Barna Group, the evangelical Christian pollster, has just come out with a list of the most "Bible-minded" cities in the nation. Barna defines "Bible-minded" people as those who "report reading the Bible in a typical week and who strongly assert the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches." Check out the full map here.
It shouldn't come as a big shock that the most Bible-minded cities are in the Deep South, while the least are all in the Northeast. Knoxville topped the list, with a whopping 52 percent of respondents saying they're Bible-minded. Shreveport is second, followed by Birmingham, Jackson and Springfield. Providence/New Bedford is the least Bible-minded city, with only nine percent saying they're Bible-minded. The rest of the bottom five--the Capital District, Burlington/Plattsburgh, Portland/Auburn and Hartford/New Haven. Not coincidentally, the top six cities would all vote for a comatose Republican, while the bottom six would vote for a comatose Democrat.
That being said, though, some of the rankings may come as a shock on paper. For instance, I figured my hometown of Charlotte would score pretty high--while the city itself is solid blue, some of the suburbs are among the most fundified areas of North Carolina. But Charlotte came in seventh, ahead of places like Oklahoma City, Nashville (another blue city in a sea of red) and Dallas/Fort Worth. The only other city in the top 10 located in a state that's gone Dem in recent memory is Roanoke/Lynchburg. Also, several places that conventional wisdom would suggest are areas where non-fundies would get shot scored pretty low. For instance, Tulsa got only 36 percent, Colorado Springs got 29 percent, and Waco/Temple/Bryan got 27 percent.