Is the Bible Belt Immoral, Unhealthy, and Violent?

Responding to the Bible Belt Meme

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna respond today to a meme. That's right, a meme. I don't do that all that often. I did that, I think, during, I had like an episode, Top 10 Pro Black Lives Matter Movement Memes, and I responded to all of them.

This is just one meme though, this whole episode, one meme. Someone sent it to me and said, what's your response? Ask me the questions. This is a listener-generated episode, and it was one of the patrons had, I guess, come across this on their Facebook newsfeed and just wanted to see, you know, how do you respond to this?

And I don't know if there's a silver bullet. I don't know if there's one right way. Depending, you know, if you know a friend who posted something like this, you may respond to them differently than another friend who posted it.

But I want to at least give you some general things to think about, and not all of you are gonna find this episode interesting. You're not supposed to say that at the beginning of a podcast, right? But I'm trying to be upfront and straightforward.

Not all of you will find this kind of thing interesting. It deviates a little bit from what I usually talk about. Some of you will, though. Some of you actually might find this more interesting. So you can put your comments in the info section as to whether or not you find this interesting or not, or helpful, and if you have explanations that are different than mine for what I'm about to bring up, then please feel free to interact because that's what this is about.

We're learning, we're sharpening each other, and this is something that I think should not be ignored. I think, honestly, and I don't know the hearts of people, I just, I do think stuff like this does get ignored by some conservatives, and I think it's helpful to actually interact.

Interact with the arguments that people on the left are making. So here's the meme, you ready? See if I can cue this up here. I'll blow it up so everyone can see what I'm looking at here. This is the meme, and it's a very popular meme when it was posted.

Lizzy the Lezzy, I don't know who that is, but I think it's a secularist on social media, posted the Bible Belt. And there is, for those listening, a outline of the South, and really, it's the South, and maybe a little portion of the Midwest there with a Christian cross.

And it says, the Bible Belt is also the divorce belt, the teen pregnancy belt, the obesity belt, the homicide belt, the poverty belt, the smoker's belt, the infant death belt, the low life expectancy belt.

Now, the assumption behind all of this, you need to figure out first, before even interacting with something like this, what's the assumption? What is this trying to communicate? Well, it's obvious that there's a causation correlation going on here, a causal correlation between people loving the Bible, adhering to the Bible, and people, apparently, in some instances, not following the Bible.

See, this is the interesting thing. Before you even know any stats, you think, wait, hold on a minute. These are the people that love the Bible, yet they're the people getting divorced. They're the people that are practicing obesity.

I mean, it's one of the, what, seven deadly sins, right? But more importantly, there's Bible verses against obesity. The homicide belt, right? That homicide's not certainly in keeping with biblical teaching on murder.

Poverty, I mean, if they're practicing the Proverbs principles for money, then they shouldn't be in poverty, as at least compared to the rest of the country. Smoking, I mean, that's maybe a cultural thing, but hey, our body's the temple of the Lord.

Infant death, low life expectancy. Some of this could be the result of poverty and some of these other things. I mean, a lot of these things that are in this are related to one another. I mean, you could say it's the poverty belt and that would probably explain about half the things on this list.

Or, you know, divorce also doesn't really help a lot of these things. But obesity and low life expectancy would also be, there'd be a relationship there. So it's kind of expanded out, which makes it sound even, you know, as bad as it can be if we're just going to itemize all the different things that are negative attached to this region.

So that's the intent behind it. People that are into the Bible apparently are a bunch of hypocrites because they're not following it, right? That has to be, so you need to point that out, I think, right away.

If there's someone who's, you know, are you saying that these people are hypocrites? Are you saying that they are not following the Bible? Are you saying that other regions are following biblical principles better?

Is that what you're saying? Because obviously the issue is not the Bible. It's not the Bible that's causing these things. The Bible teaches against most of these things. So it's not the Bible doing this.

So what's the explanation? And if you start out with a question like that, I think you'll find the discussion's gonna be a little more rich because you can't just immediately say the Bible's the cause.

Because this person probably wants that to be the case. Look, the people who are most into the Bible have all these problems. But again, a lot of these problems aren't problems that arise from the Bible.

The Bible preaches against a divorce and homicide, right? So that's, I think, the first thing is to say, okay, well, what's the explanation then? The explanation can't be the Bible's causing it. It's gotta be something else.

It's people then. You're making a great argument for people, I guess, being hypocritical, sinful. Hey, you know what book makes sense of that? The Bible. But here's the other thing. Because I don't think that's entirely satisfactory.

I think that's a really good start. I think that's a really good, I think it's honestly probably where a lot of the conversations are gonna go and they're gonna stop. Because you need to be able to separate the working issues attached to a meme like this.

You can't just focus on defending all the people who live there. You need to start out with, this person's trying to blame the Bible. Let's try to take that one off the table, okay? And I think you can pretty handily do that.

All you need to do is quote some Bible verses that are against some of the things on this list. But the reason it's not entirely satisfactory is because the people are part of it. The people who claim to be the most religious, the people who, really, I mean, it's the region of the country that is the most religious, has some of these problems, right?

So, or do they? Or do they? And that's what I wanna get into. I wanna get into the specifics of this. Because this is an oversimplification. And there are other explanations. I'm not gonna claim I have all the answers to all of this.

But I want to at least provoke everyone to think a little more deeply into this. Because this is an oversimplification. And so that's the second thing. So first thing, number one, can't blame the Bible for this stuff, obviously.

Second thing is, are these, is this an oversimplification? Is this actually an accurate meme? And, or are you slandering people unnecessarily? Do you have an ax to grind? And I think that's the case. This person has an ax to grind, a bitterness about them.

And that's what's causing this. This is not out of the good heart of someone who really wants to steer people away from the Bible because they're afraid they're gonna get divorced and get murdered or something and live in poverty.

This is someone who clearly just has an ax to grind with this region. And I would say, also, on a political level, well, why don't you just kind of, why don't we maybe let them go their own way or something?

Why don't we push for maybe there to be two separate or three separate or four separate regions of the United States kind of governing themselves? Why does it have to be this one size fits all, the whole country as, I mean, look, if you go to Seattle or Portland, which I was just at recently, I was, this last year, I was in Alaska.

I was in California. I was in Seattle. I was in Portland. I was in Alabama. I was all over the place. There is a huge difference between, let's say, Alaska and Portland and Alabama. There is a huge difference.

You're in different countries, quite frankly. Especially, look at the difference. I remember one day I went from Alabama and all the way, we were near the University of Alabama. And in one day, I flew from there and I flew into Portland.

It could not have been different. These are two separate countries. And why should they all be, and this is a question, I know some of you have answers for it in your mind. They're sort of a mystical attachment to this union thing.

But why should they be united in a common destiny when they clearly have completely different ideas of what a good society looks like and what they want for themselves? That's a question, too, to bring up when someone brings up something like this.

Let's disparage this region. Maybe they should be their own thing. All right, so let's get into the stats. That's what you're really here for. And that was the question, I think, that prodded this whole thing with someone who wanted me to get into the specifics.

So here's some specifics for you. And this is fascinating to me. First map, for those who are listening, I'll try to describe what I'm looking at. Percentage of the population claimed by all participating religious groups.

So this is all religions, basically, that participated in this. This is a 2012 Association of Statistics of American Religious Bodies study. And this was posted on the UK Daily Mail. And you can see, when you break it down by county level, things look a little different.

Yellow is the most religious. Now, if you wanna look at the most yellow parts of the country, you're looking at Utah, you're looking at Idaho, right? This is Mormon country. There's regions of New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

I'm not entirely sure what that would be. I don't think that would be evangelical. Maybe Colorado, I'm not sure. And then there's this kind of line that goes up from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, all the way up to North Dakota.

Nebraska, South Dakota, kind of bleeding into Wisconsin a bit, and Minnesota. And, of course, those regions, I think, would be more Lutheran up there. But there's this kind of, it's interesting. It's like the country is split in half there by this yellow line.

And that is percentage of the population. So this is all religious groups and basically who they claim. These are the people that adhere to our religion. Then the next tier is the brown. And you can see the brown is the Midwest, parts of the West, and a significant portion of the Lower South, especially.

Also parts of Pennsylvania, some counties in New York and Massachusetts, but almost all of Long Island. So that would be probably Catholic. Now go to the next tier, that's red. Now you look at, and I don't know what the, I mean, it looks like it might be more brown than red.

I'm not sure, but it's pretty close. There's a lot of red in the South, a lot of red in the Midwest. There's Northern tip of Maine has some red, Montana has some red. Green, Florida, Virginia, a lot of North Carolina, a lot in New York, a lot in California, and Arizona, Wyoming.

So we're getting towards the lower end of the spectrum here, like the least religious, right? And the least religious, of course, is blue. Most of Maine is covered in blue. Vermont, New Hampshire, covered in blue, mostly.

Oregon, Washington's got a lot of blue. Interestingly, Northern Idaho, Western Montana, Northern California, Western Nevada, Western Arizona, lots of blue. So you can see when you look at this map by county that there are some definite trends going on here.

And look, it is the South and the Midwest. When you look at your yellows and your tans, you're looking at, a lot of it is Utah, and of course, the Mormon country being an exception, but you have the South and the Midwest mostly.

And then if we include red in that, that's what you're looking at mostly. But places like West Virginia, I think, are fascinating to me. West Virginia, Southern Ohio, this is Appalachia. This is Eastern Kentucky, covered in blue.

So least religious, right? There's not much, and these are people, if you drive through those areas, you would think that they would be more religious. Now, I'm not sure what the, I don't know how to account for all that, but all this to say, all I really wanna communicate in this map, and we're gonna go through so many maps, I'm gonna spend a lot less time on the next ones.

I just wanted to, up front, just say, look, the situation's more complicated, obviously, way more complicated than just looking at a map and at the state level. Once you get into the county level, you start seeing trends that you don't see at the state level.

And I would have never known that there's this yellow belt kind of running from Texas all the way to North Dakota of yellow, of people that are religious adherence to some form of Christianity, I would assume.

So I think that's interesting. Now, when you look at evangelicalism, and most people who probably bring this up have an ax to grind with evangelicals, that's the Deep South, right? But the Midwest is pretty close, 29 self-identify as evangelical, whereas 31 in the South, so Midwest versus South, 29 to 31%.

Northeast, 13%, West, 18%. But then this is a LifeWay study, Southern Baptist study. When you get into their actual beliefs are evangelical, it's only 23 of the South, and that's the highest. It's 5 of the Northeast, 15 of the Midwest, 10 of the West.

So your highest evangelical Bible belief is in the South, and it's only 23%. That is not all that much. Now, to call this the Bible belt, okay, but, and I found this even living. Now, I was in the Upper South.

I was in Raleigh, and then I was in Lynchburg, Virginia. So this is not, I know it's much different than a lot of my family in Mississippi in some ways, but it's, I found that there, you know, the church is on every corner, but it's going the way that the Northeast went 100 years ago, or a little more than that.

It's going the same direction where secularization has taken root. It's just been delayed. It's taken a lot longer in the South. Culture is different. The culture remembers things a lot longer. They're much more traditional, much more respecting of hierarchy, and the church is a hierarchy.

Religion plays a prominent role in their life. They're certainly not as bifurcated as people in the Northeast or the West are on that. And so it's lasted longer, but man, 23%, you can hardly call this, I mean, I remember living even in Lynchburg recently and thinking that there's churches everywhere.

The biggest Christian university in the world is here. And yet how many churches that I visited were absolutely dead? How many churches I went to were, I mean, between the social justice, the absolute, just kind of falling apart when COVID happened, just the churches with bad doctrine, period, it was very difficult.

And I didn't think it would be in a place like Lynchburg, but you're finding this all over the place. The percentage isn't quite as high. Now that doesn't mean that Christianity doesn't filter into the culture more.

And I think that's part of it. I think it's a political thing that people have a problem with, especially in the South. They're Republican, they vote a certain way, pro-life, all that kind of thing. And they carry, when a Republican wins, look at the South, that's the region that, one of the big regions and the Midwest, the regions that they're carrying.

And so I think that has a lot to do with it. Christianity still, there's a sort of a memory of Christianity, even if people aren't practicing it today, you can remember grandma and grandpa used to have this.

And some of those cultural elements were passed down, cultural, cultural, and that's where it stays for a lot of people, if only 23 are actually evangelical by belief, if this study's accurate. So not quite as Christian as maybe some of you thought, and county level, a little more complex.

And I just wanted to bring that out. Now, let's get in to some other factors. And I'm only bringing these factors up, just to ask a question. I'm not making any statements. I need to be very clear on this.

I'm not attributing any of the negative things that are on that meme to these particular maps. I'm not saying there's a correlation here, like the meme creator is, and saying, well, it's because of these things that you have high poverty or whatever.

What I'm trying to say is, there's probably more than just this, but are there things that might make sense of some of those factors? Some of them, are there? I'm just asking, are there other things other than it being the Bible Belt?

Are there other things that might make sense of, let's say, a high homicide rate, average yearly temperature, and average annual relative humidity? Guess where they meet? Yeah, it's that Bible Belt area.

It's the South. It's the deep South, especially. If the homicide rates are higher, and we'll get into that in a minute, but if they are, here's a headline from CBS News 2012. Hot and bothered, experts say violent crime rises with the heat.

Is it possible that because it's hot, that could have a contribution? Now, you might say, John, that's silly. Well, is it? If it's more violent in Northern cities in the summer, and you have a place that's summer all year long, would it, and why is it that more murders happen?

Maybe it's because just more people are out when it's hot. You're doing more things. Could that contribute? I don't know, but it could. Is that something that is worth looking into? And that's my only question, is are there other factors other than just it being the Bible Belt?

It's the hot, humid area of the country. I don't know, I get agitated when I'm hot and humid. How about the Catholic Church, right? Now, this is, look, I'm just throwing this out there. I'm not saying that these other two maps necessarily mean anything, but maybe they do mean something, I don't know.

I'm just saying there might be more research that needs to be done here. Adherence as a percentage of total population. Guess what the least Catholic area in the whole entire country is? Yeah, it's the Lower South.

It's that Bible Belt area. And West Virginia, which we already determined was not very religious according to the first map on a county level. It's also not very Catholic either, probably because there's not much religion there, period, formally at least.

But that whole region, covered in blue for least Catholic. I mean, it's about the same as Utah, right? Now, question, could there be a correlation there? Is there a correlation with some of those negative attributes to maybe Catholics are better at some of these things?

And I'm sure the person who created that meme doesn't like Catholics. They don't like, maybe they have their most disdain for evangelicals and the Bible Belt because of how they vote and everything. But most people really don't like the Catholic Church if they're really progressive.

They can't stand it. Well, that's the area with the least amount of Catholics. Could that have something to do with it? States with the largest black populations for 2018. Again, it's the Lower South.

It's that Bible Belt area. Could that have anything to do with some of those things? I mean, we've been told last year that there's such great disparities in healthcare access and poverty rates and all these kinds of things with black people.

Could it be that the states that they live in more than other states would have greater percentages of poverty, let's say? And that's where they live. And maybe, now look, I'm gonna put my social justice glasses on for a minute.

Maybe that's the whole reason behind this. It has nothing to do with the Bible or Bible Belt or any of that or culture in that sense, at least religion, I should say. But it has everything to do with discrimination against black people.

And so that's a racist meme that that person posted because they're making fun of a disparity that's caused by racism or something. I mean, look, if we're gonna try to figure out what's going on, why some of these things happen, and I'm gonna give you some hints as we go through and some possible explanations for some of these things, but why don't we put everything on the table?

Let's look at that region and let's think about all the things that might be different about it, not just the fact that, well, you know, hey, more people seem to respect the Bible there. Guess that's why there's more smoking, right?

Yeah, I don't think it quite works that way. Okay, so this next slide is on the access to healthcare. You can ignore that first map that really, it's old data and I probably should not have included it in this slide show and it's really not the most relevant.

Look at the second one though. The second one is percentage of adults 18 to 64 years old without health insurance at the time of interview, 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, US. Now this is kind of old too, 2009.

It's hard to find newer stuff with the time I had available, but here's the interesting thing about this to me. A lot of states that are part of the Bible Belt, and West Virginia, of course. Now, do we wanna say they're part of the Bible Belt?

I don't know, but a lot of states that are part of the Bible Belt and some states that are there in the Northwest as well, seem to be the least, have the people with the least health insurance. 18, 64 year olds without health insurance.

The greatest percentages are in those regions. Of course, the best seem to be the Upper Midwest and then the Northeast, they're insured. So why is that? Why is there a disparity that exists in these areas?

That's a question. I wanted to find something that showed access to healthcare as far as clinics and hospitals and stuff. I was having a hard time, I couldn't find one. But I know from doing stats for the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, which comes out this week, I did a study of Appalachia and found they have the least access to healthcare of any population in the entire country.

So I would assume that if we did have a map of that, you would see less dots, where there's a clinic or something in some of these rural areas, especially in those areas. Now, is that now a cry for social justice?

That's my question. If we've been told that disparities are such a, there's a disparity that needs to be rectified, does that mean that a whole bunch of money, federal money needs to be poured into the Bible Belt and people need to start saying that Bible Belt lives matter or something like that, because there's a disparity?

No, look, this is, you may think I'm having fun or I'm making fun or something, but I want to apply the logic that we're so often told. The logic of the meme is, well, they're just a bunch of really unhealthy people in that area.

Maybe that's true, but guess what else? They just don't seem to have the access to healthcare that others do in the country. So are you making fun of them? Because they don't have access to healthcare, which is probably tied to poverty, which maybe there's some discrimination behind, oh, who knows?

I mean, this is when you start to drill a little deeper, you start to see maybe there's some other things going on. It's not just unhealthy people. Now, maybe it is just unhealthy people, but they didn't get that from the Bible, we know that.

Let's keep going here. And we'll get into the weeds even more. Okay, so we're gonna go into some rates here, obesity rate. Obesity rate, the Midwest 34 .1 and the South 34 .1%. The Midwest and the South are even when it comes to obesity.

And then the West is 29 .3%, the Northeast 28%. Which honestly, it doesn't make me that positive about really any region of the country when I'm like, okay, the most healthy region, the Northeast apparently, well, when it comes to obesity, is 28%.

That's really not that great. But yeah, without question, the South and the Midwest are the two regions that have the most. Now, if you look at a map, you can see it starts in Texas, and there's this kind of belt that kind of goes through Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Iowa's part of this kind of too, and Kansas. These are the states that have the most obesity. Now, there's also a sense in which these are areas in which the cuisine is a lot of fried food. These are places that many of them, especially if you're in the South, they were very impoverished.

And the best way to get calories was to fry your food. The best way to kill stuff was to fry your food. Bacteria or things that could be in there that would harm you. So that's part of the cuisine. Is that because the Bible?

Did the Bible tell them to go eat this stuff? No, I mean, a lot of people were on the farm and they could eat that stuff. They're not on the farm anymore, and they're still eating the same stuff. And it's a problem.

It is a problem in some of these areas. There is no doubt about that. But it's not because they're Bible-believing Christians, unless they're going to all the potlucks, right? In fact, Chick-fil-A has a grilled sandwich.

You don't have to go and buy, get fried chicken all the time. But in a lot of these places, that's what everyone eats. It's fried chicken. It's greasy stuff. And it's the cultural cuisine. It's sweet tea.

It's a lot of sugar. It's Coca-Cola. I mean, that's where Coca-Cola came from, this area. So that's a problem. I'm not going to say it's not. And I'm not going to say that maybe there's not some hypocrisy there, but you're not talking about the entire population either.

The, whatever it was, 23 of, you know, people that take their, are evangelical. Are they the ones that are having this problem? Maybe some of them, but I don't know where these numbers actually meet.

So without a study that would tell us, we don't know if there's a lot of hypocrisy going on there or not. There may not be. There may be some. There may not be some, as much as we think. We don't really know.

So again, this goes past the Bible Belt. This extends into the upper peninsula of Michigan. This is not something that's just unique to this area. This is mostly the South and Midwest, but the whole country is not doing too well on this.

And I will say one more thing. I think Colorado is like one of the most healthy states. It's usually one of those healthy states. Areas that tend to be mountainous are areas where people are, you know, doing a lot of outdoor activities that require physical exercise.

They tend not to have these problems as much. Also, obviously areas where the cuisine is not as rich and sweet and fattening. Infant mortality. Infant mortality. Again, it's the portions of the Midwest and the West, but look, the Bible Belt's got it the worst.

Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, first three, and then North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming, Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio. Places with the worst infant mortality. Now, I think there's a correlation here with probably health insurance and access to healthcare and these kinds of things as well.

So again, I mean, a lot of these things are related. Cigarette smoking. How about West Virginia, which we already saw was one of the, by county, one of the least religious, at least by religions claiming that they have adherence there.

Kentucky. It looks like Arkansas, and then Guam. Guam is the next one. After West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas, it's Guam. And then Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma. South, Midwest, and Guam.

It looks like Alaska too has an issue with this. Again though, this is a cultural thing. This is where can this stuff be grown? The South has a longer memory. They hold on to traditions longer too. So granddad did it, dad did it, I'm doing it.

There's probably other explanations here as well, but this isn't the Bible told me I should smoke. This isn't necessarily because of Christianity. Look, West Virginia, of all the places in Appalachia in the South that we determined, West Virginia is not really very religious.

So, and they're the number one for cigarette smoking here. Next one, life expectancy. I got a county map for this one. Now, on the state level, West Virginia is the first. Then Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana.

A little bit of the Midwest, mostly the South. I got a county map though here, and you can see where it's really heavy. Again, it's a combination of everything we've been talking about. Culturally rich foods.

You also have less access to healthcare. There's more poverty. All these kinds of things add up to create a situation like this. Is this because the Bible caused them to do this? Is it because their Christian faith is causing low life expectancy?

No, it's all the other stuff. That would make a lot more sense. There's also, but on the county level, I think it's interesting, because you also see these states that are more healthy, but then they have a county here or there that just is in the same category as lower West Virginia.

Alaska even has that, which I think is fairly fascinating. Then we have homicides. And homicides, if we're looking at numbers, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, New York, Michigan, it's states with large populations.

If we're looking at the rate, it's actually Washington, DC. That's the first one. And I can tell you right now, they're not the most Christian city, Washington, DC. And then you have Louisiana. Now, Washington, DC, by the way, is off the charts, 23 .5.

23 .5, nothing else comes close. The next state or next district that they're counting Washington, DC as a state, the next state is Louisiana, and it's at 11 .7. It's half what Washington, DC is. Washington, DC is off the charts with the homicide rate.

Then it's the state of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska. Now, I have to say this too. Washington, it's almost not fair because Washington, DC is a city. It's just mainly an urban area. If we were comparing apples with apples, it would be what's Chicago, what's New York, what's LA, what's Houston, that kind of thing.

It's the major cities that are gonna have the larger homicide rates. That's where the people are, and that's where gangs are, and that's where that kind of violence is. Where people are spread apart, you're not gonna have it as much.

But anyway, I digress. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, Missouri, Maryland, South Carolina, New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama. So there's quite a few states from the South, but there's also a number of states that aren't from the South.

What would cause this? Well, there could be heat, like I said. Maybe that's a correlation. Could be poverty. Could be traditions that trace back to Scotch-Irish days in some of these areas, in Appalachia especially, but even through the Lower South, a lot of Scotch-Irish people, and they're in Cajuns in Louisiana and stuff.

There's a temper that sometimes is associated with those things, and kind of a mentality, and I'll just tell you straight up, because I've noticed this. There's sort of a mentality of we do things our own way here.

We're not necessarily calling the police. We're not necessarily relying on the government to solve our problems. We're gonna solve them, and sometimes that means they're gonna solve them their own way with a gun, and that mortifies people in the suburbs, especially, and if it's an actual, you know, if it's a homicide, it's evil.

It's wrong, but I think there's also a cultural thing going on here that causes some of this, and whereas, I just, because I've lived in New York for most of my life, but I've also spent some time in Mississippi, and obviously North Carolina and Virginia, and I've just noticed there are way different mentalities.

I mean, in New York, especially people from the city, they call the police at the drop of a hat. I mean, I don't know how many times I've seen where someone, you know, you're making too much noise, and the police show up.

The neighbor doesn't even do the, they don't call you. They make these big fences to separate neighbors from each other. They're just not as friendly, and when there's more interaction between people, and I'm gonna take things into my own hand, that person offended me and offended my honor, and honor's a big part of that Scotch-Irish tradition kind of going back, and even the Cavalier tradition, people who settled in the South, that's going to, that could contribute to this, and I'm spitballing myself.

I'm not saying those are the reasons, but I'm saying there could be a lot of other reasons. The Bible doesn't tell you to commit homicide, obviously, but the more rural, the less access to police, and culturally, the less reliance on police, the more you're gonna have these kinds of things.

Crime and homicide by county. Now, this is interesting to me. You see, for those listening, I'll try to describe this. Violent crime incidents per 1 ,000 people in 2014. Now, you see there's a bunch of pockets in New Mexico and Texas.

Alaska's got some deep pockets. There's some in Michigan, and throughout the Midwest, there's some. Look at this, though. Look at the South. It starts up here in Tennessee. It follows the Mississippi River down to Louisiana, and then it kind of takes a right, and it kind of goes through the middle of Mississippi.

If you notice, the regions of Mississippi, Mississippi's mostly white. There's mostly no data, or it's not much. There's not a whole lot of crime, but there's this sort of line in the middle of Mississippi.

That line extends through the middle of Alabama, kind of. Southern Alabama a bit, jumps to the middle of Alabama, and then you kind of see lower Georgia, and extends through South Carolina, North Carolina, up, but it's this line, and you can see it when you look at it from the county level.

It kind of, like I said, it's almost like a U that goes through the South. And so, if you're gonna, hey, look, these regions, these regions are really violent. Well, are they, or is the crime happening in certain counties in those regions?

Now, this is where I think more study should be done. Where are the most religious regions? Is it the areas where these dots are? Where are they, where those dots aren't? Because look, it looks like there's actually, in some of these counties, there's not a whole lot of crime at all.

But then, there's these regions that probably pull the whole stats for the state up. What do you attribute that to? Why is it? Why are the people living in these certain counties more prone to crime? This is, this next map is homicides.

So, the first one was crime, violent crime. This is just homicides. And you can see some of the same kind of things playing out. But look, even Georgia, and Alabama, Mississippi, like there's what, a few counties that are red, and then the rest of it's just white.

But you see this go through, and you see the whole, the Northeast, there's this line that goes up, and there's a line of red. California, there's a whole lot of red. So, there's, it's honestly, it's not states as much as it is certain regions, certain counties, where this stuff is happening.