Whoa, Toronto » « Why aren’t women flocking to movement atheism?

A peeve: can we retire the phrase, “Bible Belt”?

It vexes me. The official definition says the Bible Belt is the deep South, but that makes no sense. Dwight Moody, of the influential Moody Bible College, was from Massachusetts. William Riley, the pastor who invented fundamentalism, was from…Minneapolis. Saddleback Church is in Orange County. New Saint Andrews College and Doug Wilson are in Idaho; Mars Hill, before its founder’s meltdown, was based in Seattle. The burned over district? New York.

I travel a lot, all over the country, and everywhere I go, North and South, East and West, people tell me they’re living in the Bible Belt. Worse, they’re prone to tell me that their local religious fanatics form the “buckle of the Bible Belt”. Everywhere. The whole damn country. I’ve heard it in Oregon and Ohio, as well as Florida and Texas.

It’s not a belt. It’s a great fat corset, wrapped all around the USA, and it’s covered with elaborate chains and straps and buckles and fasteners. Some people use the term “Bible Belt” to disparage the South, others use it to refer to any entrenched collection of rabid believers, and it’s no longer useful at all. Stop using it!

I do recommend calling it America’s Bible Corset, though, and it’s the intricate corset of a dominatrix, what with all the odd buckles everywhere. Maybe you can use your creativity a little more and name your local religious scene something different: “We’re the zipper of the Bible Corset!” “We’re the nipple clamp of the Bible Girdle!” “We’re the brass rivet of the Bible Bustier!”

Anything but “Bible Belt”. Or “buckle”. Please.

Whoa, Toronto » « Why aren’t women flocking to movement atheism?

Comments

  1. Morgan!? the Slithy Tove says

    How about “I live in the rusty lock on the iron chastity belt of religion.”

  2. chigau (違う) says

    Of course, I looked it up in Pffft.
    There are Bible Belts everywhere!!!
    No one is safe!!
    Run!!!

  3. robro says

    I have lived in San Francisco for 40 years and never once heard “Bible Belt” used to describe it.

  4. Funny Diva says

    And the semi-rural, but still very near Sacramento part of CA where my folks live is so Jesus-soaked it isn’t EVEN funny…
    Makes visits like the one I’m facing next month a real challenge…at least there shouldn’t be (fingers crossed!) any medical emergencies involved–the unceasing jesus-babble is a veritable tsunami in that context.

  6. Funny Diva says

    What’s wrong with “scriptural straitjacket”?
    Just askin’…
    (corsets don’t cover enough of the territ’ry, IMO…plus at this point they’re a pretty gender-specific [under] garment)

  9. uusuzanne says

    I think this used to be more true in the past than it is now. I grew up in New Jersey, lived in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Mexico, and Illinois, and it wasn’t until I moved to Oklahoma in the early 1980s that I started to hear complaints about children celebrating Satanic holidays in school (that would be Halloween) and the whole rest of the fundamentalist weirdness. Now it’s everywhere.

    Just a bit of reminiscing – the argument that struck me as being most bizarre back then was the one about girls’ high school basketball – apparently Jesus never intended for girls to run full court. Half court only.

  11. Reginald Selkirk says

    Saddleback Church is in Orange County

    That’s Orange County, California; not Orange County, Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont or Virginia. Or Orange County, China.

  16. Crimson Clupeidae says

    I never referred to Kansas as the buckle of the bible belt when I lived there.

    I preferred the term ‘asscrack of the bible belt’. Sometimes, ‘taint of the bible belt’….

  18. Rey Fox says

    Personally, I live in the little leather loop that you tuck the loose end of the Bible Belt into.

  19. says

    Mississippi: The little gooey white strip between the shiny and matte layers of the Bible Duct Tape that covers America.

    ….I dunno, this may require some cliche reworking.

  23. says

    Even though the mormon corridor, “Morridor,” is more of a Book of Mormon Belt, it is also a “Bible Belt”. We have a good name for it though. “Morridor” is excellent for Arizona/Utah/Idaho and environs. Maybe we could come up with something similar to apply to god addled communities, small or large, local or regional.

  25. Anthony K says

    Canadians have a much more inclusive term for the large geographic region whose denizens are fiercely and violently ignorant, theocratic, blood-thirsty, and will do everything in their power to ensure the rest of the world goes down with them: we simply call it “the US”.

  26. Sastra says

    I do recommend calling it America’s Bible Corset, though, and it’s the intricate corset of a dominatrix, what with all the odd buckles everywhere.

    Just remember the “safe word,” people. It’s “Hi-I’m-an-atheist-debate-me.”
    Then they usually stop as if by prearrangement.

  30. Intaglio says

    Paul #5 – Over here (UK) some companies have started advertising “Black Friday” sales. This pis… annoys me, despite the private wishes of UKIP we are not yet the 51st State.

    Ball gag of the Bible Gimp Suit?

  31. Suido says

    In my county, we got both types of bible… belt and suspenders. We’re as safe as saved can be, no stinking atheist is going to catch us with our pants down.

    Actually, I don’t have a county. I don’t live anywhere near the US, and had to check whether you call them braces or suspenders. Bible suspender belt. Heh.

  32. Suido says

    @Ichthyic #24:

    O/T
    Got distracted comparing the EC votes per state to the 2012 version. What happened in New York and Pennsylvania? Reductions in actual population, or reductions in relative population? If the latter, does that mean the US has less reps per population than 50 years ago?

  33. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Threads of religious stupidity interweaving and penetrating.

    It’s more like a Fundy-gus.

  35. says

    suido

    or reductions in relative population? If the latter, does that mean the US has less reps per population than 50 years ago?

    Yes and yes. The size of the Congress was set in 1960 at 435 Representatives (there’s also 100 Senators, 2 per state, which brings a lot of problems with it too), but the population has increased greatly since then.

  36. Ichthyic says

    What happened in New York and Pennsylvania? Reductions in actual population, or reductions in relative population? If the latter, does that mean the US has less reps per population than 50 years ago?

    that’s actually an interesting question. I’d say that the total number of GoP supporters is likely about the same, it;s the distribution and message that has changed. They deliberately started courting authoritarians, who are:

    -easy to control
    -tend to extreme religion, and use pastors as authority figures
    -tend to vote consistently as a large block

    you see the exact results of that in the last election.

    Also what happened was a slow migration and segregation of specific ideologies. first, migration of upper middle class whites out of the cities and into the suburbs, where they were isolated and comfortable, so not wanting change, tended to go conservative. then, with a foothold in the door, GoP specialists redrew districts so that districts with mostly republicans could all vote together.

    that’s all it took really.

    -focusing on heavy right wing authoritarians in the south at first, then spreading to the midwest
    -focusing on being the Party of white suburbia
    -encouraging migration of whites out of previously mixed areas and into suburbs
    -gerrymandering.

    it was a well thought out plan.

    well, if your goal was to restore your power base to where they wanted it to be, at all costs anyway.

    and those costs have been FUCKING HORRENDOUS.

  37. kaleberg says

    I always thought the Bible Belt ran inland through the south from Georgia to Texas. It usually stands out on any map of divorce or murder rates.

    At least the Silicon people have some imagination. You’ll notice that you never hear about Bible Valley, Bible Alley, Bible Glen or the like.

  39. Suido says

    @Dalillama, Schmott Guy #35

    Yes and yes. The size of the Congress was set in 1960 at 435 Representatives (there’s also 100 Senators, 2 per state, which brings a lot of problems with it too), but the population has increased greatly since then.

    Ouch. I’m a big fan of smaller districts and larger parliaments, as it dilutes the power. What would it take for that number to be revisited?

  40. Suido says

    @Ichthyic #36

    Thanks for the info, though it wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I was more focusing on the fact that NY’s EC votes had reduced from 43 to 29, and Penn’s had reduced from 29 to 20, which Dalillama answered.

  41. robro says

    Yes, Funny Diva, I know you don’t have to go far across the bridges before you’re in real America. But here religion seems somewhat peripheral. I’m thankful for the illusion that I’m not living in theocratic America and that the Bible Belt is somewhere else.

  42. ChasCPeterson says

    The official definition says the Bible Belt is the deep South, but that makes no sense.

    ?
    Sure it does. Your Bible-believing fundamentalist-type Xians are (with, doubtless, a few exceptions) versions of Baptists.
    Here (in red) is where you find most of your Baptists: map
    So what’s the problem? The fact that there are also some fundamentalists elsewhere does not obviate the clear and strong geographical pattern. It’s obvious to anybody who has lived for even a couple of weeks inboth that red zone and elsewhere.

    Your peeve is silly.

  44. sytec says

    If my local radio guy is to be believed (#RussMartin in Dallas), you guys have missed the etymology of the term. According to him, the term “Bible Belt” came from parents like his mother, who, when the whipping with the belt did not work, would wrap the Bible in the belt and beat him with that.

  50. Antiochus Epiphanes says

    So says the guy sitting comfortably in Minnesota. I’m with Chas at #42. Fie on your peeve. “Bible belt” is perfectly cromulent.

  51. says

    I thought “buybull belt” was a synonym for “Mason-Dixon Line”, or perhaps a line from West Virgina across to Texas.

    “Belt” always seemed a fairly apt euphemism for US states on or below it. The christians are obsessed with people’s activities below the waistline to the point of fetishism. And the belt keeps getting hiked higher and higher.

    http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/fashion-trousers-high_trousers-buckles-simon_cowell-buckle-mwln28_low.jpg

  52. anbheal says

    @50, yeah, I recently drove from Savannah to New Orleans, all of which until Mobile nicely avoids the Eisenhower Highway System, meaning backroads GA and AL for six or eight hours. It was on a Sunday. And there’s nothing like this anywhere else in the country (I mean, except for Mississippi and South Carolina, e.g.). There are parts of Kansas and Indiana and New York that sport lots of Jesus billboards, but it’s just nowhere near as pervasive. It’s like calling Boston a racist city because it tried to do something about educational inequality and the plan ran into a whole lot of racism — but they would never have tried anything like bussing in Charleston or Dallas. The real heavy-duty institutionalized racism is headquartered in Dixie, plain and simple, it’s why they tried to secede and still talk about seceding, they just love Jesus and hate blacks.

    As for a name that includes some of the plains and mountain states, I liked the one that emerged after the first really clear Red/Blue election (2004, maybe): Dumfuckistan.

  53. coragyps says

    I think “Bible Belt” really sort of correlates pretty well with those portions of the country – probably West Virginia to Texas – where no events are scheduled for Wednesday evening because that’s when the Baptists and Church of Christ have church night. Not even football can interfere.

  55. trixiefromthelurk says

    The town I used to live in was pretty churchy, but not nearly as much as the towns south of it. So if I lived in the Bible Belt, then those towns were the groin.

  60. Lofty says

    I’m sorry, but the US is currently stuck in a Circumbibular Vortex. I hear it’s very unstable these days and reaches into all areas of public discourse. Vulnerable people are still getting sucked in. Pouring buckets of reason into the aether may help reduce its grip on thinking people living on the fringes of the Vortex.

  61. David Marjanović says

    Canadians have a much more inclusive term for the large geographic region whose denizens are fiercely and violently ignorant, theocratic, blood-thirsty, and will do everything in their power to ensure the rest of the world goes down with them: we simply call it “the US”.

    What about Alberta (Texas North)?

    Got distracted comparing the EC votes per state to the 2012 version. What happened in New York and Pennsylvania? Reductions in actual population, or reductions in relative population?

    Relative – to Texas in particular.