I’m traveling through North Carolina, using hotel wi-fi and a cranky netbook (they don’t like to be dropped on asphalt. Who knew?)
Every now and again, I run into someone who wants to say that the bible belt isn’t any more religious than the rest of the county. They usually have some broad statistic like church attendance or basic religious affiliation to back up their arguments.
This argument feels tenuous once you take a drive through Virginia or North Carolina. Perhaps there aren’t that many more religious folks in the region, but they wear their religion closer to their skin. I’ve seen any number of hills decorated by a trio of crosses. The churches themselves seem larger, more numerous and they frequently try to outdo each other in terms of cross size.
This is where I grew up, but I’ve gotten so used to the more laid back north that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be steeped in religion.
One thing I keep noticing is the number of churches offering some kind addiction recovery program. Several of the larger churches I’ve passed have signs for some kind of assistance program for people with drug and alcohol addiction.
Is this a regional thing? I’ve yet to see a similar program in my portion of New York.
I was on assignment in NC (on the campus of NCSU) several years ago, when one of the employees of my client tried to “save” me. I told him I was done with religion and why, and he accepted my explanation. Later that day, a very sexy coed walked by, and my ostensible new Christian buddy shared with me exactly what he would like to do with her (earlier he had disclosed that he was married with children). When I asked him how this squared with his religious beliefs, he said something to this effect: Down here in the South, we go away to college, so that we can have a normal experience outside the view of those who we live (grew up) with (his community). He went on to explain that they wanted a normal college experience without the potentiality of being caught acting outside the bounds of religious rules.
God is not watching these people, and they know it. They’re more afraid of their peers and neighbors than they ever were about fealty to their expressed belief system or any “God” they might claim to worship.
Reminds me of the Taliban.
I’ve started to warm to the idea that religion is for a great many people simply about social cohesion and not rocking the boat. That is an interesting anecdote. Deacon Duncan had a very interesting blog entry recently covering the same issue: http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2010/12/04/getting-religion/
That’s it in a nutshell. Professing Christianity is your membership key to social acceptance, no matter how dim you are. You’ll never know how deeply held a person’s beliefs are until you take them out of their social bubble.
I think you’ve got that pretty close, if not dead on, right. Way back when I would have identified as Christian trying to fit in was the main reason. Strangely (or not) that never worked out for me. Lately I’ve been more vocal about my lack of belief, and not surprisingly it’s causing some waves.
Damn truth man, the amount of hypocrisy is at a level I’d never experienced before getting here.
Ah yes, North Carolina. That is where I first learned that Catholics are not Christians, a fact which was explained to me by a Southern Baptist.
Then what are they?
Sinners in the hands of an angry, manic-depressive, megalomaniacal, xenophobic, capricious, infanticidal, homicidal, patricidal, matricidal, jealous, envious, insecure, hateful, spiteful “god.”
LOL!
Many otherwise gentle Methodists where I was brought up fifty years ago would have the answer for Gringa, they are Papists who worship the Pope and bow down to graven images.
Re: the addiction/recovery thing. I live in rural NC and I think a lot of the time, the churches end up with those community-service-type meetings because there’s no one/nowhere else. AA meets in churches. NA meets in churches. All the Scouting (boy and girl) programs meet in churches. National Alliance for Mental Illness meets in a church. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens in the “big” towns near us? Churches. It could be that up north, there are other organizations taking on that burden but here, notsomuch.
That, and the 12-step programs are religious in nature. I’d go so far as to call them 12-step cults.
They also have shockingly high relapse rates, by the way.
Yep, that too. What’s worse is that the courts literally force people into these programs. So much for freedom of religion…
That’s one of my problems with the 12-step programs. If you are in a particular problem with the law having to do with alcohol, they will assign you to meetings even if you don’t have an addiction. There is the assumption that you agree you must have a serious enough problem, but doesn’t require you to continue meetings after however many. You don’t have to speak at these meetings (a friend of mine did have his problem with the law a few years ago), or get anything out of them, or report back to your probation officer that you seem “better” or “recovered” from your addiction. You just have to go and get your sheet signed that you were there.
They are assigning a disease to you, assigning you recovery of that disease on a temporary basis, and doesn’t even matter if you have improved (for the good of society at large) from the conditions that got you into trouble with the law. I think that’s how they stay on the good side of the establishment clause.
My other problem with them is that, if you do have a serious problem and you voluntarily would like to address it, there are literally no other recommended options in the US. The programs may be helpful to some people, but complete BS to others. I know sometimes they also say that “higher power” doesn’t necessarily mean “god” if you don’t want it to; it can just mean the things out of your control, basically most things. The BS part is that it works just like a religious program. They are trying to help people beat what they call a disease by telling them they are powerless. Everyone I’ve known who is in AA (not too many, really) may go to several meetings in one day when they are feeling particularly week, and at least several times per week, or whenever they travel, find a meeting in the paper.
If what it takes to stop being an alcoholic is making a job for yourself to get to meetings, you basically need more meetings to stop your addiction to meetings. That just isn’t for everyone. That’s the power of “acceptance” that you are powerless. It’s not being stubborn to walk out of AA and wish there were some other way. It’s just talking, it’s psychology, it’s distraction, and friendship – I’m sure there can be other valid formats that would be helpful and more appealing. AA just makes you, like a bully, understand you are powerless, and that you’re arrogant if you think there’s some better way to kick booze.
Something I found interesting was when I had two AA members speak at one of my health classes. They both had been in for over ten years and they both said they’ve been sober but if they didn’t go to the meetings, then they would start drinking again.
Makes you wonder how “cured” they really are.
They’re not “cured”, they’ve simply shifted their fixation/addiction to the meetings.
That reminds me of Christians who claim that the 10 Commandments and the threat of eternal punishment is what keeps them from sinning. You know, because if it wasn’t for eternal damnation, I know I’d be out murdering, stealing and raping (oh wait, that’s not a Commandment…) to my heart’s content!
Out of curiosity, where do you get the relapse figures? I know AA doesn’t publish them itself, for example. But I don’t doubt that they would have high relapse rates.
Here’s something:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html
It’s really long, but not hard to read the important parts (and it’s not a pdf).
Thanks!
The writing style of the article is actually pretty good, but you wouldn’t know that because it looks ugly and has large blocks of text. Somebody needs to teach these people brevity and formatting.
Still, there is a lot of pretty good evidence there. Usually the sample size is pretty small, but not too small to be statistically significant.
There was an episode of “Bullshit!” on 12-step that was pretty good. It’s good to see P&T were well-supported by the facts on this one (occasionally they are not).
I kind of liked the ugly blocks of text to the normal dry format of just paragraphs in plain black and white for something of that length. Made it easier to skim for the high points and not feel like I really missed anything, writing style and all, and because of it’s amateurish formatting, it didn’t take ages to load. In Word, it clocks in at 176 pages. WOW. Brevity, yeah. I would not volunteer to teach them brevity.
I agree with you about P&T – it’s always helpful to remember they’re magicians. Even though they often show you exactly how they do a trick, it still is hard to see how they are doing it when they do it again. I think they use that ability on their show, so I don’t just buy what they are selling to me, even if I have the impulse to agree or feel confirmed about it.
I’ve had my own impressions of AA for a while – I know “It works if you work it” gets said a lot, and people who are not familiar tend to give them the benefit of the doubt for saving people who were destroying themselves. I generously assumed, like most people, that it does work well if you are willing to be in that program, but also why there aren’t popular alternatives – why laws around the US sentence alcohol-related criminals to AA meetings, welfare applicant alcoholism assessment – AA meetings. Is there no skepticism for this program????? Everyone who doesn’t like it is in denial! They won’t admit they are powerless, they fail the steps, they can’t be cured!
????? And as I said above, the alcohol-related criminals are required to attend meetings long enough to get their sheet signed, long enough to cover their sentence. Itself has no interest in treating the source of the offensive behavior, care of the criminal as a patient, what is the point to this? So the criminal has the ability to keep some appointments. AA has no good record for success in recovery, so double-what is the point?
I mean, if alcoholism is a disease (and is it really, and who is on the case?), usually medicine has journals and peer reviews and people trying to refine medicines and search for less invasive, safer, and more effective drugs to treat the problem – WHY has this one gone unprogressed? AA is not an actual medicine, that’s one possible reason – considerably less intrusive than medicine to the body except it takes over your whole life to keep you from taking another drop of drink.
I know I went pretty much a straight few years drinking too much every day, and then, without any struggle or discomfort, stopped for months at a time. I still drink occasionally, not very much, sometimes in the morning if I want to! – I feel that as an adult, it is like eating cake instead of dinner, who cares? If I went to a meeting at the time I felt I was powerless to stop drinking (I kind of felt that I was), they would have convinced me that I was never going to stop unless I did the steps and the meetings. People really do stop drinking when they want to, and drink occasionally afterwards with no “relapse” into the addictive behavior. Is alcoholism a disease? If so, am I cured or only recovered? Will I drink again habitually? Probably not. I gained a lot of weight and I’ve since lost it from not drinking, if you want to call that an incentive. I like fitting into my old jeans, is that so hard for a 12-step program to understand?
NHS drug addiction services keep tabs on all types of program to help addicts quit; abstinance is at the bottom of the success list. For alcohol you need to ween people off over 48 hours with Valium (which acts on the same receptor sites and blocks the nastier withdrawal symptoms), with heroin you get people onto Methadone instead and ween them off of that (because it acts on the same receptors as other opioids – meaning heroin does nothing to you if you’re on methodone – but can’t be injected and is easier to ween people off of over time), with tobacco you use nicotine replacement therapy like patches or gum. All of them benefit from a peer support group or counselling, but NOT if you just stop dead – besides which, some of the withdrawal symptoms can kill you. I’ve had patients who suddenly decided to quit drinking who’ve had seizures every minute or two for a day and a night.
In fairness to the soup kitchens, they use churches because they’re big indoor spaces with plenty of seats! Choices are limited with those criteria.
As a North Carolina resident, I think it would be good to keep in mind that the South is not as homogenous as many people think. In NC specifically, places like Ashville, Chapel Hill, and Durham are very open-minded and religiously tolerant. Carrboro, in fact, is one the most liberal voting communities in the US.
That said, Protestantism in the South has been a vital institution, providing community services (as DH mentioned). This is especially true in very rural places where the government intervention was (is) not present. These Churches often provide a lot of the communities’ entertainment and social gatherings; even kids’ sports teams are often “church teams.”
I think that when you examine the role of churches in the South, you can see why atheists have such a hard time reasoning with religious southerners. I, for one, was not as integrated into my church as many people are, so leaving the faith didn’t mean losing friends and family. Having a family that encouraged my education helped a great deal, as well. Many people (all over the country) don’t get that, and I think we’ve seen how a lack of science education affects their ability to understand the logistical issues of Christianity.
I think it would make sense that religious institutions would host programs that might rely on the Twelve Step Program, considering that a belief in a high power is a central idea. Over half the steps reference “God” or a “Power” that gives strength. Getting people to join a program that pushes acceptance of a deity as the sole road to recovery is a good way to get people in the pews.
The 12-step cult… again.
I grew up in NC as a moderate Southern Baptist (yes, there is such a thing!). I grew up in a small liberal college town in the mountains, then lived in the state capital Raleigh for 12 years before moving to Boise, Idaho last year (from one bible belt to another – Idaho is Mormon country, like Utah). Anyway, I visited NC last month with my girlfriend who grew up in Boise and has never been to the south. As we drove across the state on backroads, we played “count the churches,” or more specifically, “count the Protestant churches.” It was a game that could have kept us busy all day, but we lost track after several dozen in a couple hours of driving. My girlfriend was amazed at the pervasiveness of churches, crosses, billboards and other Christian paraphernalia. Of course, one also can’t help but notice the correlation between the number of Confederate/Rebel Flags and the number of churches in certain parts of the country…
I know that, in NYC, at least, addiction treatment services are provided by the city government. A church-based program would have trouble getting going, I think.
Yes there is the lack of social services. But the south (particularly the Apalachian south) has MAJOR problems with drugs: Oxycontin (aka “Hillbilly Heroin”) and meth.
I guess gettin’ high on Jeezus only goes so far…
Also, let me put on my shocked face…. You mean when people are poor and miserable they try to self medicate with drugz and/or Jeezus?????? Shut up!!!!
You don’t say…
Ja. I sometimes think back and recall just how powerful the effects of singing in praise or “group worship” were. It was definitely VERY euphoric at times. Though I realize it was placebo and I can mimic the effects even now by similar means (however I tend to be to cynical to do so =P).
Damn my love of cynicism!
Cynicism gets me high.
I grew up in North Carolina and I have to say that people in the bible belt are way more religious then other places in the country. Also NC has a huge meth problem so many churches set up programs for addicts. Most of these places are not certified by any kind of official group of any knid for the kind of treatment they offer though
I live in North Eastern North Carolina and yeah, it’s that bad. I’m 17 so I try to keep a broad and positive outlook on the world in general but areas like where I live make it hard. There are a lot, a LOT of atheists in our school systems. The religion of this area has caused people to literally pray their way out of a financial slum. We’ve been defined as a rural ghetto by many numerous speakers who have tried to help our area out. I was born in Fort Myers, Florida and honesty can’t remember one church around where I lived at. In Virginia we had large LDS and Catholic churches (Norfolk, Va) but that’s about it. I now live in Hertford, NC, a small town of farmers and retired people, and there’s a Souther Baptist church, a Baptist church, Methodist church, and a Lutheran church. These churches literally run the town. We’re trying to sell our house to the Methodist church and they’re voting on what to do and it’s a physical battle just to deal with them.
At the park just sitting with my brothers in band t-shirts and jeans we had two men come up and ask us our religious affiliations. One brother said he didn’t care about religion one way or another, my other brother said agnostic and I said atheist. There ensued a two hour debate on religion which led to them basically telling my brother he shouldn’t hang around with us because we’re bad people. It pissed us all off.
My parents, who aren’t very religious, tried to send my two brothers and I to a baptist school. My brother Zach (the agnostic) and I were handily kicked out because we weren’t Christians and we were evolutionists. My brother is facing similar problems at the school now.
Bottom line is North Carolina and the whole south hold parts of Florida are insanely religious, to a radical extremist point.
I just moved to the south and one thing I’ve noticed is that there is a whole lot of “Merry Christmas” and no “Happy Holidays.” I think they are making a point not to be politically correct. So much for southern hospitality!
People are hospitable as long as you don’t “insult” their “right” to Guns, God, and Gold.
Gold, really? Can you explain that one to me? I’ve never heard that one.
You’ve never heard the denizens of the Right complain about taxes and how their money is going to unworthy minorities with a bazillion children who sit around on their ass and leech off of society and how the government spends, spends, spends THEIR money?
Ahh! My bad. Yes, I have heard of that. I was just thrown off by the use of “gold” and my mind went to thoughts like “gold mining” and jewelery…
^_^ Thanks.
“Buy Gold” has become a mainstay of right-wing radio and TV like Rush and Glenn Beck. Gold has historically been a “safe investment” especially in difficult economic times, i.e. a place to put your money where it won’t lose value even when the dollar is depreciating. So right-wingers have two motivations for pushing people towards gold right now:
1) they want to convince people that Obama et al. are literally destroying the economy and the dollar won’t be worth jack in a couple years, and
2) perhaps not surprisingly, the gold industry has become major sponsors of the right-wing media machine. If you watch an hour of Glenn Beck, you will see him on his show claiming “the sky is falling, you must put your money in gold”, then during the commercial break you will literally see him hawking goldline.com as a place to buy gold.
http://flowingdata.com/2010/08/02/inside-the-glenn-beckgoldine-scheme/
Isn’t gold subject to bubbles like any other market????
yes, of course. But people with a vested interest in you buying it won’t tell you that when it’s on the way up.
just like any bubble – when you’re at or near the top, the “experts” claim “there is no bubble, it’s different this time! this is a new paradigm!”
Yes, Glenn Beck… making an art out of fear-mongering and desperation-making. Here’s my shocked face:
>:*0
I know what I want when the world goes tits up – lumps of inert metal!
Gold isn’t inert, and in fact a number of “gold salts” (which are not really salts at all) have a number of medical and industrial uses.
But it won’t oxidize in air, which is nice.
And of course, gold’s most common use is still making things look nice.
The most despicable is the way he send the stupid sods who believe him to buy antique coins that offer higher profit margins for his sponsors but will lose most of their value if the doomsday scenario actually happen.
Does anybody know the story of the tulip bubble in Holland a few hundred years back? In modern comparison, Glenn Beck is the King of Holland.
Anyhow, I live in Colorado. The biggest Christian protrusion in my side is those who feel the rest of us drifted too far from christ and that they ought to remind us he still wants us back. They know we don’t care, but they know we’re only sleeping on Saturday morning so that’s when they come knocking.
Religion runs hot and cold here. If some douche with a gavel thinks you have a juice problem, you are permitted to pay for a therapist instead of the religion classes via AA. Call it a transition phase? I concede it’s less big brothery and more teenage ex-boyfriendy but still invasive and offensive and extremely condescending. Sooo, hot and cold. In a bath that’s just tepid.
Their signs are embarrassingly funny though:
“try jezus. If you don’t like it satan wants to talk.”
“C.H.R.I.S.T.: Christ Heals InSide and ouT”
Yes, Tulip Mania!
And this is a great opportunity to mention Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a skeptical classic from Charles Mackay, 1841. That cat was way ahead of his time.
Welcome to NC! I have to say that there is a more solid feeling of religion here. Even in the more urban areas religion will permeate general culture a bit more than some other states I’ve visited. While waitressing to put myself through college, I was once stiffed on a tip by two ministers who during their discussion on the flaws of evolution found that I did not agree.
There are probably a lot more atheists/agnostics/skeptics here than it seems. We’re just not easy to spot because a lot of us blend in. I personally use language that many would see as branding me as christian just because I hear it so much:P
But yeah! Welcome to our state!
I live in, and am from, Western New York State. However I did live in Jacksonville, NC for over two years when I was in the USMC, back in the late 80′s. Religion was everywhere, but so were strip clubs. Go figure.
I looked for LRA’s descriptions of Texas, having been a west-coaster all my life. 100 miles inland was far, and a couple of years in eastern Washington state was really far in.
In Alaska, it seemed like a dike’s mixture of progressive people (of all ages) – the ones we called “liberal” before it was used as if it were a dirty word for name-calling – the highest percentage of umarried couples cohabiting in the U.S., and the redneckiest rednecks trying to outdo Texas ones. Even the liberal crowd seemed always to be saying, “She goes to my church!”
Anyway, my mom left Oklahoma to get away from the bible-belt shit while she was very young. Like, as in, as early as possible.
Community organizations that provide useful services to people overtime persist and grow. Doesn’t seem that anyone in this tread has ever dealt with alcoholics or related symptoms of dysfunctional families in our dysfunctional society. AA has given my daughter, age 32, a social life away from negative influences. If you change your habits, you have to change your friends. That we live in a culture of drugs and alcohol, is easily over looked. Mick Jagger’s “Mother’s Little Helper” was “a little yellow pill” way back in 1966. There was a lot of alcoholism among suburban housewives that psychologists didn’t understand until decades later. Logic and rationality works until it doesn’t. Save a little space for the Mystery of Spirit. The gods of human religions mirror the humans of the time. Just for fun, answer the question: “Why is there anything at all?”
Yes yes, of course. People need mystery and romantic idea’s of spiritualism in order to survive.
The argument here on this blog (or so it seems to me) doesn’t seem to really be about WHAT people are allowed to believe, just about HOW it affects everyone else. Yes, religious institutions do good (and you have a very nice sob story to accompany it), but the problem comes when these “born again” people start trying to make everyone else as “whole” as themselves (ie – affecting legislation and school materials and generally impeding humanity as a whole).
“Why is there anything at all?” So what? Is that one of the few little things you cling to in order to justify your beliefs? Yes, there is a lot that I don’t know about, but will I prescribe to some inane belief just because I don’t understand/know? No.
If you can pry the rose-coloured glasses off your face for two seconds you may see the points of others.