I’m guessing that’s a regional thing anymore. Over the last twenty years, overt religious expression has definitely declined even here (NE Wyoming), which makes sense as religious feelings are in decline across the country. But I’d be willing to bet that some areas (Utah, the southeast) are still fairly heavily religious.
It occurred to me while writing the previous paragraph that we are STILL talking about something that is likely “untrue”… Because I would guarantee there are far more religious folk in the cities than there are in the “country”, it’s just that there are also more non-religious or overtly anti-religious folks.
This again seems to come down to the inability to get past “people I don’t know” as an abstract, alien group that is completely different in thought and practice. It’s easy to see the neighbor’s kid as a bit of a rebel who just doesn’t fit into the Church, but when it is those “others” in the city, obviously they are a dangerous group of godless folks.
I think I misconstrued this the first time I read it. We should agree it is valid that certain stereotypes exist and consist of a particular belief or collection of beliefs about a group of people, and not meaning that we should agree that a particular stereotype about a group of people is true.
Does that sound like I am more correctly understanding what you mean?
I don’t disagree with that at all, but aren’t you just saying that the percentage of religious people is quite likely (significantly) higher among rural folk than among urban folk ?
And aren’t rural areas losing population, particularly younger population, causing their average age to rise ? This may be a 17 y/o article, but I doubt the dynamics have changed much even if the degrees have:
[Older = more religious]
I have said on these threads that the natural tendency for humans to gather themselves up into tribes is quite likely really exacerbated in more rural areas where there generally isn’t the same diversity to begin with.
It may pit Baptists against Protestants against Lutherans against Catholics for all I know.
I’m being tongue in cheek, here, but even in more and more of these areas (as is the case in my town), diversity tends to be Latino and there is a tendency for those folks to live among their own, in rather discrete parts of town (partly, but not strictly, for economic reasons).
In most urban areas … it’s either relatively quite integrated, or … diversity is just a couple blocks away.
Neither side (rural or urban) may well have a good understanding of the other, but there is reason to believe that folks who live, work, and play in significant diversity are daily exposed to myriad puzzle pieces that are radically different from their own.
Meaning: it isn’t that there aren’t bigots in the big city – not by a country mile [NPI] – but for those who aren’t basically wired for bigotry, a rich cultural experience exists that can amply inform a worldview and loosen the grip on many things that some will otherwise hold dear and guard relentlessly.
25 years ago, when I was in high school, my teachers lamented about the drain in our area. “Our biggest export is our children,” they said. Because more often than not, any kid who proved themselves bright, capable, and adaptable always left to go to a city somewhere, and as a result things were always mostly stagnant, growth-wise.
This might be inaccurate or a stereotype, but connections to family and extended family are sometimes mentioned as tighter or more valued among Latinx people. There are two towns not far from where I live that have a much higher Latinx population than the surrounding area. I think an untrue stereotype some rural people here hold is that these would be populations of illegal immigrants. One town has a pork processing plant, and the other has a plastics factory and a big fruit tree nursery. (They sell seedling trees, not fruit.) The workers are a steady population who live there year-round with their families. My personal impression is that the Latinx workers like to keep their families together and help each other find jobs in the same places.
Do you really believe this? New York City is quite possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world, but for decades they had a very segregated public school system catering to the needs of white students to the detriment of black and Puerto Rican children. Of course they didn’t call it segregation and it wasn’t supported by legislation, but the system was set up to favor white students with others getting the short end of the stick. And then they had the stop and frisk program for many years where the NYPD was pretty blatant about using racial profiling to determine who they would detain.
So you can tell me that this cosmopolitan contributes to acceptance of more types of people. But from where I’m sitting that acceptance seems predicated on white supremacy and others knowing their place in the hierarchy.
From context I take it to mean the “cons” in the pros/cons of rural v. uban, as in “cities’ taxes subsidize making the ‘cons’ of rural life less burdensome”.
Since I started by saying that racism was endemic in big cities, I obviously recognized the problem. I also stand by the rest of it. What I’m saying is standard sociological analysis of cities. Cities are where cultures merge and blend, cities are where immigrants get assimilated, gain power, and rise. Cities are where all the top kids from rural areas go to and absorb values that are different from their parents, leaving the small towns to stagnate.
Cities are not panaceas nor utopias. The bad parts about civilization get concentrated there just as much as the good parts. The important fact about cities is that the two sides work in opposition toward balances in various areas that then become new standards of acceptance, a dynamic that the monolithic rural areas lack.
Nobody questions that cities are different from small towns, especially people in the small towns. The answer to why they are different has been examined by experts in multiple subjects and always comes down to diversity of cultures in proximity.
