I was in Alabama 10 years until recently. I can agree the Evangelicals (mostly a certain Baptist type) make Mormons seem sane. At least Mormons already know people think they are weird. The Christians there seemed to put religion in everything. I think they assume it signals they are "good" trustworthy types. My dentist had a giant Bible and Jesus pictures everywhere.
Even my 70 year old realtor had to tell me she goes to Bible study every time I saw her (good gawd lady- read another book already!). Many of my coworkers had scriptures and Jesus pap all over their work areas.
If they found out I went to BYU, they treated me with suspicion and curiosity. Once they figured out I bad mouthed Mormons, they were fine with it. The problem is, they automatically assumed I was a born again like them. I had to be careful not to say anything that would alienate myself.
Yeah, the place is dripping with religiosity which is off putting if you are not used to it.
My wife's uber christian cousins from W. Virginia know almost nothing about Mormonism other than it's weird but they manage to interject God and religion into their conversation to an almost uncomfortable level to me.
The moment I saw the subject line, I thought "this is a job for dagny". I see she thought the same thing!
I spent part of my youth in the south, with many Mo relatives, and my experience was similar to dagny's. There were tent revivals in those days (1950s) and we would sometimes go just for the entertainment value, and to feel smug about how we had The Truth™ unlike the poor deluded fools who were rolling on the floor and speaking gibberish, or listening to tub-thumping fire and brimstone sermons.
I suspect that has toned down over the decades. Ah, the good old days.
The part of the family that never went Mormon were Church of Christ adherents. I'm pretty sure they pitied the Mormons. I never sensed any open hostility, but I never saw them except for the occasional family reunion - actually I only remember two reunions that tried to get together the entire extended family.
Since I was too young to work there, and only visited for a few weeks at a time, I never really had much in the way of interactions with non-Mormons, I think the southern Mormons were more Bible thumpers than the Utah breed of Mormon. I had a cousin who drank RC cola and was obviously on the high road to perdition, so we didn't even speak about him. At one of the family reunions, they put together an address book of all the relatives, and that cousin (along with two others) had prison addresses, proof that RC Cola was indeed the road to perdition. :-/
That is my favorite Neal Diamond song, likely because of those tent revivals that I attended. When I was a small child, televisions were still rare, and I thing revivals really were entertainment. What else you going to do on a hot August night? Except Friday night. That was professional wrestling. Bobo Brazil and Killer Kowalski. I had an aunt who lived for Friday night wrestling.
There was a BBQ place in Birmingham, AL, that had placemats and pictures all over of tent revivals (I'm not sure why- some historical connection.) I was a sheltered Mormon girl who was not exposed to things like tent revivals. My dad tried to watch wrestling whenever my mom wasn't around to make him watch something more stupid. Ahh, memories!
9.5 years. A very specialized position opened up in the pharma corporation I was working for in Birmingham. I had to travel to Atlanta a lot too (among some other US cities). My kids were grown, so my husband said go for it! He stayed in Idaho and held down the fort there. We were lucky to both have good careers we enjoyed and the freedom to pursue whatever we wanted.
We're weird, but you already knew that. Thanks for asking!
I'm in North Texas, which isn't really considered "the south", and certainly not the deep south. But my perspective: I mostly know mormons around here because of my brother still being in the church, but they don't bug me as much as Utah (specifically utah county mormons).
The evangelicals and baptists around here haven't been too bad. They just tend to talk about god in everything they do. I can't count how many times people say "look at god" and "god is good" and "i'm blessed" around here. It always surprises me, especially when they say it at work meetings. Its mostly god talk, and not really pushing their specific religion. One of my friends asked me once what gets me up in the morning if i don't believe in god. I told her I didn't understand the question...
There was a time when at a big virtual work meeting encompassing people from different parts of the country (and i think a few out of the country), and held in a southern state where they had a prayer at the beginning of the meeting. One of the higher up executives whose originally from a european country looked a bit bewildered at that point. It shocked me as well.
I lived in a northern suburb of Dallas back in a former life (1970s) and then, there were "dry" and "wet" districts. It wasn't determined by city, or even county. It was set by voting precinct. A typical voting precinct is 1,000 to 1,500 people - pretty small.
All us Yankee engineers were moving in around Plano and totally messing up life for the local S Baptists, by voting precincts "wet", allowing the devil's brew to be sold right out in the open. Oh, the horror.
That was a long time ago. Hopefully Texas has gotten better, but based on what I see on the news, it might be worse. I do suspect that in and around the major cities, liquor is legal.
I think there are still a few dry counties, but Im not sure.
Liquor stores are closed on Sundays here. You can still buy beer and wine on Sundays. They recently changed it from not being able to buy until noon or later, and now you can buy ut after 9 I think.
My last four years of working, I was at Ft. Gordon, GA, just outside of Augusta. The church is pretty strong there, if for no other reason than the large military presence (Army, AF, Navy, Marines, Canadian Forces, British Forces). Near our house in Evans, GA ('burb of Augusta), we even had one of those Utah-style McChapels. But truthfully, Mormons aren't that well-respected there, due to all the very popular mega-churches. Directly opposite to the Unitarian church I went too back then was what I call "Humongo Baptist." It's just a very large, cathedral-like church, out buildings, etc., on at least a couple of acres. Baptists and various sects of Evangelical Christianity are everywhere. You meet a person for the first time an some event, and they ask,"So, what church do you belong to?"
My heart was always with the numerous black churches, because the parishioners always looked like a million bucks.
Re: the deep South itself, I couldn't take a minute more. Still plenty of racism to go around.