Bible Belt

The Bible Belt is a region of the United States, primarily across the South and into parts of the Midwest, with historically high rates of church attendance, strong evangelical Protestant influence on culture and politics, and a more conservative social orientation than the national average. The term is descriptive rather than denominational; many Christian traditions are represented in the region.

The journalist H. L. Mencken coined 'Bible Belt' in the early 1920s, in commentary around the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee. Mencken used the phrase critically; the term has since been adopted neutrally and even affirmingly by people who live in the region.

There is no official boundary, and the boundaries shift with how the term is used. Commonly named states include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, parts of Texas, parts of Virginia, parts of West Virginia, and parts of Missouri. Some maps extend it to parts of Florida (the Panhandle), Indiana, and southern Illinois.

Evangelical Protestant Christianity (Southern Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, independent Baptist, et cetera) has historically been the dominant cultural force. Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, and other traditions are also present. The phrase 'Bible Belt' describes the overall cultural texture rather than any single denomination.

The region remains more religiously observant than the national average by most surveys (church attendance, religious self-identification, regular Bible reading), though the gap has narrowed in recent decades as religious affiliation has declined across the U.S. The Bible Belt is still recognizably distinct, but less starkly than in mid-20th-century usage.