News-Record.com

Having spent some time in many of the places of the south mentioned in the article, I can say it's easy to believe. It seems to me that in the South, at least, overt religion is more common in rural areas than in urban/metropolitan areas. And the types of religiosity also seem to change as well. It's rare (in my experience) to find a progressive church in the mountains or out in the middle of the sandhills. I wonder how detailed these surveys are in regard to these local variations?

I am a lay leader in a small United Methodist Church in Mississippi, and we are very fundamental in our belief concerning the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation, and the absolute authority of Scripture as being God-breathed.
We aren't only on a different page from our liberal denomination, but in a different book!

Rural aeras always tend to be more conservative, in religion as in other areas. Did you know that the word "pagan" originally meant what we call a "hick" or "redneck"? It was an insulting term those newfangled Christians invented back in the fourth century or so to put down the backwoods yokels who still clung to the old religion instead of being up to date and modern. Now the religions have reversed, but the pattern is the same; maybe because people in the cities are exposed to more different ideas and tend to be more mobile and less clannish.