"The
Bible Belt" is an informal term referring to a swath of the
Southern United States that is home to many
fundamentalist Christians. According to the
American Baptist News Service, this region contains a higher percentage of
church-going Christians than anyplace else in the country.
Prior to the
Great Awakening, any Bible Belt that America may have had was located among
Puritans and
Quakers in
New England. But when this spiritual
revival arrived in the
American colonies from Britain in the 1700's, it was most intense south of the
Mason-Dixon line, stengthening
Methodist,
Baptist, and
Presbyterian denominations there.