I know what you mean. I get equally annoyed with the stereotype of snooty, out of touch intellectuals in the north. Anyone who has been to South Boston, rural Maine, or Fall River can see that stereotype is baseless.
There are some real differences however. One of them is the attitude toward religion. There is a fascinating map here. Note how Massachusetts and Florida defy expectations.
That is a fascinating map. I see no discernible Bible Belt on it. At least not in its normally ascribed location.
Upon closer examination, I see some possible flaws with that map:
We don’t know which 149 religious bodies participated in the study.
I imagine such a study would miss a lot of independent churches and small denominations in the South, and would also miss the “churches of Christ” (which have no centralized organization). The c of C numbers would probably be enough to darken middle Tennessee and east Texas(strongholds for that denomination) considerably. At the same time, I can imagine Catholics being over-represented, since they are baptised into the church at infancy, even though they might never darken a church door as an adult. So the number of theoretical adherents might be very different from the number of people regularly attending. (Correct me if I’m wrong, Catholic friends.)
It runs North/South through the middle of the country rather than east west through the south.
