General Discussion

And it is no coincidence that those former slave states have high levels of poverty and low levels of education which are the drivers of all of the issues listed--except probably for the porn viewing which some research suggests does actually correlate to religious propensity.

But the vast income inequality in the slave-holding south between not just slaveholders and enslaved people, but between slaveholders and non-slaveholders of all races, really set in motion the conditions we see today in the Bible Belt.

But it is also important to note that the Bible was used as a whip and chains to get us here in the first place.

In 1452 and 1455, Pope Nicholas V formally supported Spain and Portugal’s mass kidnapping and enslavement of Africans because it would help to Christianize enslaved people.

In 1548, Pope Paul III used his “apostolic authority” to declare the slave trade legal in the eyes of the church, which empowered the religious monarchies in European nations to continue to engage in Transatlantic trafficking. The “popes and their friends” accepted “gifts” of enslaved Black people shipped from Africa to Rome.

Through Transatlantic trafficking, the church systematically extended its influence. European enslavers baptized millions of enslaved people whose labor they used to amass vast wealth.

( https://eji.org/report/transatlantic-slave-trade/origins/sidebar/the-role-of-the-christian-church/ )

Then, following the Civil War, churches in many ways became the front lines in continuing the fight to ensure white supremacy in the south.

"Evangelicals resisted black equality in many ways. Some ministers preached an overt biblical sanction for segregation. Most preachers took a more oblique approach, remaining silent about the subject of black equality while condemning faith-based civil rights activism as “a prostitution of the church for political purposes.” Most southern Christians did not regard segregation as a sin, and they resented those who criticized their “way of life.” They rejected efforts from their denominations to educate them into more enlightened racial views and frequently withheld funds from agencies in the church who advocated for equality. They sacked pastors who embraced any aspect of the freedom struggle. They formed lay organizations to keep their churches segregated; many individual congregations adopted formal resolutions instructing their deacons to reject black worshippers. When school integration became unavoidable, white evangelicals forsook the public schools in droves in favor of new private schools sponsored by their churches."
( https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/jim-crow-civil-rights-and-southern-white-evangelicals-a-historians-forum-carolyn-dupont/ )

And so here we are today still living with the effects of a religion that purports to follow the teachings of a man that--by most accounts--would not agree with anything that was done and continues to be done in his name.