The Church Answers Podcast
Is the Bible Belt Disappearing?
- Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast, presented by Cheney & Associates. Cheney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. - You are at the Church Answers Podcast. I'm Tom Rayner, I'm joined by Jess Rayner. Jess is best known as the father of my grandchildren and that is his claim to fame from my perspective. - He's got incredible kids, absolutely incredible kids. Gannon Harper, Collins, incredible kid, the one that's with the Lord, Will, I would have loved to have known him. How old would Will be today? 14, 13, 13, he's a year younger, that's right. - Wow. - What a story, what a legacy you already have in the three kids and the one that is in heaven. We are going to be talking about the Bible Belt. And when people hear the Bible Belt, they have presumptions, assumptions. Sometimes they're on target, most of the time they are not. Hey, let me tell you what is on target. We got this incredible resource. We call everything church resources directory. It's absolutely free, download it now because anything that you want to find out about where can I find such for my church is there. And if it's not, just send us a quick email and we'll make certain it's added in there. Thousands and thousands of resources and it's there available for you. You can download it and print it out or you can just download it and look at it. It's everything church resources directory. So Jess, what we're going to talk about is the Bible Belt disappearing. Can you have, do you have any recollection of the first time you ever heard of Bible Belt and what you thought or is it just, you've heard about it so long, you don't remember? - No, I can't. That's just been a known topic for so long being in the South, you know. Growing up in church, I'm sure I heard you say it at a young age. No, I don't have any recollection of when I first heard it. - Nor do I. And before I also get past recollection issues, please think about going to Chaney and Associates. They are the accounting firm for the church. I love that they let you focus on your ministry while you, they can focus on your finances. They're cloud based. They serve all sized churches. They're great organizations. If a church, all churches need some type of financial support but keeping otherwise, they're the ones that you need. They're the ones serving 1,100 churches. So thank you, Chaney and Associates. So let's go back to the thing about Bible Belt. And the first question that we need to begin to ask is, you know, what is the Bible Belt? What states are in the Bible Belt? Checking several different sources, there were 10 that were common. - Okay. - There were two that were second tier. And there were six that were third tier. - Okay. - So when you look at all of the Bible Belt churches have been mentioned, 10 are mentioned every time. Sometimes another two are added to those, but I was surprised where the other six are mentioned as well. So let me just go through the first 10. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas. No surprises there, are they? - Nope, almost virtually the Southeast. - Except for what? Two states were left out. - There's no Florida. - They went too fast. There's no Florida, there's no Louisiana. There's no Louisiana. - Okay, okay. - Those are the two states that were not included. And it's for this reason, Florida is only the Bible Belt in demographic categories in the penhandle and the Northern portion. Once you start getting Orlando South, whether you're going Southeast, which is go South Florida, or Southwest like Bradenton Sarasota or Naples, it is not Bible Belt country. So that's why it's sometimes listed in the Bible Belt. And anyway, the penhandle should have been in Alabama anyway. I mean, have you ever looked at the shape of the state and where they just left this little beauty beach for Alabama and they said, "Oh, this is Florida." There must have been some power brokers back then that were able to keep that. - Smart move by Alabama. - Why is that? They didn't get the beach. - Oh, you see, I was assuming Florida would go the whole way in Alabama for at least a part of it. I don't know the history of it, so who knows? I was thinking, I'll be able to at least give me a part of it. But I see what you're saying now, it should have gone all the way down. I don't know, I don't know the history of how the states formed, but that's another podcast. I'm sure it's out there. - I'm sure it's out there too. And Alabama just gives us a little beauty place, just west of, just east of Mobile, like Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, just that little beauty place. - And then Florida gets the panhandle. - Well, so Florida is one of those Bible Belt. Louisiana, the reason it is not a Bible Belt is because it's so heavily Catholic. And so there are some Southern Baptist churches, Nazarene churches, free will Baptist. There are some of those there, but it is so heavily Catholic that oftentimes it is not included in the Bible Belt. The other six, I'm not gonna give the reasons why or why not, but there are portions of this that are considered the Bible Belt, Missouri, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Indiana and Ohio. - Okay. - And some of that has to do with transplants too. - Yeah, and it sounds like the parts of the states that are touching parts of the Bible Belt, you know, and so that makes sense. How far out does it grow? - Yeah, well, I know that Illinois is not owned here, but your wife's hometown of Mount Vernon, Illinois has some Bible Belt flavor to it, even though it's not in the Bible Belt. - A hint, a hint. - Okay. - Well, when you, yeah, that Southern Illinois, I've only picked up on a hint. - It's not listed as a Bible Belt. So the question is this, is the Bible Belt disappearing? So Jess, I'm not gonna quiz you on any type of specific definition of Bible Belt, but just give the lay person's understanding when you hear what the Bible Belt is, what are we talking about? - Yeah, and I could be wrong on this, so you can correct me. I tend to think Bible Belt and it's synonymous with cultural Christianity. - I think it did on it. - The South and church. I'm gonna say church. Religion became a cultural piece of it. You know, it's what you did on Sundays. It's just, you go to church, you go grab some lunch afterwards. It's just a part of the rhythm of life and there was an expectation, right? If grandma wanted you to get church on Sunday, you better be there. And so that's how I defined it. It's a cultural norm, a cultural expectation that existed mostly in the South to attend church. - And here is what has happened. You're dead on, the cultural norm began to transform into now what is called cultural Christianity differently than what it was called in the past. Cultural Christianity in the past meant that it is part of the culture that we got to church as part of the culture that there are a lot of Christians. Now cultural Christianity means you're not a Christian, but you may act like it or even say you are because that's the cultural thing to do. - Right. - So yeah, that's a good point. Cultural Christianity doesn't typically involve church going now. - It's exactly right. And I just read an article, gosh, and the listeners and viewers are gonna say, "Tom, you should remember this." But anyway, by a well-known atheist and he says he's a cultural Christian. And he said he wants to be, he wants certain things in the United States that were common to cultural Christianity back then in the Bible belt to come back. He said it was good for America. I don't believe in Jesus, I don't know, but I love. So he's declaring himself a cultural Christian while not even believing in the existence of God. - Wow, yeah. Yeah, even cultural Christianity now that people will say they go to church and say they're a Christian just because it's part of their heritage growing up. And so yeah, I could see why the Bible belt, what it used to be versus cultural Christianity versus what it is now. Yeah, that makes sense, that's good. - And then it's changing even more. And some of that has to do with the influence of media where you don't just see your own region usually, it's kind of like how Western culture affects the world, but also the culture of the U.S. affects the U.S. and so you don't just have this narrow perspective of where you live. But also there's the blue state to red state immigration or migration that is taking place. Well, if you're red state, it's immigration, if it's, you know, but it's migration from one state to another. And so what is happening there is you are bringing in a lot of people who are exiting blue states, some of them for tax reasons, some of them for other reasons. But one of the big reasons is they want to go to a place where they're more culturally comfortable, but they're not bringing any religion with them. So they're coming, hey, we're conservative politically, but we're not going to attend church. And so that's reshaping the Bible belt, not to be the Bible belt. - Yeah, yeah, then that makes sense. I sent being a church in Tennessee, I see a lot of transplants specifically from California. But I'm seeing those who want to go to a more, they see cultural Christianity, but they're, I think this is a place that's going to be more accessible in terms of that, but they're coming for the right reasons to church, right? They're not, you know, they genuinely want to be a part of it. They're leaving a culture that feels more, maybe more antagonistic is the way to describe it. And so you have some who are leaving because of the antagonism and they want to be able to just, you know, be in more like-minded mindset. We have others who are leaving for political views, which is then causing, I believe, you know, the big question is the Bible belt disappearing. I think it is. And so a lot of these reasons are leading into that. And I hope the Bible belt's disappearing. I really do. I hope culture Christianity is going away. That's my heart being in the South. We need that. - Yeah, culture Christianity is a side. It is not real Christianity. And so I think you're right. But here was a question, I think your oldest brother, Sam and I were discussing recently, how easy was conversion growth when I served as a pastor when y'all were boys compared to now? And I think it was a lot easier. I think growth in general was easier because people were coming to church is more common. But I think conversion growth was easier because we had a lot of children to reach. Children who were not. And again, I consider conversion of a child if they have a genuine decision for Christ to be conversion. You know, put it in just another category. And so we were able to reach a lot of the next generation of those who were churchgoers, but things are really changing now. And conversion growth is going down precipitously. And the fastest decline is in the Bible belt and conversion growth. - Yeah, you know, I wanna think about pastoring in the South. I was talking with a guy who was in high school and now he's in college. And he's going to college in a different part in the Northeast US, you know, saying just comparing like how different it is to be a Christian there versus what it was there. And he's just like, it's, you know, you really have to be a light. Like there's just a lot more opportunities in kind of using the analogy of darkness, right? There's a lot more darkness and you have to be light because there's not much light. He was just, you know, we gotta go. We gotta send people, we gotta do all these things. And I'll explain, well, you know, I feel like my calling that God's place in my life is to be in this area in the South where I'm wanting to tell people it's time to stop living off other people's light. You know, there are more Christians, you know, evangelical Christians in the South, but the problem is they're light. People are living off of it. And so, you know, as that light gets smaller, it's exposing more of the true nature of what's happening and people can't live off their other people's flame, other people's torches. So that's kind of gets, gets, gets me motivated as the Bible Belt disappears, the opportunity to just let people know, "Hey, you can't live off your grandmother's faith anymore." You know, our good word. Proximity to Jesus doesn't relate to relationship to Jesus. And so it's allowing me to have more of the true conversations with people. - Well, a lot to discuss here is the Bible Belt disappearing. Yes, it is. And as Jess said, it's not necessarily a bad thing. We'll talk about similar issues in future episodes. Thank you, Chaney, for being our sponsor. Chaney associates the counting firm for the church. And just a little note here. We have now gotten a donor that has given us $500 scholarships, one a quarter for church answers university. If you wanna claim that one, do so. You can see the information. It's a great program for a diploma. It's an alternative to formal ministry training like seminary at college, but it's a great alternative. And I just email CAU@churchanswers.com or look in the show notes. Thanks for being a part of this episode. behalf of Jess Rainer, I'm Tom Rainer. We'll see you in the next episode. - You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]