The Baptist Religion in the South?

Why are there so many Baptists in the South? You go to New England and there's a clear plurality of religions. Same in the North. Same on the west coast. Then you go to the South. And, bang! Everyone is the same religion.

Why?

I have nothing against Baptists per se. But I do smell a conspiracy. Was everyone forcefully converted one day (presumably in the distant past)? What's the story behind that?

 

Yup; the official religion of the South; SEC Football.

 

The heat?

Does heat breed more fanatical religions?

The middle east is literally the mecca of religious nuttery...

 

No conspiracy, but you're right about lots of Baptists here in the Bible Belt. I'm a Methodist myself, so not an unbiased source on the subject. From what I gather, the Baptists were an outgrowth of the Separatist movement that came over from England early in the seventeenth century. They split with the dominant Puritan church in Massachusetts Bay over the issue of infant Baptism, which the Baptists rejected on grounds that a person needed to understand what (s)he was doing for baptism to be valid. They were outlawed and persecuted by the New England Puritans, which is why there aren't that many of them there. They came to South Carolina in the seventeenth century, and later Virginia, and spread rapidly throughout the South, where the Anglican church was still the established religion and the religion of the upper class landed gentry. During the Great Awakenings of religious ferver in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Baptists made inroads among the lower class of small farmers who felt out of place with the formalism of the Anglicans. The Baptists were successful partly because they were willing to condone slavery, and found support for it in scripture. This set them apart from many of the other Christian denominations, including their fellow Baptists in the North. As the issue heated up at the national level, the Southern Baptists broke away from their Northern counterparts in 1845. During the War, Southern Baptists became identified with the Confederates, and became an integral part of Southern society. They remain a pillar of religious conservatism and political support for the Republican Party. The former slaves accepted the religion of their masters, although they were segregated into their own Baptist churches.They tended to emphasize the Exodus message of "let my people go."