The Unknown Florida

In the past, when we watched American movies like Footloose¹ that showed religion in rural regions in the US, we always considered the depicted piety of some characters an extreme exaggeration of real life America. However, since living in the Deep-South for almost two decades, we realized that (evangelical) Christianity here is really as backward as depicted in movies like Footloose and countless others. “Are you Christian?” we have been asked. After responding “no”, the sad look you get says it all: “God loves you, but not enough so save you.” In addition, some Southerners like to document their piety with Sunday church selfies posted on social media. Often they pose with guns on other days of the week. Here is our church selfie.

1. Footloose in a nutshell: Big-city teen from Chicago moves to small town America with his mother and yellow VW Beetle. In this bible-thumping town where, for religious reasons, dancing and having fun is verboten by the city council, Ren McCormack (played by Kevin Bacon) is leading a mutiny by finally dancing the night away in a barn. ↩︎