I died in the wool but was resurrected as a bad speller 
Just found a ranking of churches from conservative to liberal. Unitarian/Universalist is not listed as it is no longer considered christian. Not sure the list entirely supports my broad brush diatribe.
Interesting rankings. Where did ya find that?
I’ts hard to belive that Southern Baptists dont fall closer to the top, perhaps to me maybe because they are so plentiful and so soaked-in to Mississippi life. You know, all I have is this yard stick of mine and things look like that from where I sit and all that.
An interesting aside about the liberal leanings of Episcopalians: my god father was the Episocpalian Bishop of Miss. at the time of the Meredith riots. He took a stance which the fundies did not like, recieved death threats etc. So I don’t disagree with you on that point.
On preview, I see your link, disregard my Q about the cite. 
Here is the list again with my feeble attempts at the “birth dates” of the religions as pulled from Wikipedia. There is a lot of judgement involved as churches merge and split.
1914- Assemblies of God (the most conservative)
1863- Seventh-Day Adventist
1830- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)
1830 - Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod
1907 - Church of the Nazarene
1845 - Southern Baptist Convention
1832- Churches of Christ
1572 - Presbyterian Church in the United States *
1814 - American Baptist Churches in the USA
1988 - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
1906 - Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
1858 - United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America *
1820/1968 - United Methodist Church
1789 - Episcopal Church
1957 - United Church of Christ. (the most liberal)
17th C?/1961 - Unitarian Universalist
Was gonna say, as the granddaughter of two SB ministers who went to an SB college, I’d have put them right up the top, then skipped three spaces before I put anybody else, cause nobody else gets more conservative than that.
Cheers,
G
God yeah. It always makes me laugh when people bemoan local grocery stores/delis shutting down because of Tesco/Asda whatever moving into the locality. I live in a village with a few grocery shops. They’re shit. They have no choice. They have no grasp of how to treat a customer. They’re overpriced. They’re hardly ever open.
That isn’t “local character”. It’s tyrants exploiting a captive audience.
Thankfully, Tesco, Asda and Marks and Spencer have just opened up at a nearby retail park and these idiots will start shutting down or competing.
I can second this. When I was in DC I saw the same exact thing. All these enlightened city folks who are so highly praised here for their commitment to diversity and desire for “authentic” stores and restaurants were, in fact, just as bad as any suburban haus frau in terms of NIMBYism. I lived in a transitional neighborhood that, when I moved there, was pretty run down but was made up wholely of locally-owned businesses. More yuppies started to move in and when they got their, they began using the city code to shut down businesses they did not like. They also lobbied hard for stores like Whole Foods and cafes like Caribou Coffee to move in. These are just as much chain businesses as Wal-Mart of Target, but they appeal to urbanites so I guess they aren’t evil. Whatever. They pulled the same shit as anyone in suburban America, it just had a more up-scale flavor.
And, frankly, I can’t really blame them. The local “mom and pop” stores that existed before sucked. Groceries were much better at Whole Foods than at the locally-owned Fair Price Market (what a misnomer) or at the grocery store owned by the Korean guy. Both these businesses folded. If that would have happened in small town America, and it would have been Wal-Mart and not Whole Foods, I’m sure we’d see a documentary about it. Instead, since it was Logan Circle in DC and Whole Foods, people applauded.
I don’t know if its generally a City thing or a DC thing in general, but for the most part the locally owned businesses tend to suck around here. None of the mom and pops even carry any produce, but if its chips you want, you are in business. My experience is about the same as yours is.
I’ve lived in DC proper for about two years and I generally do like the place but I am not going to romanticize City living. You’ve swapped one set of frustrations for another. My commute is shorter and I can walk to places. However, there is a lot more noise and a lot more in the way of dysfunctional bureaucracy than there would be in the suburbs (This may be a DC thing).
Also, just because it is the city doesn’t mean that it is densely packed. I have a front yard and a back yard. They aren’t as big as a single family house but they are larger than most townhouses in the suburbs. I even have trees in my yard. A lot of neighborhoods in DC started life as streetcar bedroom communities and quite a few of them have single family houses. As for lookalike buildings, most rowhouses in DC look pretty similar. When they were built, they probably were identical, they’ve just had a century of different people living in them to change things around and paint them different colors.
Our local grocery was recently sold, and it went from being an unfriendly place with cashiers who wouldn’t even bother to stop gossiping with each other in order to tell you how much they owe to a pretty friendly place. The same can’t be said of the hardware
A woman opened a pizza place in town and I was in chatting with her one day. She said she had lived here for 15 years and the people were still so unfriendly. It’s been 10 years for me, and there has been no welcome at all. The pizza place is out of business, by the way. Good pizza, too.
There is a wonderful pictureque fishing village that I used to work in. You are a newcomer if you aren’t from there. Hint: you can’t be from there in one generation. If you are black, you better be off the island by dark. How do I know? Because we had a family friend come to visit and that is what we were told. We referred to that town as “the Rock” and couldn’t wait to leave it.
On the drive home, we passed through a town that died from a massacre that took place there not nearly enough years ago, into our small town with the one store ran by the rudest people you have ever met. We routinely drove the extra 12 miles to a store where folks were nicer and the supplies came in more recently than 20 years ago.
However, we had 2 acres, we lived how we wanted to live, grew what we wanted to grow, burned what we wanted to burn and had deer and critters come in to our yard routinely.
I’m fleeing surburbia, it has always scared me. I don’t like neighbors close enough to give a rats ass about what music I play or if I walk around naked.
As for Walmart, hell, before walmart my grandmother had to drive 60 miles to get a trashcan for her bathroom. Granted, the trashcan she gets at walmart may not be top quality, but she can GET one. When my daughter was born premature, one of the few places I could reliably get clothes for her was Walmart. I live in a city now that has always been an ugly place, we are the test bed for chains. We have every franchise known to man, too damn many malls and way too much urban sprawl.
I live in a nice neighborhood, with good schools, an easy commute and yet, I never, ever see children playing outside. I want my daughter to be able to breathe. I want her to be able to climb a tree, ride a pony and sit under a tree and read a book. The closest I can find what I’m looking for is 40 miles away. I’ll take it.
But only because my husband won’t live on a mountain top.
An alternative to the problems of urban sprawl can be found in Fairhope, Alabama. (I don’t know the owner of this site but I love his photographs of Fairhope.) It’s a beautiful turn-of-the-[20th]-century city that was actually designed to be a model community and they still take that seriously. No building can be torn down to build a new one unless it meets a rigid set of rules, and that’s why [actual example here] the Fairhope Dollar General is located in a 1920s bungalow! Wal-Mart is forbidden because of its size (nothing that large or requiring that size parking lot can be built inside city limits except by the city), and that’s caused some controversy (Wal-Mart sued over some loophole or other and some residents want one, but the city won the suit), so the nearest one is about 15 miles away. Buildings destroyed by hurricanes or natural disaster have to meet very strict and precise guidelines in rebuilding; older buildings must be rebuilt in similar architectural style OR be replaced by a transported older building from somewhere else.
It’s picturesque, good economy, absolutely gorgeous views. Residents include Fannie “Fried Green Tomatoes/Candid Camera” Flagg, Winston “Forrest Gump” Groom, a couple of well known country singers own vacation homes there as did Major R. Ferguson (father of “Princess Fergie”), there’s a 4 star hotel {with some 5 star suites} there, etc…
The problem is that I was offered a professional position there paying well over the average income for that county and the nearest place I could afford to live was 20 miles away. The banning of apartment complexes in many areas and extremely restrictive zoning laws and refusal to let old buildings be torn down even when restoring them is much more expensive or space is needed adds scenic beauty but it’s expensive as all rip. Even by the standards of beachside/bayside communities, Fairhope is just unaffordably expensive to middle class newcomers, even those who don’t seek to live by the water.
By contrast, Gulf Shores looks like somebody spliced strip malls and chain establishments with tribbles. It’s quintupled in population in the past 25 years and one of its main draws (other than the beach) is a damned near city sized outlet mall. There’s not a lot pretty other than the beaches. BUT- you can find a comfortable apartment there for the salary I was offered in Fairhope and you can buy a plunger at 2 a.m., which if you’ve never needed to, trust me… that’s a good thing. 
Funny you should say that because there is a caveat below the list, which was originally created in 1979:
I completely agree with the general theme of this thread that suburban development patterns are sapping the vitality out of American communities. But the key issues are cost of housing and quality of schools, and they’re much more difficult than the above quote suggests.
First, cities are far more expensive to live in than suburbs for similar levels of safety and quality of life; in many cities, you’d be lucky to find housing in the slums for what you pay just a few miles away. Granted, the suburbs that have good schools aren’t cheap either, but they’re still much more affordable than the nice communities within the city. Perhaps you’d argue that I shouldn’t be such a snob and find a neighborhood in the city that I can afford. In Seattle, where I most familiar, that would either put me in either a tiny, run-down apartment for the three of us (me, wife, baby) or else in a neighborhood whose ‘character’ would be no better than a crummy suburb.
More importantly, the quality of public schools in the city is often far worse than those in the 'burbs. As a result, parents are faced with a menu of bad options. You can put your kid in the crappy urban public schools and hope for the best. You can stay in the city and put your kid in private school – if you can afford it after paying your outlandish housing bills – thereby undermining the public school system. Or you can move to a good school district which almost always means a suburb.
I don’t claim to have the right answer – as I said, I feel my soul withering when I’m in suburbia. But I don’t see how I can compromise on the quality of my kid’s school. It could be that I’m over-emphasizing this, maybe you can get a dandy education in an urban school even if on paper it only looks mediocre. But as a parent it seems irresponsible to take that chance.
Seconded – walkability is the salient concept here, I think. Having arrived recently in the Southeast, it’s shocking to me how many communities have been developed in a manner that is positively hostile to humans. How can there be neighborhoods without sidewalks??? It completely boggles my mind. Are there people who can tolerate never being able to leave their houses except in their cars? Feels like being in solitary confinement to me. I’m one of the most introverted people you’ll ever meet but I love when I feel like I’m a part of a greater community, not just a collection of houses.
What do people think of the New Urbanist approach to trying to restore human-scale communities within otherwise suburban environment? Personally I think it’s an improvement from bland suburbia but still far from ideal.
Walkability is the main thing that I dislike about the suburbs. The fact that if you need to get into a car just to go a quarter mile to buy bread. I’ve seen subdivisions that don’t have sidewalks in them let alone sidewalks linking them to other places.
I’m curious about the new urbanism, how does it propose to deal with problems arising from already existing communities. It has to be an improvement on the existing model. I’ve seen a few places constructed on these lines but they tend to be groupings of condos.
The ones I’m familiar with tend to be pretty self-contained – they’re communities created out of nothing, with their own little town centers etc. That’s a big part of the problem in my view; they’re little bubbles that aren’t well-integrated into the surrounding development. They’re pleasant and they’re walkable within the community, but if you want to leave the boundaries of the development you’re pretty much forced to drive.
The one I like the most (Southern Village) is close to downtown Chapel Hill (meaning about 2 miles), but there’s no non-autombile way to get from the Village to the city, though they’re talking about extending a footpath into town. It has a pretty good mix of housing types including reasonably affordable apartments, condos/row houses (more expensive than elsewhere but not outrageous), plus lots of single-family homes, typically pretty expensive. The design is really pretty nice as far as it goes, but there’s no way you’d be able to satisfy all your needs in the little town center, so it’s down the highway to Target you’ll go. The GREAT part about it is that there are elementary, middle, and high schools – good ones – within walking distance of the community, as well as a day care, so your kids can pretty well live a car-free existence.
People who can’t afford steeples or pews should not worship? How dreadfully classist of you.
The reasons behind not putting in sidewalks in residential areas are that it keeps the riff-raff who are too poor to own cars out of the areas, and in the long term it saves the municipality maintenance costs.
I barely had two communion wafers to rub together growing up, but I wouldn’t have been caught dead going to church in a strip mall. There are some standards in life; churches should have names like “St Bonaventure’s”, not “The New Life Hope Fellowship of Christ Community Church”. It’s no wonder they can’t afford a steeple, they spent all their money on the sign and it’s monthly electric bill.
Sidewalks aren’t the only problem with walkability guys. Sure it’s a big part that makes it possible but you also gotta realize that there are other things to it too, like the character of the neighborhood. I used to live in a place where there were 5 story buildings (common density here) yet it was a ten minute walk to ANYTHING of interest. There was a small kiosk at the end of my Block, yet VERY few stores or bars or anything of interest. Simply boring flats. It was a dreadful 10 minute walk everytime I went anywhere. Imagine walking 10 minutes to the store when there is absolutely nothing but boring houses? Now when it’s urban and vibrant, it’s cool, because it’s nice to see people doing things, etc. A ten minute lonely walk is no good.
Problem is, you’re describing something that only exists in a handful of large cities, and even there consists of only a small part of those cities. I lived in Seattle for many years; Seattle is widely touted as one of the most walkable cities in the US. There are maybe 4 strips of interesting urban scenery in Seattle, the longest about 1 mile long (Capital Hill), the rest only a few blocks. Anywhere else, even right close to the University or downtown, a 10-minute walk will take you either through housing or along rows of dreary businesses with no pedestrian traffic.
So we’re looking at, what, Manhattan, downtown Chicago, and San Francisco? I would be thrilled if more places had as much urban vibrancy, but they don’t, and I’ll never come close to being able to live in any of the aforementioned with any vaguely reasonable quality of life.