attorney Clarence Darrow was hailed as a liberal hero for keeping the nation on its ain evolutionary path out of the superstitious past. What is interesting today is the increasing critique against Darwinism.
These include renowned scientists such as Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and Darwin Devolves,a magnificent defense of intelligent design from the study of DNA), Steven Meyer (writer of Signature in the Prison cell and Darwin's Doubt, a devastating blow to Darwin's missing question of the Cambrian explosion of fossilized fauna life) and the brilliant Princeton PhD mathematician, David Berlinski (a non-practicing Jew, whose recent book, The Devil'south Mirage formed a direct polemical response to the atheist, Richard Dawkins).
Other critics include think-tanks like the Discovery Institute in Seattle, and Erskine Seminary's David Livingstone Institute for Christianity, Medicine and the Sciences, all of which have contributed to a growing body of scientific and intellectual capital that is transforming H.L. Mencken's cavalier comments well-nigh the Bible Belt into cocky-condemning evidence of inflated, irrational bias.
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iii. The Bible Belt Is a Vision
In a real way in the Bible Belt is an idea that is larger than any regional part of the Us. The vision of the Bible Chugalug transcends race, region, time, and economy. At its best, the Bible Belt is a committed community that recognizes the place of God and the practice of the Christian faith in the public square. And we must be careful fifty-fifty as we country this. For such an thought is not intended to promote theocracy: that is, an imposed rule by clergy and dogma. This often-employed critique is a cherry-red herring, a logical fallacy used to misconstrue the true aim of such a community.
A theocracy forces faith by fiat: the "chugalug," therefore, is used to enforce a particular faith. Such imposition is alien to the gospel. Rather, Christianity reflects Christ and applies His gospel past organized religion. This Bible Belt is one fashioned out of a complimentary offering of God'south Grace. This belt is simply a highlighted area, a population in a representative democracy — whether a republic (e.g., the U.Due south.) or a constitutional monarchy (e.g., the U.K.) — noted by a growing number of people following the Lord Jesus Christ and seeking to reflect his gospel in every area of life. Therefore, imposing Christianity on a nation is contrary to the vision of residents in the Bible chugalug. Their goal is to see human lives transformed one by one, and and so the culture, including government, begins to reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That is a very of import bespeak. Indeed, such influence by the propagation of the gospel was a distinctive that the American founders understood well. The Bible Chugalug used to include New England where ministers would regularly preach "election day sermons" prior to elections. These early American clergy didn't dictate how a parishioner should vote, simply why they voted. They reminded them of the gospel that transformed their lives and how they had the opportunity to reverberate that through a Biblically-derived representative government.
If the Bible Chugalug becomes the repressive, moralistic conscience-cops of Mencken's making, yous can be sure that it is neither Biblical nor a Christian customs.
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What the Bible Belt Ways
So, while a secular-minded critic targeted the majority scriptural values of a committed Christian community — in the original instance, East Tennessee — to paint a wide-brush-stroke of drab irredeemable, backwoods intolerance and call it "the Bible Chugalug," the reality is something quite unlike.
As a affair of faith, to the dismay of others like Mencken, both the New England Pilgrims and the Jamestown founders were residents of a "Bible Belt." Moreover, members of the Reformed Christian Religion, Protestantism, along with a minority of Roman Catholics and Jewish congregants, formed a larger community of committed Judeo-Christian citizens who expressed their faith by founding a seamlessly sewn chugalug of Biblical values. And that Bible Belt was called the U.s.a. of America.
Sources
Brunn, Stanley D., Gerald R. Webster, and J. Clark Archer. 2011. "The Bible Belt in a Changing South: Shrinking, Relocating, and Multiple Buckles". Southeastern Geographer.51, no. 4: 513-549.
Hall, David W. Election 24-hour interval Sermons. Oak Ridge, TN: Kuyper Constitute, 1996.
Teachout, Terry. The Skeptic: The Life of H.50. Mencken. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
Vail, R. Due west. G. A Check List of New England Ballot Sermons. Worcester, Mass: Social club [i.due east. the American Antiquarian Society], 1936.
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Michael A. Milton, PhD (Academy of Wales; MPA, UNC Chapel Colina; MDiv, Knox Seminary) is a retired seminary chancellor and currently serves as the James Ragsdale Chair of Missions at Erskine Theological Seminary. He is the President of Faith for Living and the D. James Kennedy Constitute a long-fourth dimension Presbyterian minister, and Chaplain (Colonel) USA-R. Dr. Milton is the author of more than thirty books and a musician with five albums released. Mike and his wife, Mae, reside in Due north Carolina.
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