Reply to Why are there so many "highly religious" people in the South?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank you for sharing. It sounds like it could create a lot of stress for kids if they didn't share those beliefs. Was that in the South?
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Np here. I don't think it would cause stress. 
Just a fact of navigating it.

You're usually in the literal and figurative clubs. Or you're not. And everyone knows where you stand pretty much. And everyone knows if you are religious but being wayward anyway. [/quote]

What about the slut shaming the PP described? That would stress me out if it happened to me or even if I thought it could happen to me.  [/quote]

Eh - I'd rather go for the slut shaming than participate in that stupid trash. Bring on the slutting!

Geez. I grew up in DC and my mother dragged me to church every darned Sunday but i just couldn't get anything out of it. I'm a pretty moral and good person but I didnt like the sexism and hippocracy of the church (the meanest most self centered people go to church the most), didn't get anything out of praying, and I dont 'fear anything' including god. I don't understand people who go for all of this stuff verbatim. Not even 15 years of Catholic school could make me a robot - I'd much rather be known as a slut.

Don't get it. And yes we have religious relations in the south and they say ignorant off the wall things - it's really like they are in a cult.  [/quote]

I think part of what people who didn't grow up in a small, rural community tend to miss is that it is much harder to blend in and not be noticed as it is in more densely populated areas.  Your absence or lack of participation is much more obvious when there are fewer people an the community is more insular.  My DH was raised in a rural, Southern community, and what kept him toeing the line was not his neighbors' perceptions of HIM but rather the judgment and blowback from his lack of belief on his mother.  People whose children didn't play the game were publicly prayed for and there was definitely questioning of their parenting skills.  These are people who look skeptically upon Catholics, think Mormonism is a cult, to say nothing of Jews and Muslims (whom they cannot differentiate from Sikhs and Hindus).  My father-in-law is agnostic at best, and that gave DH someone to relate to and an outlet for his faith-doubting.  But FIL's lack of church attendance and being "saved" was not unnoticed and had consequences.  HE didn't care, but my MIL worries more about the perceptions, and, of course, about his soul.

I grew up in a large, suburban area in the south, and it was very different.  There is a huge church community, but a wide array of faiths (Christian and not) and a lot less emphasis on being "saved".  I had no idea what being saved meant until I was in high school, and, when my MIL called my husband to tell him our nephew had been saved, it was odd to me because I didn't get what a huge thing this was in their community.  When she excitedly got started, I thought that someone in their family had had a medical event or something given her tone.  She worries a lot about our souls, we have a don't-ask-don't-tell policy on our lack of belief/church attendance and the variety of religions in which my family members participate (at last count, we had a few United Methodists (who do baptism/confirmation and not "saving"), a Jew, a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, and a couple of Buddhists).[/quote]

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