The Bible Belt is Tightening
To those of us trying to run a small business it was no surprise when the Gallup organization announced on April 11 that its research shows unemployment at about 20%. Here in the Appalachians, buckle of the Bible belt, it was doubly no surprise. Existence has always been pretty thin in these hills, but the grinding down of the already ground down is creating a whole new meaning to the word heartache. If we get much more of this our biscuits will have to be served sans the gravy. About the only ones who have money anymore are the doctors, but they can’t support us all. Just how do you get your phone to ring when a fifth of the people are out of work? More advertising only goes so far.
We have something here though that the rest of the country can’t buy and Gallup can not measure no matter how long his pole. There remains a sense of strength that decries the outsider’s notions about the southern man and his supposed need for progressive enlightenment. It is not a matter of intellect. People can be clever or wise wherever they settle. But, there is a different mind in this part of the south, a specific measure of soul which shows itself, has a come-uppance so to speak, when the hard times are harder.
Around the 1830s or so the long decayed Anglican ordering in the south began to unravel. It was displaced with a deeper in the soul Calvinism that focused on the sovereignty of God. It was a perspective that defined the culture and knotted it securely to European Christendom. Respect for Scripture and an embracing of its truths became the muscle of believing hearts. It marked the south as did nothing else. At first or second glance the passing world may see financial indevelopment, a rural people, or perhaps a defeated nation. In any case, it is certain that the inner soul that has transferred its energy through nearly two-hundred years of her citizens, will not be detected by the cynical and haughty secularism prevalent in eastern-establishment think tanks or national newsrooms. The best objects of the Spirit are not discovered with their tools.
One of the lessons of Scripture is that faith engenders courage. Faith, which is ephemeral, births acts that are phenomenal. It is this transformation that begins to unfold when finances are ruined and faith is pressed. It is this advantage that the Bible belt finds squeezed from its inner being by the God whose sovereignty so many here still embrace. It is one thing to say God is sovereign, it is another to actually live as if this is true. It is out of this deeply-believed concept that faith and courage rise, even when the spirits of men all around are falling. Some of us accept God’s sovereignty as a brute fact that cannot be got around. Others embrace the doctrine with a spirit of victory. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Let us press onward in the power of the Spirit. If God’s unyielding will advances before us, how can we be anything but victorious? The battle is ours!
What I speak of here is conviction. Holy conviction is when a person’s will is welded to the truth of God’s inscripturated word. A Christian man driven by conviction will act insanely for a kingdom he cannot own for he is its slave. Yet he cannot be disowned for he is its son. I find that conviction to build the Kingdom increases when there is little left to lose. This tightening in the Bible belt is tightening our sense of what matters. While the disoriented world seeks its deliverance through other pursuits, the church is given a tighter focus. We are not running from either the battle or God’s sovereign will. Rather, we are convicted that the race set before us is specifically purposed for our legs to run. This being the case, our hearts are stronger and encouraged with a hope that cannot be false.
An advantage of living where Christendom still has sway is that our faith, which is often frail, absorbs courage and conviction from the larger being of that surrounding reality. Not everything here is ideal. The Bible belt is not worn by every citizen in its trace. However, the residual strength of its presence is externalized in tiny presences that inflame internal assurances. It is reasonable to understand that the south was the last remaining center of Christendom before the war. Its crushing appeared to be the cutting of an artery from which the old church could not recover. But it was not. In the midst of the turmoil and confusion of a humanistic era, God has preserved for Himself a repository of Christian civilization, that tho crushed, yet lives. While the battle for the culture sometimes seems lost to our enemies, God is busy raising armies of millions from families of tens. The civilization of Christ is not dead. It is in fact breathing more deeply than its slayers ever conceived.
As for me, I have discovered that it is more easy to write brave words than to live them. I am a man, a person like you. My thoughts flicker. I conceive that living from faith to faith is noble, yet sin causes doubt. Still, I am convinced that, at the moments of greatest danger, the Lord opens opportunity for striding advancement for His kingdom. We are chosen to live in that dangerous moment. To our generation is given the real possibility for seizing some very high ground for our King. Now is the season to rebuild Biblical civilization. The belt is tightening, but so are convictions. I am not doubtful that we were put here for such a time as this.
For Christian Culture,
Don Schanzenbach
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Suspender Man™, Don Schanzenbach, has long been an outspoken advocate of recapturing culture for Christ. He holds a MA in applied Biblical studies and a doctorate in applied theological studies in the field of political philosophy and government from New Geneva Seminary. He has been thinking, writing and speaking on Christian culture for two decades.
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