Bible Belt Quotes

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence. ~ Kimberly Eady

I think that people in the Bible Belt are far less monolithically religious than many people imagine. There are lots and lots of people who are free-thinking, secularists, or atheists in the so-called Bible Belt. ~ Richard Dawkins

INCEST, n. In many parts of the Bible Belt, the most popular form of dating ~ Charles Bufe

The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance. ~ Russell D. Moore

The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture (though maybe not in the United States Bible Belt, nor in parts of the Islamic world). Most people are at ease with the idea that our present biosphere is the outcome of four billion years of Darwinian evolution. ~ Martin Rees

There is no god." I've said that sentence on Glenn Beck's TV show in front of his live audience at his studio in the Texas Bible Belt. I've told Republicans that I like immigrants. I've told Democrats that I dig rich people. I've told sane people that I like lawyers. But ~ Penn Jillette

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be. ~ Kelli O'Hara

An older, Puritan approach to Scripture tended to prevail in the American South, where the Bible was regarded as a set of definite, positive laws ~ Mark A. Noll

The available divorce data show that marital breakdown is now considerably more common in the Bible Belt than in the secular Northeast ... The percentages of broken families and unwed mothers remained higher in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma than in New York and Massachusetts. ~ Joe Conason

An older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment "Thou shall not kill."
But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22–23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies.
Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life. ~ Gloria Steinem

hundred miles west and one would be out of the "Bible Belt," that gospel-haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces, but in Finney County one is still within the Bible Belt borders, and therefore a person's church affiliation is the most important factor influencing his class status. ~ Truman Capote

As for basic jokes about sex and even my religious stuff, I don't find any problems with that, even if I'm gigging in the Bible Belt, because religious people don't come and see me. ~ Jim Jefferies

It's ironic that the Bible belt is the killing belt - Texas, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and so forth, Georgia. Chief executioners. ~ Joseph Lowery

The Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that. ~ John Shelby Spong

Growing up in the Bible Belt of Texas, I thought for sure there was no way - if I'm 100 percent true to myself and come out as a gay, African-American person in 2015 - that people are going to be able to accept that and understand it. ~ Todrick Hall

Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country. ~ Gore Vidal

The bible belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Maybe "Bible Belt" refers not so much to the popularity of the Good Book in these parts, but to the biblical-plague level of insects. ~ Paul Jury

I was raised with the Bible Belt mentality, and by coming to California, I came out of this dark place and unlearned a lot of things I'd been taught. ~ Edward Ruscha

As American culture changes, the scandal of Christianity is increasingly right up front, exactly where it was in the first century. The shaking of American culture will get us back to the question Jesus asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?" As the Bible Belt recedes, those left standing up for Jesus will be those who, like Simon Peter of old, know how to answer that question. Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed. Good. ~ Russell D. Moore

In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50 percent above the national average. ~ Ronald J. Sider

Trip Advisor: Travel America with Haiku [Texas]
Grackles roosting,
sentinels on miles of phone line.
Don't Mess with Texas.

Austin rush hour, "Go
down Mopac. You don't wanna
mess with I-35."

Athens, Texas,
Blackeyed Pea Capital of the World.
Yup, just another shithole.

Killeen, Texas,
Kill City, Boyz from Fort Hood.
Spending every paycheck.

Texas A&M;,
Aggies football, the wired 12th man.
Too lazy to plant in the Spring.

Fredericksburg, Texas.
Polka Capital of Texas but
I could swear I saw Hitler there.

Ft. Worth, Texas,
Where the West Begins and
a great place to leave.

San Antonio, Texas,
Fiesta! Alamo City! Northstar Mall!
I've been to better tourist traps.

Dallas, Texas,
D-Town, City of Hate.
Don't miss the Galleria.

Lubbock, Texas,
Oil wells, Hub of the Plains.
Stinks like an armpit.

Waco, Texas,
The Buckle of the Bible Belt.
Lossen it up a notch.

Neck dragon tattoo, piercings,
purple haired kindergarten teacher.
Keep Austin weird. ~ Beryl Dov

Abilene had gone from boomtown to Bible Belt, from whorehouses to schoolmarms, without any of the intervening phases. ~ David Brooks

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states. ~ Tony Campolo

The battle going on over gay marriage in America reveals an awful lot. The Bible belt - people hate gay people. Because the Bible tells them? No, the Bible tells them an awful lot of things that they ignore. ~ Ian McKellen

In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times. ~ Assata Shakur

I am in a two-stoplight town in the Alabama hill country, in the heart of the Bible Belt and Crimson Tide football mania, listening to an old-fashioned, heated argument between Cubans like the ones I've heard in Little Havana in Miami, but the moment very quickly loses its sense of strangeness and cultural dissonance. This is what America is like now
North America, I mean, the United States. The craziness of cubanos and mexicanos and guatemaltecos can find you just about anywhere ~ Hector Tobar

I've gotten letters, but mostly from Bible-belt types who say, you must be Satan! They come right out and call me Satan and hope that I'm damned to hell. ~ George A. Romero

This may seem confusing considering the "swing to the right" this country has taken, but raunch culture transcends elections. The values people vote for are not necessarily the same values they live by. No region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. ~ Ariel Levy

For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That's the best revenge a girl-loving girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it's healthy. ~ Beth Ditto

In marked contrast to the relaxed, typically Latin attitude of the Dominicans the Protestant missionaries were still proceeding at full blast with the fight for souls. These North American evangelists of strictly fundamentalist inclination combined in a curious fashion strict adhesion to the literal meaning of the Old Testament With mastery of the most modern technology. Most of them came from small towns in the Bible Belt, armed with unshakably clear consciences and a rudimentary smattering of theology, convinced that they alone were the repositories of Christian values now abolished elsewhere. Totally ignorant of the vast world, despite their transplantation, and taking the few articles of morality accepted in the rural Amenca of their childhoods to be a universal credo, they strove bravely to spread these principles of salvation all around them.
Their rustic faith was well served by a flotilla of light aircraft, a powerful radio, an ultra-modern hospital and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- in short, all the equipment that a battalion of crusaders dropped behind enemy lines needed. ~ Philippe Descola

In the same way, metrics can record the frequency of our church attendance, the regularity of our Bible reading and the exact amount of our tithing, but they can never gauge the genuineness of any of them, or whether they are any better than "the noise of the solemn assemblies" against which the prophets fulminated. ~ Os Guinness

Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think. ~ Isaac Asimov

The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. ~ Thomas Paine

I remain fearless of airplanes after 9/11. But during a trip to Los Angeles on a Boeing 767, I couldn't keep my mind from drifting: What's the largest piece of this airplane that could crash into the World Trade Center, explode out the other side, and survive intact? The landing gear? My computer battery? My belt buckle? My wedding ring? ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The bank man had been standing quietly by our picnic table, waiting to lock up the house. Around his waist he wore a live rattlesnake for a belt. Behind it, his stomach was a black hole of hunger. ~ C.E. Medford

If Christians read the Holy Bible, they know the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. ~ Anonymous

Ultimately I think the difference between reading the Bible and studying it is making the connections between who Jesus is and what he's done. ~ Mark Driscoll

The Bible NEVER flatters its heroes. It tells us the truth about each one of them in order that against the background of human breakdown and failure we may magnify the grace of God and recognize that it is the delight of the Spirit of God to work upon the platform of human impossibilities. ~ Alan Redpath

I have one great political idea ... That idea is an old one. It is widely and generally assented to; nevertheless, it is very generally trampled upon and disregarded. The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, "Righteousness exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people" [Proverbs 14:34]. This constitutes my politics - the negative and positive of my politics, and the whole of my politics ... I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind, that it may speedily be recognized and practiced upon by our people. ~ Frederick Douglass

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught.
Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. ~ Timothy Keller

Christianity was derailed when Bible Schools became certification centers for true apostles of Christ. Where is the Holy Spirit? John 16:13 ~ Felix Wantang

He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself. ~ Hannah More

the impression that many seminarians seem to take from their introductory Bible course, that a given text is a puzzle with only one solution - an impression that often makes biblical study oppressive rather than exhilarating. ~ Ellen F. Davis

I cannot see how it can be argued that one should speak in tones of reverence and awe about the alleged divine instruction-in Psalms-to grab the defenseless bodies of innocent infants and dash their brains out against the nearest rocks or walls. ~ Steve Allen

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. ~ Frederick Buechner

(Note: I realize this is horrifying. Just keep reading.)

"Turn to Leviticus 20:13, because I actually discovered the cure for AIDS. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS. It was right there in the Bible all along - and they're out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It's curable - right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."

This is an American pastor openly calling for the death of all homosexuals. The anti-gay movement is now so extreme, some, (not all) call for genocide. So how about instead of Alex from Target or pumpkin spice lattes, we get this out on the media. Because this is disgusting. No one should have to be called worthless, better in death, for a problem they did not cause. AIDS did not start with homosexuals, and it's not going to end with them. The only thing that has to end is hate like this. ~ Anomymous Pastor And Myself

The other cop is writing things down in his pad. The pad is so small. His pen is really small, too. They seem too small, the pen and pad. Personally, I would want a bigger pad. Then again, with a bigger pad, where would I put it? You'd need a pad-holster, which might look cool but would make it even harder to run, especially if you have the flashlight attachment . . . I guess you need a small pad so it'll fit on your utility belt - Oh, it would be so great if they called it a utility belt. Maybe I could ask. Not now, of course, but later. ~ Dave Eggers

The British Empire now stood at the very apex of modern civilization, and that it was the special burden of this empire to spread its enlightenment - whether through commerce, the Bible, the gun, or some combination of all three - to the world's less fortunate cultures and races. ~ Scott Anderson

The first mate slid, almost bonelessly, down the wall. Baltsaros shoved his softening cock almost angrily back into his pants; he felt strangely unsatisfied and frustrated. Tom looked up at the captain with wet, red eyes as Baltsaros undid the belt that was looped around him.

What was it about Jon that had him so wound up? ~ Bey Deckard

There just isn't enough cock in this world to be caught suckin' and be called anything but a slut for life. The cynic in me would call it a bad habit, but that'd make me a whore in denial and if there's one thing I am, it's an honest bitch. Then again, you don't get famous for being daddy's little angel, but you can easily fall into the Infamy Bracket by preaching a made-up Bible quote now and again. They say I'm shallow, but I've made a living out off diving off the deep end. ~ Dave Matthes

Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Conscience tells us in our innermost being of the presence of God and of the moral difference between good and evil; but this is a fragmentary message, in no way as distinct and comprehensive as the lessons of the Bible. ~ Billy Graham

I'm not a Christian, but I have read his book. ~ Bill Maher

Some people will go around the world to find God's will for their lives but will not go to the next room to read their Bible. ~ Zane Pratt

So-called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. Pull in your belt is a slogan closely related to gird up your loins, or the guns-butter metaphor. ~ Wyndham Lewis

He looked so strange without his guns.
So wrong.
'Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master's unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it.'
'Oh, that,' he murmured. 'I almost forgot.' He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.
'This is ridiculous!' Eddie shouted.
'Life is ridiculous.'
'Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader's Digest.' Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. 'Now can we go?'
'There is one more thing,' Roland said.
'Weeping, creeping Jesus!'
The smile touched Roland's mouth again. 'Just joking,' he said.
Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness. ~ Stephen King

I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer. ~ Brian D. McLaren

[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive! ~ Megan Sweeney

It is mind-boggling to me that the Almighty power created everything I see; the Bible says that God created the entire universe just so he could create this galaxy just so he could create Earth so he could create human beings so he could create a family. ~ Rick Warren