Camp Gagnon - The Bible Belt: How Sin, Corruption, and Power Control America

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Today, we explore the history of the Bible Belt. We’ll trace its origins, examine its difficult legacy like racial dynamics and post-Civil War beliefs. Also, we look at its modern power, from televangelists and theme parks to its outsized role in American politics...Welcome to Religion Camp!🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: Morgan & Morgan✝️☪️✡️🕉️☦️ Religion Camp Merch: https://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 What Is The Bible Belt?3:08 Scopes Monkey Trial6:37 What’s Considered The Bible Belt?11:03 Origins of Bible Belt13:42 Spread of Religious Revivals22:18 Separation of North & South Beliefs26:54 Racial Dynamics In Religion29:37 Post Civil War Beliefs34:30 Rise of Televangelist + Christian Theme Park41:44 Religion in Politics48:22 Bible Belt Today53:57 The Scholarly Thoughts #peace #podcast #history #religion #ancient #film #educational #knowledge #information

From all night, tent revivals to preachers with private jets to entire elections decided from church pews. This is the story of the Bible Belt. The name started out as an insult. In 1925, journalist H.L. Manken coined it while mocking the South during the Scopes' Monkey Trial. But the name stuck, and the region completely owned it. And today we track how explosive 19th century revivals turned the South into America's most religious stronghold. how slavery, the Civil War, and black churches forged radically different but equally powerful faith traditions, and how radio, TV, and megachurches blasted Southern Christianity into every living

room in America. We'll show how the Bible Belt still decides elections today, shapes classrooms, and why Gen Z might be pulling it into the next era. This isn't about religion, it's about power, culture, and why belief still runs America. So if you were interested in the history of the Bible Belt and why the American South is so religious. Well, sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me. In my tent where every single Sunday we explore the most interesting, fascinating,

controversial stories from every religion from around the world forever. Yes, this is my attempt to understand what everybody on this big blue planet believes. I truly believe that you can't understand a people without understanding the God that they worship and in my own attempt to forge my faith. and to strengthen my relationship with the Lord, I'm trying to understand, you know, what everyone's dogma is and try to find the little pieces that I can pull

and try to just become a better human being. And I'm hoping that by clicking this video, you have the same belief and the same mission, all right? So I just want to say thank you for joining me and for making this show possible. Now, of course, I wouldn't even be here on this screen right now if it wasn't for my dear pal Christos Pachadapidos. Christos, how are you?

All right, Christos, look, we'd be getting a lot of comments, okay, about people telling you to stop yapping. And I did get one comment, though, the people said that they're tuning in to Christos camp. And they said that if I keep on telling you to shut it, that they're going to completely tune off and they're going to listen to your spin-off show. And I will try to institute Christos camp, despite your objections. We need a – if you start a crestedt camp, I'm going to flip, all right? I'm going to lose it, and I'm going to burn this whole tent to the ground, all right?

That's not happen, okay? But we're not here to talk about Christos camp. We're here to talk about the Bible Belt, all right? If you've ever heard of it, this is not where I grew up. I grew up in the south, but not this south. Okay, if you grew up in Florida, as they say, the more north you go, the more south you get. We're talking about the specific little stretch of land, all right, right in like kind of the southeast of America. You can see it on the map here.

This is what people call the Bible Belt. And as stereotypes go, if you're not from America, people in this part of the country are religious and they love Jesus and they're typically Protestant or some type of non-denominational, you know, reformed evangelical Christian. And yeah, they love Jesus. They love going to church. And there are all sorts of interesting quirks about this specific sort of breed of Christianity that exists in this part of the country. But where does it come from? Why is it this part of the world? Right.

Why is the Bible Belt not in the Pacific Northwest? Why is it not in New York City? Why is it in this little stretch of land? Well, the answer is far more interesting than I ever could have expected, okay? And it goes deep. The history is fascinating. I mean, you got basically like outdoor, like, revival sessions where people are, like, going all night, just experiencing the Lord. And it's very, like, charismatic.

And then you have these televangelists that are building, like, Christian theme parks. I mean, I saw Christmas Eve churches from parts of the Bible Belt that had, like, giant, like, explosions and pyrotechnics and, like, Santa Claus coming. It's, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars going into these productions for these megachurches. It is absolutely fascinating. And there's even a political component to this, and today we're going to be figuring everything out. And it really starts in the South, and it happens in this place and kind of nowhere else. And it's all connected to slavery and the Civil War. And Gen Z actually is kind of holding on to this, which is sort of ironic because the whole thing started off as an insult.

But in order to understand this, we got to go all the way to 1925 in a small, unassuming town of Dayton, Tennessee. and it became the center of global attention, okay? There's a high school teacher named John Scopes who was put on trial for teaching evolution in the public school that he worked at. Imagine that, this type of blaspheme or this heretic. And basically, this was a massive deal because the school, as well as the whole community around it,

they were fundamentalist Christians, all right? They believe that God creates everything. And it is very much like a literalist interpretation of this creation story that we find and Genesis and that science, you know, evolution, natural selection, all that stuff, had nothing to do with it, that, you know, God did not employ these tactics to create mankind, that God just created these things miraculously in perhaps a literal seven-day time period. Now, of course, there's different interpretations of this, but this is more or less the vibe. There was even a law in the state of Tennessee at the time, and this whole debacle became a national news story. It was the first American court case to be broadcast by radio, and with this kind of national investment, the country would probably not see this type of like national news story until like O.J. Simpson And, you know, what would be the outcome? Like how far would they take this separation of church and state? And was this the breaking point between the fundamentalists and the modern Christians?

And this became the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial. Now, journalists were being flown out from all over the country to cover this story. And among them was a guy from Baltimore. His name was H. L. Mankin. Now, Mankin was a brutal writer, and he would cover the trial from start to finish, and he was notably a huge admirer of the German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche. Now, he famously declares, you know, God is dead. So you can imagine how he might have felt about a place like Dayton, Tennessee, where, you know, people are taking their Bibles very seriously, and, you know, science is on the back burner to the literal interpretation of the scripture. Now, Mankin coined the derogatory phrase Bible Belt in 1924 while writing about the Scopes Monkey Trial and in an article for the Chicago Tribune where this article lived.

He was also referring to the area, you know, Dayton and the surrounding towns, as the hookworm belt and the lynching belt. So not great terms, but the Bible Belt is way better than the other ones, you know, hookworm and lynching. Bible, that's pretty good. So, yeah, he wasn't exactly subtle. So, like many of the terms that were originally meant to be insults, the Bible Belt, that term would basically forge its own path apart from, you know, what Mencken intended and far beyond what this trial ended up being. So the South would eventually take ownership and reclaim the word, if you will. And they made it much less hostile and almost like more descriptive. Like, yeah, that's what we are.

We love the Bible. We are soul of scripture through and through. We believe every word in here. And that's who we are. So today the term has become so familiar and solidified that we literally use it to identify the actual geography of the region like, you know, Silicon Valley or, you know, the financial district, right? Like these are places that are sort of colloquial terms, but they specifically mean a piece of land. And its name was derived from what the region is known for, right, which is, you know, like a boom of tech or, you know, the financial center. So the name Bible Belt is literally just that.

It is this specific geographical region in addition to representing the religious majority. of the people who live there. So what exactly is this region? Like, where are the borders? And that question brings us to an important detail. Not everything in the South is considered the Bible Belt, and the borders of this belt are not really objectively agreed upon. So it generally includes like, you know, Mississippi and Alabama, Arkansas, South, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, and parts of Louisiana, even Texas. Some maps will push even farther into like Missouri, Virginia, Kansas, Kentucky, depending on who you're talking. to. But places like Florida, southern Louisiana, southern Texas, they see a lot of immigration

from, you know, Hispanic countries, from Mexico, French colonies, and of course, they are Catholic. So the Bible Belt is very specifically talking about Protestant Christianity, so a lot of these places would be, you know, precluded from that, right? The Catholics would not consider themselves to be a part of this evangelical sort of revival in this region. So a 1961 study by the geographer Wilbur Zelensky, not a different Zalinski. Apparently Zalinski is a zolenski is very popular out here, okay, but this one is a geographer who defined the Bible Belt as the area where Protestant denominations, specifically Southern Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and evangelical are the predominant religious affiliations. So even if a

region is religious, even if it's technically the South, it doesn't mean that it's the Bible Belt, right? Like, you know, Catholics in Southern Texas are not the Bible Belt. We're talking about a very specific feeling. Now, it's interesting how religious the Bible Belt is in comparison to other parts of the country. Like, the numbers are pretty staggering. Alabama, for example, right? 12% of the people in Alabama say that they are non-religious. Compared to, like, Vermont, for example, where that's 37% identify as non-religious. I mean, that's three times higher. Tennessee has the highest proportion of evangelical Protestants at 52%. And we're talking about an entire state where more than half of the population identifies as evangelical Christian.

But Mississippi and Alabama are actually tied to the highest percentage of religious people in general. 77%. Think about that. Right? Like you compare that to New York or Seattle where I feel like you'd be hard pressed to find someone that's like, I believe in, you know, God and creationism. Whereas in these parts of the country, it's 77%. Right. And many of them Protestant Christians.

Now, the rates for church attendance tell a similar story in this. these areas, like in many Bible Belt communities. Not going to church on Sunday is the exception. There are even more churches than gas stations in some of these towns across the Bible Belt. And that's not an exaggeration. It's just the way the communities have been built over the last couple centuries. And the Bible Belt isn't a place where faith is just something people do. Or like they'll, you know, check in, check out. It's woven into everything. The culture, politics, the laws, the community life, literally how they exist. And that raises the question, why? How did this part of the South become so overwhelmingly religious when other parts of the country

just didn't? Well, the answer goes back way, way before this journalist from Baltimore ever gave the Bible Belt its name, and even far before the monkey trial in Tennessee. It goes back to the early 1800s where the homogenous culture and the lack of higher education and the tough economic structure of the South would set the stage to introduce something known as the religious revivals. So let me just say I grew up Catholic in Florida. And so maybe throughout this episode, I'll poke some fun at the Protestants just because it's funny to me. I went to a Presbyterian school. So much of my formative years through like middle school and high school were just, you know, sectarian debates over transubstantiation and the Trinity and, you know,

solar scripture and predestination, all sorts of things. So it is a people and a part of the country that has a fondness in my heart. But of course, like brothers, we do a few. But I just want to preface that, that I don't think that just because people are from the Bible Belt or they believe in God or, you know, they orient their lives around God that that's, you know, like a silly thing to do. I don't want this to come across like it's, you know, belittling in any way. I truly don't think that. I think that having some type of religious affiliation and believing in a higher power is actually a beautiful thing and I think would, you know, is actually generally beneficial for societies to have some type of connection to a higher force outside of radicalism, of course. But when we're talking about the Bible Belt, there is some versions of radicalism that do exist. And I think it's really interesting to talk about. So the way that the Bible Belt really begins is kind of the early 1800s. You have these southern colonies in that area that are actually originally founded for commercial reasons, right? You have slavery and farming and tobacco and agriculture.

And they're not religious reasons like the northern colonies were. So the Puritans up in Massachusetts, they come to America specifically to practice their faith without. interference from the monarchy. But down south, people are there to farm and sort of religious life is kind of secondary and connected to that. But really, they're there to farm and make money and build a life for themselves. So the south for a long time was actually the stronghold of the Anglican church, which is basically the official church of England transplanted to America. So, yeah, their priority was clearly not to further their religious rights or to get freedom from the church because they kind of just stuck with what was going on back in England. In fact,

Most people in the South just weren't super interested in religion at all, right? You went to church, you kind of went to motions, you went home, but you were there to, you know, have a plantation or something like that. And, you know, you were religious, but you also like had slaves, which, you know, as you can imagine, is very much against a Christian worldview. Or at least, that's how I see it. They obviously rationalized it a different way. What's up, people? We're going to take a break real quick because this episode is sponsored by me. Yes, Camp R&D.

That is the merch. That is the threads that we'd be wearing around. here at the campsite. And we got all sorts of cool stuff. My buddy Zach just cooked up a sick UFO collection. You can go check it out there at Camp R&D. I really appreciate you guys. We have so many people that came through for the holidays and picked up their threads. It's awesome. We got hats, hoodies, t-shirts, all that. And if you're still listening to this and you didn't skip through, congrats. You got a promo code, all right? What do we do, Chris? It was 5%. More?

How much? Five more? 10%. 10%. 10%? Final offer? You won't go higher. You tell me. What do we get them? 12%. All right, we're doing 12% off. Should we go more? Hey, it's your world.

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Anyway, let's get back to the show. Now, there wasn't a lot of fire or passion or, you know, brimstone or anything in the spiritual lives of many people living in the South at that time. Religious leaders in every southern state started voicing their fears about how unreligious their congregations. were becoming. Even an anonymous French nobleman who was touring the southern states in the early 1800s actually wrote a letter and basically said, religion is one of the subjects which occupies the least of the attention of the American people. Imagine that, a guy going through what we know is the Bible Belt being like, these people aren't religious at all. So the South was kind of dying out on religious involvement, but something shifted that would cause the culture to do a complete 180.

And that was the development of religious revivals. Now, these revivals weren't to your typical, like, Sunday morning church with, like, a little sermon and some songs, these were massive outdoor events that would last for days. Like, think, like, it was like Woodstock or, like, Burning Man, but it was all about Jesus. People traveled from miles away to attend these gatherings, and they would set up these tents, and they would build fires, and they would camp out, and they would stay for the entire thing. And at these revivals, these attendees would hear these pastors, these very, like, charged up and charismatic preachers, and they would talk about sin and hell.

hell and salvation in the kingdom of God and they would worship and they would pray for each other and they would even seek like supernatural healing. And these religious revivals would become known as the Second Great Awakening. Now this was a time of fierce recommitment to God that took place in the 1790s and into the 1800s. And the hype for these events spread throughout the entire region, specifically Kentucky and Tennessee. And we'll do maybe a whole episode on the Second Great Awakening in general and looking at all the things that inspired it like the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and all that stuff, but for now, we'll just kind of go over the broad strokes and recognize that it was a massive phase that really helped solidify the culture

that would eventually become the modern Bible Belt. Now, there were a few specific revival camps, if you will, which were particularly big and influential and probably worth mentioning. And they would end up being pretty defining of this entire period. And one of those was the Logan County Kentucky Revival in 1800, led by Presbyterian Minister named James McGrady. Now, it's pretty wild and arguably the most influential revival actually came in 1801. Now, the Logan County revival was very big and very much a tent pole in this entire movement, but the really crazy and arguably the most influential revival happened a year later in 1801, in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and it was led by Pastor Barton W. Stone.

Now, Stone was a Presbyterian pastor, and he planned the revival for August 1801, and it attracted an estimated 25,000 people. Now, that's pretty crazy, right? For context, Madison Square Garden holds up to like 22,000. So you can imagine the size of Madison Square Garden in, you know, the south and the 1800s. And you can think of just like the population density wasn't really there. Travel and infrastructure isn't really there. So for 25,000 people to show up at this event, it was pretty much unprecedented. One young man who attended the event described it like this. He says, the noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated. it as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others on wagons. He wrote that some people were singing and other people were praying and people were crying for mercy and he just had this impression that he felt like he wanted to just fall onto the ground. Now, seven preachers all going at the same time. There's no sound system, no like real organization, just like pure religious passion and people are fainting and screaming and having what

they would call a religious experience. And all of these events are gaining traction, right? Protestant and Presbyterian revivals started to spread across North Carolina, and in January of 1802, thousands attended a revival that was hosted by the Rutherford County Courthouse. By June of the same year, Methodists were holding revivals where reportedly up to 300 people were converting all at once, and the momentum just continued to build. Local churches became more than just places that you would go on Sunday and clock in for an hour. they became schools and social centers and support networks. And they started to encompass all areas of life for their congregants.

People were going to these events and having such profound, emotional, and religious experiences that they wanted to continue. And they wanted to talk about it afterwards. And they wanted to send their kids to institutions with like-minded people that all felt and experienced the same fervor. So by the mid-1800s, the South had completely transformed. And what started as a region that was barely religious, according to, you know, French journalists that came through, had become the most Jesus-focused center of America.

And it wasn't just white Southerners anymore, you know, but we'll get to that part of the story in a second. The point is, the Bible Belt didn't exist in the 1700s. It barely existed in 1800, but by 1850, it was taking shape. And all because of these massive revival movements that swept the South and really changed everything about how people thought about faith and salvation and community. And this is where their religion started to bleed into everything in their lives. And these revivals continued until the outbreak of the Civil War. But there's still a big question that we haven't answered, right? Like, why do this happen only in the South and not anywhere else? Like, remember when we talked about the Puritans, right? Like, they literally came to

the Northeast of the United States for religious freedom. So why didn't that become the Bible Belt? Well, if you're thinking that, you're not entirely wrong. In the 1800s, places like New England were actually quite religious, just like, you know, if not more religious than the South. This would have been in the early 1700s, and those were the revivals that originated these umbrella terms for evangelicalism, right, which was ultimately just used to encompass multiple Protestant denominations, right? You have Puritans and you have some Quakers over here, then, you know, you have some general, you know, just Protestants and Lutherans and all these different people all come together, and their main focus with just like, hey, have a relationship with Jesus and read your Bible. And so that just

became evangelical. So areas in the North and the South both experienced their own versions of religious revival, but only one of them really stuck. Obviously, that was the South. But the reason why, well, there's a few. So the main one, okay, the North diversified and the South didn't. So the American South never experienced the kind of mass immigration that the North did, especially in the 1840s. you know, the 1890s and even the early 1900s. In northern cities during this time, millions of people were flooding into cities like New York and Boston and Detroit and Chicago, and you had people from all over the world bringing completely different religious traditions and settling in these major cities, right? You have Catholics from Italy and Catholics from France

and Catholics from Ireland. A lot of Catholics. I'm sorry about that. That's what happens when we pull up. You know what I mean? That's just how it be. But you just have people coming from all over the world. and as a result, they're bringing their different traditions, and as a result, they kind of get fractured and kind of more acquiescing into city life. And so suddenly, the landscape of the north was more complex, and the American Protestant dominance really started to diminish. However, the region of the Bible Belt stayed overwhelmingly white

and Protestant and more or less homogenous. So, for example, you'll find plenty of last names like Smith and Taylor and Tucker all in the south, and you'd be hard pressed to find names like, you know, to Lucas or Kowalski or Giordano or, you know, Gagnon, if you will, right? You're not going to really find them in the South until my parents took a flight. But regardless, the cultural and ethnic, you know, homogene that we see in the Bible Belt during this time is consistent with why the religious landscape kind of just stayed the way that it was. When everyone around you shares the same basic framework and the culture just kind of reinforces itself,

it just solidifies. And there's no competing marketplace of ideas or these weird Catholics coming in from Italy or anything like that. So ultimately, no real reason to think any differently. And this isn't unique to the Bible Belt, by the way, right? It's true everywhere that if an area is largely homogenous, then the established religion, whatever it is, just becomes by default the center of the culture and of community life. Well, now, if you are a sharp little camper, you're probably wondering why wasn't there huge immigration to the south like there was in the north, right? Why did it stay so homogenous? Well, the North had certain assets and opportunities that just weren't developed in the South. And I think a lot of this has to do with geography, right? So you have these booming cities that are developed in, you know, these massive port towns. We were able to trade. And as a result, people are coming in. And then you have these longstanding universities all through New York and Boston that are drawing students from around the globe.

The South, due to its economic position and its lack of development and higher education, well, it just didn't have that type of influx. So I'm not saying that education is the reason, or lack thereof, that these people stayed Protestant and in the Bible Belt. It's just that they didn't have the influx of people coming from all over the world. So, for example, according to the census that was conducted in North Carolina in 1910, there were reportedly 122,000 grown white people who could neither read nor write. Now, that's a quote from Walter Dyer, who wrote in the world's work in 1914.

Now, according to many American historians, the whole rural lifestyle of the South was also a huge factor as to why it was literally the perfect place for the whole Christian fundamentalist thing to take root. Like when modernity and the Enlightenment came around, the Bible Belt communities largely saw this as a threat to their lifestyle and their religion and to God's kingdom by proxy, right? Modernity really represents, you know, to them, immorality and corruption and greed and a rejection of what it truly means. to be a Christian fundamentalist and to the values of the people. So as a result, they really push back against it, right? This guy Joseph Locke in his book, Making the Bible Belt, says, The South prospered because of and in spite of their confrontation with the modern world. So that's essentially saying that the Bible Belt's conflicts with modernity and secularism and this whole idea of embracing progress and moving towards the future, stuff like that

is actually the thing that solidified the culture and really made them stronger as a region. And it kind of unified them together in the rejection of where the rest of the country seemed to be going. And you can even feel that to this day, right? Like I was doing a show in a part of Georgia and it was kind of rural and I get into an Uber and it was like a regular town of Georgia. And the guy was like, where are you from? And I was like, oh, traveling from New York City. And he goes, ah, I'm sorry about that. He's like, ah, it's just a, you know, a real crap hole up there in New York. And so it's still a feeling that people in the South have towards people in the Northeast and in big cities, specifically New York, where it's just like,

ah, it's hedonistic, and that's where people go to lose their values and they become secular, and they just accept everything, and they're all gay. That's kind of the feeling, right? So this guy, David Henkin, he's an author and a historian, he says in a 2014 book, Becoming America, that this development of the Bible Belt was not the result of cultural isolation of southern communities, but rather the opposite. Evangelicals in the South and the Trans-Aplachia West were connected to growing networks of religious preaching and communication. So, yeah, the Bible Belt didn't necessarily happen because it was isolated from modern values, but that they rejected them, that they got these modern values. And it was, you know, spreading into their communities.

And they said, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not what Jesus wants. So instead of, you know, embracing these, you know, more modern Northeast traditions, the Bible Belt communities and the churches and the pastors, they built a stronger connection amongst themselves. They created an in-group and an out-group. And the out-group was the, you know, immoral northerners. and the in-group was the Jesus-love and Southerners, and this circulated and reinforced and then cemented this internal culture of Christian fundamentalism. Now, the rural, less structured nature of the church themselves

were also perfect for evangelical Christianity spreading through the South, right? You don't need a fancy building or a ton of, you know, capital to build up a whole thing or some minister that went to some divinity school up at Yale. The Methodist circuit preachers like Peter Cartwright would travel from one location to another, attracting thousands to these outdoor revivals. And they just went where the people were, which definitely was never a part of the religious culture in the north

and was very much part of how the homogenous culture was reinforced across these communities. And I think you can even still feel this to this day, right? You have, you know, so many Presbyterian or evangelical churches in the South that just take place wherever. Someone's home or maybe, you know, a basketball court or, you know, a meeting room at a, you know, a hotel somewhere. The church is not the building.

It is the people. And ultimately, the people that feel it the most is where the church is supposed to be. So it follows to reason that these pastors would just travel around to the people and they would set up a tent and they were saying, all right, this is where church is. But we also need to talk about something a little more brutal, a little more morbid. And it's how slavery and slave owners and the Civil War actually played a part in the Second Great Awakening and, again, further cemented the Bible Belt region and its culture. So during the peak of slavery in the American South, especially after like the 1830s when tensions were growing with the North, southern white religious leaders would often use the Bible to justify slavery. And they would use this as a part of their defense against, you know, abolitionist criticism. So ministers cited examples of slavery and Christianity coexisting in the New Testament.

And they would quote approvals of slavery in the Old Testament and interpreted Genesis to mean that black people were descendants of the sinner Kane. and were apparently destined forever by God to be bonded in slavery. Now, a former slave from Kentucky named William Wells Brown, who escaped to Ohio when he was 19, would write that slaveholders hide themselves behind the church. A more praying, preaching, psalm-singing people cannot be found than the slaveholders of the South. Yikes. So yeah, there's that version of Christianity that deeply embedded, you know, amongst white slaveholders that basically hey, these people in the North are trying to take away our means to unlimited wealth and free labor,

and we can use Christianity as a means to rebuke that and push against that and basically hide behind our interpretation of Scripture. And this was a Christianity that said slavery is fine and potentially even ordained by God. Nonetheless, there were still black Christians who held a strong faith that showed them something very different. And this was a faith that told them that God was on their side and that if they just had faith in him and persevered, he would some way deliver them. I mean, black pastors, while still enslaved themselves, would commonly apply biblical stories of Exodus to their own people. I mean, you can see very clear parallels between Jewish-Israelite slavery in Exodus to the Black experience in America. Black congregations would

meet together in what they would call Secret Services to pray and to worship. Black spirituals became a group expression of these aspirations, songs like, Go Down Moses, weren't just hymns. They were these empowered words of resistance and messages about freedom and resilience. And the ring shout was the most distinctive expression of worship in their praise services, which often included African-inspired dancing. And it's just really fascinating to note that they read the same Bible as the white slave owners. And yet they received a completely different message from it, one of freedom and justice and deliverance. And then the Civil War happens. And it ended. and everything shifted once again.

The post-Civil War reconstruction period saw communities rebuilding and redefining their identities and evangelical Christianity became a pivotal force in shaping social structures and values. So for white southerners who had lost their ability to have slaves and also their lifestyle and their entire communities due to this war, their economy and the entire social structure of the South

shifted completely. Churches offered hope and community during this difficult time. And black Southerners, the church became something even more important. The black church emerged as a central institution in not only African-American communities, but throughout the entirety of the Bible Belt. The numbers were staggering. Within a year of the war's end, the African Methodist Episcopal Church added 50,000 new members, eventually expanding to over 250,000 congregants from Florida to Texas by the end of Reconstruction. And by the 1870s, black ministers in Tennessee founded the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which grew from 40,000 to 67,000

members within just three years. Now, at the same time, Black Baptist Church has flourished, peaking around 1895 with the formation of the National Baptist Convention. Now, this became one of the largest black religious organizations in the entire country. The Black Church quickly became the cornerstone of African American public life, and it fostered leadership and created aid societies for people to share resources and they develop schools while really providing a space for this kind of renewed autonomy for so many people that were the descendants of slaves and trying to rebuild their lives in America. So when we talk about the Bible Belt, we're not just talking about white evangelical Christianity. We're also talking about this sort of mixed

racial, biracial religious culture where both black and white southerners were deeply committed to Christianity, albeit, you know, different interpretations of Christianity. of course, but the same devotion and fervor and charismatic culture was really similar. So I guess to button that part specifically, you have the White South becoming the Bible Belt because it really stays homogenous while the North is diversifying. The Black South becomes part of the Bible Belt because they cling to the church as the symbol of hope and freedom and deliverance out of slavery and out of bondage from the slaveholders. And, you know, they continue to invest in it during the reconstruction.

So for different reasons and with very different interpretations of the Bible, Christianity is central to these people's identities and to their communities. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you a story. Imagine you're sitting in your house. It's cold outside. It's a little snowy. And you're like, man, I just want a pinini. So you go and you order it, you know, from a, from DoorDash or something like that. And it never gets to you. You're looking at the app. You're like, dude, it's been four hours. Where's my Panini? You're calling. No one answers. Well, this is a true story that happened. There was a woman, a client that was working as a DoorDash driver, and she slipped and fell on an icy walkway outside of a Panera bread at Fort Wayne, Indiana. She breaks her elbow, which leads to surgery and hardware having to get inserted into her arms. She can't work. And originally, you know, she sues Panera, and Panera was like, okay, we'll give you like $125,000. But then the good people over at Morgan and Morgan fought for her and got her the million dollar verdict that she deserved.

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Or click the link in the description below. And thank you so much to the good folks over at Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this program and making this show possible with this paid advertisement. Let's get back to the show. And by the early 1900s, the pattern is set. The Bible Belt was the most religious region in America. But the story doesn't end there. Because in the 20th century, there is a new regional phenomena emerging in the Bible Belt,

which would eventually be broadcast to the entire nation. Yes, we are talking about radio evangelists, later to become known as televangelists. And this begins in the 1920s. Christians were among the first producers of radio programming. Radio is this brand new technology at the time that allows you to broadcast your voice into people's homes. And preachers immediately realized this was massive. You didn't need people to travel to your church anymore and you definitely didn't need to travel around the country as a pastor to all these different towns. You could reach them wherever they were.

Now, it's interesting to note that by the 1930s, many different Christian denominations are embracing this new technology as a medium to share a message. So, for example, Father Charles Coughlin was a Catholic priest, and he had these radio programs about, you know, anti-communism and Catholicism that were reaching millions of listeners across the nation. Before TV, before the internet, this was a game changer. And suddenly, one person's influence wasn't limited by the size of the congregation anymore. And radio was really just the beginning, but the real game changer was television. So Fulton Sheen successfully switched to television in 1951 after two decades of radio broadcast. and Time Magazine called him the first televangelist. Now, Sheen won numerous Emmy Awards for his program,

which ran from the early 1950s until the late 1960s. And this wasn't some low-budget public access, you know, cable show. This was primetime television, competing with regular entertainment programming, and people were tuning in. But the person who really mastered this was a man named Billy Graham. Born on November 7, 1918 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy Graham was the most famous

televangelist of the 20th century. And I mean famous, like shut down the mall famous. Graham went on over 400 televised TV crusades, preaching to live audiences upon thousands of people. I mean, he would fill entire stadiums, and it would be on TV for millions more to watch at home.

And he became friends with basically every U.S. president since Harry Truman. It was even given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I mean, think about that. A preacher from North Carolina getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was unprecedented. And Graham was especially skilled at blurring the line between a religious figure and a traditional mainstream celebrity. And he really became the first public religious figure to a mass,

a personal fortune off of his preaching. And Graham really opened the floodgates. Once he proved that you could build a massive national following through television, everyone wanted in. So Rex Humbart created the Cathedral of Tomorrow. and became the first televised evangelical show with a national audience by the 1950s. By the 1980s, Humbard's program spanned the entire globe with 695 stations in 91 languages, the largest coverage of any evangelical program at the time. Every Sunday morning, people from across America could just turn on their TV and tune into church from their very living room. And then came the next wave in the 1960s in the early 1970s.

Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim, and Tammy Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson all developed their own media networks, complete with news exposure and political influence. And they weren't just preachers building congregations anymore. They were building massive empires. I mean, the scale of these things is really difficult to comprehend, especially for the time. Pat Robertson started the Christian Broadcast Network, known popularly as CBN. Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University and co-founded the moral majority, which would become a very much. a massive political force. And these guys weren't just reaching people spiritually.

They were shaping politics and education and just American culture at large. And then things got interesting. So Jim and Tammy Fay Baker co-founded their own TV station and used proceeds from their talk show, the Praise the Lord Club, to fund Heritage USA, a Christian theme park.

Yes, literally a Christian theme park. And it had hotels and water slides and shopping. It's the entire ballgame. And at its peak in the mid-1980s, it was the third most visited theme park in America behind Disneyland and Disney World. Yes, Disneyland and Disney World were one and two, and then it was Heritage USA.

But here is where televangelism gets complicated. A lot of these preachers started preaching what's called prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel states that wealth is a sign of God's favor. And it encouraged people to donate money to already wealthy televangelists with the promise that it would increase their own chances of getting rich. And as a result, I mean, you can see the problem here, right? You have preachers on TV living in mansions, flying in private jets, and then telling struggling families that if they just send them a little donation, just one little tithe of 10% of what they made that month, that God would bless them financially. And some of it crossed the line from being, you know, questionable to just outright fraud.

I mean, Jim Baker eventually went to prison, Jimmy Swaggart had multiple sex scandals, and the whole televangelist industry got a pretty bad reputation. Critics like O'Anthony and John McArthur wrote that faith healers and health and wealth preachers who dominated religious television were just frauds and that their entire message was not the true gospel and that their onstage performance was a nefarious chariolars. Ray designed to basically just take advantage of desperate people who needed it the most. And to be clear, the whole negative talk about televangelis isn't a theory or speculation or even my personal opinion.

This is just documented in books and documentaries. And many podcasts have been dedicated to calling out just how dangerous and manipulative this specific culture is. And we'll actually get more into the history and development of the megachurch and the celebrity pastor culture in another episode, which is really fascinating. But here's the thing, scandals and all. These televangelists fundamentally changed American religion. They took Bible Belt Christianity and fervor,

which had been formally just been concentrated to the South and broadcast it to every corner of the country. And some of today's biggest names in evangelism are still doing just this, right? What started as a regional religious culture in the South became a national phenomenon because preachers figured out how to utilize mass media. First radio and then,

TV and now the internet. The Bible Belt has not stayed in the South. It's made its way to you and me and everyone. That's just scrolling on Instagram. And that media influence translate into something bigger. And ultimately, that is political power. Because once these preachers had millions of people listening to them every single week, politicians started paying attention, right? The people trusted them. And if the politicians could gain the trust of these pastors, I mean, that's a massive voting block that can easily get swayed. And that's where the Bible Belt really starts to shape America. Because the Bible Belt doesn't just pray, right?

It votes and it wants to secure a way of life and a lifestyle and a philosophy for how people should exist. And of course, politics is going to be interested in that. So when this specific subset of the nation votes, it will literally move national elections. So from Reconstruction in 1877 until like the 1960s, the region was actually a democratic stronghold. And it seems pretty crazy to think about. But, you know, our generation today, we look at the South and we're like, you know, it's Republican. But the Republican Party was originally associated with the Union, while the Democrat Party was ultimately more sympathetic to the values of the Confederacy. Southern Democrats, right? They were pushing for states' rights in Congress, which would allow their states more opportunity to maintain their former lifestyles rather than conform to reconstruction.

It was called the Solid South because you could basically assume that every southern state would go blue in every presidential election. Democrats controlled everything for nearly a century after Reconstruction ended in 1877. The shift from blue to red in the south happened in the middle of the 20th century, when the civil rights movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow laws really took effect. And by 1964, Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and this was a step for the Democrat Party to take a new direction, basically for the first time taking a stance in support of racial equality. And upon signing the act, President Johnson,

Johnson reportedly told his aide, Bill Moyers, I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come. And he was right. By signing the civil rights legislation, he'd broken the Democrat Party's stronghold on the South, which was still largely opposed to racial inclusivity. For example, when interracial marriage was federally legalized in 1967, which is crazy, many individual states followed suit and symbolically voted on amendments that would remove bans on interracial marriage and their, you know, individual constitutions, except for states like

South Carolina, Alabama, who didn't remove it from their state constitutions until the years 1998 and 2000, respectively. And even then, 25 out of 67 of Alabama's counties still voted against it. So the Republican Party saw an opening and they stepped in. The Republicans started to adopt a rhetoric that would appeal to southern white interest, right? They leaned into this whole conservative, traditionalist religious agenda thing, largely just targeting former Democratic voters in the Bible Belt for the first time. Now, all those Southern white voters had suddenly found a new political home in the GOP. Now, in 1964, that presidential election, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, won in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. And it was the first time since

reconstruction that a Republican had defeated a Democrat in the South. And from this point on, if a candidate could win the Bible Belt, they would be able to snag the presidency with pretty minimal effort elsewhere. There's actually a term for this political maneuver. It's called the Southern Strategy. The founding of organizations like the moral majority in the 1970s and 80s highlighted the political engagement of evangelical Christians in the South. Jerry Falwell and other televangelists weren't just preaching on Sundays. They were mobilizing voters, telling them which candidates to support and framing elections as these moral battles between good and evil. which, I mean, sound familiar, right?

And it worked. Republicans now had a stronghold in the South. And today, the Bible Belt's political landscape still leans heavily on the conservative side, with religious beliefs guiding a lot of the political choices. So during election season, Bible Belt's really frequently vote for candidates who advocate for traditional values and policies that align with these Christian teachings. And the impact that this has on national politics is huge. When someone is running for president, they can't ignore the Bible Belt, right?

They need these electoral votes. But the thing is, it's no longer just the Bible Belt they need to cater to. And this brings us to the rise of Christian nationalism as a general term, right? It's spread through entire parts of America. And it's no longer just what Northerners would call, you know, the Bible beating South. It's also the rural Midwest and the Southwest and all the places that those radio evangelists and televangelists could now reach. While the growth and the spread of technology, the Bible Belt was no longer just how homogenous within itself. It was now able to connect with like-minded people outside of the region.

But politics isn't the only place where the Bible Belt flexes its influence. I mean, education is a massive battleground. So in many Bible Belt schools, creationism is still presented as just an equal alternative theory to evolution. Creationism is the belief that, you know, in the book of Genesis, God creates the world in six literal days. And, you know, this is basically the thing that John Scopes was on trial for for not teaching. And the teaching of evolution versus creationism has been long debated as an issue in Bible Belt schools, but some states favoring curriculum that includes biblical perspective, which of course is what led us to the Scopes Monkey Trial, whereas we learned the term Bible Belt was originally coined. Additionally, in the sphere of education,

there's a whole Christian culture around using the Bible to determine the age of the earth and the universe. And this Christian culture is founded on using the Bible as like a tech, book where they can decipher answers on everything from religion to philosophy to history, biology, geology, and they take this stuff very seriously. In Kentucky, there's even a whole creation museum that's entirely dedicated to young earth creationist education and often refutes evolution. And it actually has an entire accurate, sized replica of Noah's Ark. And then besides creationism, other activities like prayer and Bible studies are constantly advocated for in the sphere of public education in the Bible Belt. And you all remember, even just in like the last year, 2025, Texas passed a law

requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all classrooms. And they're the third state to do this following Louisiana and Arkansas. And it just brings into question like what is the separation of church and state? We allow for, you know, Christian commandments to be in there, but we wouldn't allow for, you know, any type of, you know, the Noahide laws from Judaism or the Quran. So at what point do we draw a line? Who knows? So when we talk about the Bible Belt's influence today, we're not just talking about a region that goes to church more often. We're talking about a region that shapes national elections and influences education and pushes moral issues into the political spotlight. And whether you agree with these positions or not, or you think that it should happen or shouldn't, you can't ignore the immense impact that this has on the national landscape. So that brings us to today.

Is the Bible Belt going to stay this way forever or is it going to fade away? Well, for the past 20 years, the answer seemed pretty obvious. Young people have been leaving the church in droves and study after study showed the same trend that church attendance was dropping and more people identified as, you know, a non-religious affiliate. And experts predicted that America was heading towards this European-style secularism. And the numbers backed it up, right? Nearly two-thirds of Americans today report having no childhood religious affiliation and say that they're still unaffiliated as adults. and that is a massive shift. You know, people raised without religion are staying without religion.

Pew Research suggests that four in ten Americans no longer regularly attend religious service and many identify as spiritual but not religious. Everything pointed in one direction that religion is declining, secularism is rising, and of course the Bible Belt will lose its grip. Well, not exactly. Here's where things get interesting. Gen Z, specifically Gen Z men, are actually more likely to attend weekly religious services than millennials and even some younger gen Xers, which is pretty surprising. It completely contradicts

everything that the data was telling researchers. And that's not just happening in America. In the UK, a government study found that the share of 18 to 24-year-olds who were going to church at least monthly jumped from 4% to 16% today. That's a four-fold increase in just six years. And among young British men, specifically, there was a 21% increase in church attendance. So what is happening? Why are young people who are supposed to be the least religious generation ever and continue to go down just randomly shown up to church? Well, there are a few theories. First, COVID. Yes, young people might be turning to religion to find community in connection after the isolating years of the pandemic, which obviously hit Genzi very hard, right?

You're a teenager, you're in college, during COVID, and all of a sudden, these formative years that you were supposed to, you know, be in college and joining fraternity or graduating high school and, you know, going around the country to a different place are all of a sudden. of a sudden spent lockdown in your parents' house, doing Zoom school and just missing out on life in general. So a lot of Gen Z kids are craving this real in-person community, and church is a place where you can really experience that. The second theory is economic anxiety. Gen Z is probably not going to expect a higher standard of living than their parents, which is one of the first generations in American history for a long time. And there's a palpable sense of being economically and socially disenfranchised, right? They're graduating with massive debt and they're struggling to afford rent, and home prices have gone up and wages have stagnated.

And this is not a little thing, right? Many young Americans are experiencing what they feel like is a systemic failure. They're like, I went to school, I did all the right stuff, I got a degree, and no one will hire me, and wages are low, and I'm never going to buy a house. So when the material world isn't delivering, what else is there? People start to look for meaning elsewhere, and they find places that are preaching about hope and love and ultimately having faith. And this is important. we're not seeing a uniform religious revival across the board. The picture is way more complicated than that. So urban centers located in the Bible Belt like Nashville and Atlanta are becoming more

multicultural and progressive and they're attracting individuals from various backgrounds, similar to the American Northeast during the 1920s and 30s. This urban migration is reshaping demographics and once again influencing local politics and community values. And for the first time in Bible Belt history, these specific areas are promoting a more secular and inclusive atmosphere. I mean, Atlanta is a great example, right? It's technically the heart of the Bible Belt, right? You have Georgia, this great Baptist strongholds. But modern Atlanta looks nothing like the stereotypical Bible Belt city. It's diverse and cosmopolitan and politically way more liberal than the rest of the state, same with Nashville and Austin and Charlotte. These cities are growing

into magnets for young professionals and tech workers and transplants from all over the country and all over the world who are bringing different values and beliefs with them. So according to a 2021 Pew study, 30% of adults in the South now describe themselves as non-denominational or unaffiliated. Additionally, higher education, individuals are statistically more likely to engage with diverse worldviews leading to a re-evaluation of traditional beliefs. More college-educated people means exposure to different ideas, different lifestyles, and more ambiguity when it comes to their faith and their morality. But here is what's interesting.

Even with all these changes, the Bible Belt, I don't think is going anywhere. The states like Alabama and Mississippi still have much higher church attendance than the states in the northeast or in the west coast, and the gap has narrowed slightly, but it's still massive. Even if the United States becomes considerably less religious overall, there will still be substantial pockets of religious communities, specifically in the Bible Belt. It's not disappearing. It's just kind of changing, right? Some parts are doubling down on tradition, while other parts are kind of modernizing and embracing modernity. many religious institutions in the Bible Belt have embraced contemporary worship styles, incorporating modern music and technology to attract these younger congregants, and others are engaging in community outreach programs that address social issues, such as poverty or racial injustice, and aligning their missions with the values of these more progressive audiences as well. So to answer this

original question, yes, the Bible Belt is changing. It's more diverse in cities, younger people are engaging with faith differently than their parents did, and there's less of a uniform religious culture than there used to be. But it is still the most religious region in America by a mile. And given how Diebla religious, you know, the area is and how religion is woven into southern culture and politics and identity, I don't think this is going to change at any time soon. And that is the story of why the Bible Belt is the way that it is. It's just fascinating. I find the way that like these sort of like religious movements sort of occur within our country to be so captivating. And it's really interesting.

see how, I mean, a few things, right? I guess you can see so clearly how like the black evangelical experience in America is so tied with like the Old Testament narratives. And I'm assuming that's where you get like, you know, black Israelites and like this really like conjoining of, you know, this story of deliverance and like, hey, we are enslaved and yet there is this book that offers us hope for retribution and deliverance from this slavery. And I can see how powerful a message that is and why it connects. And then you can also see the flip and how the same reading of the same scripture gives you an entirely different interpretation where they, you know, you have these white slaveholders that are like, hey, this is our way of life,

and the Bible's actually kind of cool of slavery, so we got to protect it. And they're completely misusing the scripture to kind of further their own personal economic agenda, which, I mean, pretty heretical, if you ask me, right? That's not a good move. But it's just interesting how you have these two different groups kind of forming, adjacently to each other using the same scripture. I also think there's an interesting thing to be said with like televangelism. So Neil Postman writes this book, amusing ourselves to death.

And basically the moral of the book, you guys should read it, it's great. But it to me really encapsulates like the current media paradigm and how, you know, we consume content. And ultimately the moral of the book is that the medium is the message. So like you read the newspaper for political information and the newspaper is sort of logical, and it's kind of drawn out and all the ideas are there. And, you know, if you're going to consume it, you have to sit down for an hour and really, like, digest this information.

And as a result, it creates a more informed and, I think, nuanced political perspective. And then TV changes that, where all of a sudden TV is entertainment, and it's exciting. And if it bleeds, it leads, and whatever the most entertaining take is, that's ultimately what's going to captivate the people.

And now with social media, it's that on steroids. So I think that can be mapped with religion as well, that the preachers that are, coming out of this televangelist boom are not necessarily the most adept theologians or, you know, the most brilliant scholars necessarily. These are people that have the most charismatic message and they're able to get people on board with what they're saying. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. But again, it's not about if it's morally true or if it's the best, most nuanced interpretation of scripture. It's just, is it entertaining? And we have such a desire

to be entertained or everything has to be media. Like political debates have to be, you know, on a Jubilee video with a bunch of people debating and it's chaotic and crazy. And that's how we're digesting information. And that ultimately we just need things to be entertaining. And as Postman would say, we are amusing ourselves to death. So it's just an interesting, you know, kind of perspective. And like prosperity gospel stuff, I just find, you know, aggravating. And I know it's rich from a Catholic to say this. Like, yeah, I know the Vatican's got a couple billion dollars. But there's something about a church getting wealth and, you know, redistributing it to the people or creating a place for tourism that then can be used to, you know, help those that are less fortunate, which obviously the church has a long

history of, you know, misallocating funds, but also a long history of allocating funds pretty well. But then just versus like a personal minister that has like five private jets. Like, I don't know if that's, it just feels wrong, right? I don't know. I know nothing, but it just feels like, ah, that's not what's supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about having a mansion. It's about taking care of the poor, taking care of the needy. Like I think if Christ came back and saw a pastor with like, you know, all these jets, he'd be like, why do you have that, you know? He might flip some tables in the temple. That's my general feeling. But again, I don't know. I'm just a comedian. But it's just an interesting analysis on how these regions kind of pop up.

And again, I personally have a lot of respect for evangelicals in the Bible Belt that love Jesus and orient their lives around, you know, the teaching of Christ. I just hope that they are actually reading the Gospels and kind of pulling in the teaching of Christ into their, everyday life and not using the Bible to, you know, exonerate a different group or try to create some type of us versus them, you know, racial war. Like it's, ultimately, I think if you read the gospel, it's in my interpretation, is that Christ is, you know, a god of charity and of compassion and of non-judgment and of pacifism. And I think if more people adopted those beliefs, the world would be a better place. So I think, you know, Gandhi has an interesting quote on this where he says,

I love your Christ. It's just your Christians that I'm not so sure about. And again, I think that the average Christian in the Bible Belt South is probably a good person, but it's just the televangelists that are getting all this money from preaching the gospel saying, hey, donate to me and you'll be rich. I don't know. It says in the Bible that the meek will inherit the earth. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of. It's a little bit of humility in your lifestyle. Again, I don't want poverty. I want people to be on the streets, but you don't need a mansion of gold in order to be happy. And as a matter of fact, It's probably harder to enter the kingdom of heaven. But again, that's just in the Bible. Who knows, right? Anyway, Cretius, what did you learn from this? Did you pick up anything as a Greek Orthodox? First of all, shout out to T.D. Jake's televangelist. Oh, yeah.

He'll have you throw a wall. I can't show it to you on the screen right now because I stink. But unfortunately, these guys are so fascinating and entertaining. Have you seen this guy, though? Oh, yeah, he's the best. He's probably my favorite, to be honest with you. Dude, honestly, he is excused from any criticism. I agree.

TDJ's the man. Shout out to him. God bless him. What about the one dude with the crazy eyes where he's like talking to the woman and she's like, so why do you have five private jets?

And he's like, there's demon aside you. Wasn't that Billy Graham? No, not Billy Graham. It's another guy. It's like this name's like Cutfeld or something. I can't remember.

Cole Pepper. Okay. Can you search like scary televangelist? You'll get his name. Kenneth Copeland. Get a picture of this guy. Again, I don't know anything about this guy. I've never met him,

so I've recused myself from speaking about a man who I've never shaken his hand, right? I try to judge people that I don't know well. But there's just something about these clips that makes you go, oh, man, I don't know about this guy. As far as the Bible Belt goes, like, I wonder if other countries have parts of the country that are super one religion and that devout. Yeah, well, again, it's not devotion and it's not religion, right? Like, you can look at like the Gulf states and, like, look at Saturday. Arabia, like so many people are devout Muslims and you can go to specific regions in India where people are devout Hindus or they're sick. It's not about devotion. It's about this specific version of like

prosperity, gospel, and evangelizing and like convert now and I can heal you and give me money so you don't go to hell that like, I don't know, the Catholic Church did this with indulgences and I thought it was reprehensible then. Granted, I wasn't alive during the Reformation, but I still feel that way, reading history. And I just think anytime you're trying to personally aggrandize yourself, with the words of a wise guru, spiritual teacher, or the Lord himself, I'm going to take a personal issue with it. But again, that doesn't mean to say that the people that go to these churches aren't good people. I think probably the vast majority of them are. I love Southern Christians. I go down to the South and I'll go out to O'Cal or Homassas, and I'll even just go into my

friends Presbyterian churches when I'm back home in Florida, and they're just the loveliest people. And in certain ways, they do things that Catholics should do more of, which is just fostering real community and like having dialogue about the scriptures that a lot of Catholics I find will just be like yeah yeah that's for the priest to do we don't really do that i think having a fervor and a passion for the for the scripture of reading the gospel is like a good ethic and uh i just get concerned when you have individuals trying to profit grossly off of it but again who am i to judge right i don't know what's written on the hearts of man i'm merely a comedian and a tent but uh at the end of the day. We all know what is on our hearts. And at the end of times, Allah will judge us. Or God or

Vishnu or whoever you think it is. Again, I don't know. I'm keeping my options open. We'll see. But for now, I'm riding with the Catholics. Come on now. Come on, baby. Anyway, what do you guys think? If you grew up in the Bible Belt and the evangelical South, I would love to know, is there anything I missed? Is there anything specifically with the racial dynamic between like black Southern Baptists and white evangelicals that I glossed over? Is there anything I got completely wrong. Is there anything you agree with? If you are from a different country, you don't have a version of this, that this even makes sense to you? Is this all brand new information? Do you have a version of this in your country that maps onto America? I would love to know, please drop a comment. I read all of them. And if you like this channel, great news, we have history camp. We go through all sorts of crazy historical deep dives. And then we got the main camp channel with interviews with people way smarter than me and other miscellaneous deep dives from things like government secrets to conspiracies, to freemasons, everything in between. And if you're just on a religion vibe and this is what you like, well, welcome. You're in my tent and you are welcome here any time to talk about the matters of the divine.

Thank you so much and I will see you in the future. Peace be with you.