page_title: Culture of the Southern United States
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of the Southern United States / Religion
context_page_description: The culture of the Southern United States, or Southern culture, is a subculture of the United States. The combination of its unique history and the fact that many Southerners maintain—and even nurture—an identity separate from the rest of the country has led to it being the most studied and written-about region of the U.S.
  Southern culture has been and remains generally more socially conservative than that of the rest of the country. Because of the central role of agriculture and slavery in the antebellum economy, society remained stratified according to land ownership, and communities often developed strong attachment to their churches as the primary community institution.
  From its many cultural influences, the South developed its own unique customs, literature, cuisine, and music.
context_section_description: Part of the South is known as the "Bible Belt", because of the prevalence there of evangelical Protestantism. South Florida has a large Jewish element that migrated from New York. Immigrants from Southeast Asia and South Asia have brought Buddhism and Hinduism to the region as well. In the colonial period and early 19th century the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening transformed Southern religion. The evangelical religion was spread by religious revivals led by local lay Baptist ministers or itinerant Methodist ministers. They fashioned the nation's "Bible Belt."
  After the Revolution, the Anglican Church of England was disestablished (meaning it no longer received local tax money) and was reorganized as the nationalised Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA. The Revolution turned more people toward Methodist and Baptist preachers in the South. The Cane Ridge Revival and subsequent "camp-meetings" on the Kentucky and Tennessee frontiers were the impetus behind the Restoration Movement. Traveling preachers used music and song to convert new members. Shape-note singing became a fundamental part of camp meetings in frontier regions. In the early decades of the 18th century, the Baptists in the South reduced their challenge to class and race. Rather than pressing for freedom for slaves, they encouraged planters to improve treatment of them, and ultimately used the Bible to justify slavery.
  In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention separated from other regions. Baptist and Methodist churches proliferated across the Tidewater region, usually attracting common planters, artisans and workers. The wealthiest planters continued to be affiliated with the Episcopal Church. By the beginning of the Civil War, the Baptist and Methodist churches had attracted the most members in the South, and their churches were most numerous in the region.
  Historically Catholic colonists were primarily those from Spain and France who settled in coastal areas of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Today, there are significant Roman Catholic populations along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (especially the port cities of New Orleans, Biloxi, Pensacola and Mobile), which preserve the continuing (and broadly popularized) Catholic traditions of Carnival at the beginning of Lent in Mardi Gras parades and related customs. Elsewhere in the region, Catholics are typically a minority and of mainly Irish, German and French or modern Hispanic ancestry.As of 2013, Catholics comprised 42% of the population in the New Orleans Metropolitan area based on numbers presented by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.
  Atlanta, in comparison to some other Southern cities, had a relatively small Roman Catholic population prior to the 1990s. Catholics comprised 1.7% of the population in 1960, and 3.1% of the population in 1980. The population has been growing rapidly since then. The number of Catholics grew from 292,300 members in 1998 to 900,000 members in 2010, an increase of 207 percent. The population was expected to top 1 million by 2011. The increase is fueled by Catholics moving to Atlanta from other parts of the U.S. and the world, and from newcomers to the church. About 16 percent of all metropolitan Atlanta residents are Catholic, comparable to many of Midwestern metropolitan areas.
  Raleigh, North Carolina also has a rapidly growing number of Catholics, with Catholicism having the largest number of affiliates out of any other religious group (11.3%) and the second largest number in Wake County (22%).
  Maryland, which was settled by the British, is historically Catholic as well and many historians believe it was named after the Queen Henrietta Maria by Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron of Baltimore. Maryland was the only Roman Catholic British colony in the Americas, and was considered a refuge for England's Roman Catholic minority which was being persecuted by the Church of England. When William of Orange rose to power in England, Catholicism was outlawed in Maryland, causing a decrease in the number of practicing Catholics. In the 1
caption: The area roughly considered to constitute the "Bible Belt"
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