Bible Belt Membership Patterns, Correlates and Landscapes

The term “Bible Belt” was coined by journalist H.L. Mencken following his coverage of the Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. It has been used regularly since then to refer to a religiously conservative or fundamentalist region in the American South and Midwest though the geographic extent Bible Belt historically has been ill-defined. Geographers have attempted to delineate the location of the Bible Belt in the past. Notably Heatwole mapped the geographic extent of the Bible Belt in a 1978 article using 1971 data from the Glenmary Research Center. In 2011 Brunn, Webster and Archer updated Heatwole’s analysis adding cartographic and statistical analyses for the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s; they found significant changes to the Belt’s location and geographic extent. This study further updates that analysis using 2010 data. In addition to mapping changes in the Bible Belt’s geography since 2000, we examine the sociodemographic correlates to the region’s denominational makeup and consider the relevance of Stump’s concept of religious territoriality through an examination of religious signage in the region. Each of these three perspectives, cartographic, spatial analytic and photographic, sheds light on the geographic, sociodemographic and economic character of the Bible Belt.