When the South Loosens its Bible Belt

When the South Loosens its Bible Belt

A growing breed of unchurched evangelicals is poised to heighten the
culture wars.

RUSSELL MOORE
|
AUGUST 11, 2022

https://t.co/yMuAey4ucu

When the South Loosens its Bible Belt
Image: Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe
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“If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t wanna go,” Hank Williams
Jr. sang. “If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I’d just as soon stay
home.”

The song was, of course, meant to be more of a praise of the South
than a developed eschatology. But after detailing all the things he
loved about his home region, Hank Jr. concluded that if these things
were missing from eternity, then “just send me to hell or New York
City; it would be about the same to me.”

Recent studies show that, increasingly, white Southern evangelicals
are deciding that when it comes to the church, if not to heaven,
they’d just as soon stay home.

Last week here, I referenced an analysis by historian Daniel K.
Williams (no relation to Hank) on studies of a fast-growing trend
among white Southern Protestants who seldom or never attend church and
yet self-identify as evangelical Christians.

To recap, Williams points to data on how these unchurched evangelicals
are not secularizing in the same way as, say, people in Denmark or
Germany, or even as folks in Connecticut or Oregon.

Unchurched evangelicals in the South not only keep their politics but
also ratchet up to more extreme levels. They maintain the same moral
opinions—except on matters that directly affect them (like having
premarital sex, smoking marijuana, and getting drunk).

This category of lapsed and non-church-attending evangelicals are now,
as Williams points out, the largest religious body in the South. They
are also lonelier, more disconnected, angrier, and more suspicious of
institutions.

White Southern Evangelicals Are Leaving the Church

White Southern Evangelicals Are Leaving the Church
Data suggests that, when their attendance drops, these nominal
Christians become hyper-individualistic, devoted to law and order,
cynical about systems, and distrustful of others.
DANIEL K. WILLIAMS
These findings have seismic implications for the church and for the
broader culture.

Years ago, I argued that a kind of cultural Christianity was dying out
in the Bible Belt—the kind that required you go to church, or at least
to be somehow affiliated with one, if you wanted to be a “normal”
person. I often recounted how a friend of mine in college, an atheist,
suddenly asked me one day to recommend “a Southern Baptist church to
join—but one that’s not too, you know, Southern Baptist-y.”

After giving several recommendations, I asked him how he had become a
Christian. Waving away my question, my friend said he didn’t believe
in “any of that stuff.” But he wanted to run for office one day, and
demographically, there were more Southern Baptists than anything else
in his potential constituency.

At that time, most people didn’t have such a blatantly transactional
view of the church. That’s why it was expected that kids who wandered
away from the faith would eventually be back once they “settled down”
to marry and start a family.

In many of these places, to be a grown-up and not a rebel or weirdo
meant you attended church. Yet increasingly, I once argued, it was
less and less necessary for people to go to church for those cultural
reasons.

What I didn’t count on was that cultural Christianity would be
infected with a delta variant and morph into something else.

The kind of cultural Christianity we now see often keeps everything
about the Religious Right except the religion. These people aren’t in
Sunday school, but they might post Bible verses on Facebook (or quote
them on TikTok).

Cultural Christianity, as we once knew it, is largely being replaced
by a kind of blood-and-soil Christianity. The “Christianity” in such
settings is the sense of belonging and obligation not to a church but
to a particular brand of white political and cultural identity.

For, say, a front-row choir member to become such a disconnected,
culturally combative non-churchgoer is akin to the old God-and-country
civil religion morphing into the kinds of Christian nationalism we see
emerging around the world.

On one hand, the rise of the unchurched white “evangelicals” should
provoke a second thought for secular progressives. Those who assume
secularization equals “progress” (liberally defined) may think that
people who stop going to church will start discussing NPR at mimosa
brunches.

Yet in most cases, the reverse is happening. Going without worship and
connection does not end the culture wars—it often heightens them.
Almost any disconnection from organic community leads people to
extremism and anger, no matter their place on the ideological
spectrum.

Consider the evolution of the Left—from the days when leadership was
wielded mostly by labor unions of plumbers, teamsters, electricians,
and so on, and when civil rights leaders were typically pastors or
pillars of local congregations.

To use the most trivial example possible, at almost any other time in
Southern Bible Belt churches, older deacons and church ladies would
give a stern reprimand to whoever used “Let’s Go Brandon” as a synonym
for a vulgarity (even if they agreed with the politics).

As Leon Wieseltier once noted, wherever identity is the thinnest, it
is often the loudest.

There’s a world of difference between confident and combative
Christianity. Confident Christianity constantly reminds us that this
life is less important than the next. It demonstrates something of
what it means to forgive and serve one another and to be on mission
together within a true, visible local body. Combative “Christianity”
tries to differentiate us culturally, politically, or racially from
those deemed to be the irredeemable enemies.

This is especially true when people combine a sense of identity as an
entitled majority (“We are the real America”) with an identity as a
besieged minority (“Elites are out to destroy us”). A blood-and-soil
mentality is the way of Cain—who resented his brother because he
himself was not recognized.

True Christian worship is the way of Abel—who offered his sacrifice to
God even though it cost him his life. Some might say, “See, that’s the
problem! Abel ended up dead. Cain at least was a fighter.” That makes
sense from one point of view. The problem is that this isn’t the
perspective of Jesus, the Bible, or the church of the living God (Heb.
11:4).

I must return to another myth that persists in secular progressive
enclaves outside the Bible Belt. When many people in these places look
at conspiracy theories or political polarization or political
violence, they blame the local churches. They assume that the problem
lies in pastors whipping their people into a frenzy with dangerous
ideas—whether they be vaccine avoidance or much, much darker ideas.

Yet apart from a handful of well-publicized churches led by such
personalities, this is rarely the case.

Instead, at least in my experience, churches are usually the sanest
outpost of what now goes by American Christianity. At one point, I
would have said the problem is not in the pulpit but in the pews. But
now I think I would say the problem isn’t primarily in the pews
either.

Now, to be sure, this sort of unchurched Christianity affects the
church. And my point is not that “the problem is with nominal
Christians, not real ones.” My point is that if we really pay
attention to what is going on—with the loneliness, disconnection, and
fanaticism disguised as “conviction”—we can see that the local church
is, in many ways, not the problem but the solution.

But, far more importantly, Jesus told us he would come to us,
uniquely, within the context of church fellowship (Matt. 18:20)—in the
breaking of bread, in the building each other up with spiritual gifts,
in the encouraging one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual
songs.

If the church is what we believe it to be—a body connected to a Head
(Eph. 4:15–16; 5:29–30)—then we know that we are shaped, formed, and
made holy mostly through a set of rhythms and practices we often don’t
even notice is changing us. And the whole body is “supported and held
together by its ligaments and sinews” as we grow (Col. 2:19).

That sort of connection is the only way we can find the right kind of
individuality and authenticity. Thomas Merton once said, “I cannot
make good choices unless I develop a mature and prudent conscience
that gives me an accurate account of my motives, my intentions, and my
moral acts.”

Without that sort of conscience, Merton argued, our choices will be
determined by what is acceptable to the crowd, and “evil” will be
defined by what upsets that crowd. The result of an unformed
conscience is one that is “merely the delegate of the conscience of
another person, or of a group, or of a party, or social class, or of a
nation, or of a race.”

When a party-line or blood-and-soil worldview shapes the conscience,
Merton contended, true love becomes impossible since one cannot give
to others what one does not have. The conscience is meant to be formed
together in community—in worship, mission, and the reading and obeying
of God’s transforming Word. That’s the opportunity in front of us.

Yes, if all people see of “Christianity” is the anger and loneliness
of half-Christians, then they will not see the real Jesus. But the
converse is true too. In a time of loneliness, separation, and
boredom, we ought to see a craving for what Jesus told us we all need.

Against the backdrop of all the surrounding cultural wreckage, how
distinctive it is for those hungering and thirsting for something more
to find a church of people—however small, however unnoticed— who know
how to pray, gather around a table, and say “Amen” to the Bible
together.

Such a body can cry together over their sins and rejoice together over
their forgiveness—to see in one another’s lives that there is power,
wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb.

For those who can’t tell the difference between hell and New York
City, maybe this is the moment for a different Way altogether. If
heaven’s not a lot like Dixie, maybe heaven is exactly where we want
to be.

Russell Moore leads the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today.

Source: https://t.co/yMuAey4ucu
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