Religion in Southern Society: Sanford, NC

Annabelle Langford

SANFORD, NC—If by some curse you end up in the modest little town of Sanford, North Carolina, you’ll end up driving by a different church about every five miles. On Sundays, and even Wednesdays, the parking lots will be crowded with the towns’ citizens. Living in the South, religion has always had a large part in my life. It has always been the topic of conversations and has always controlled my Sunday mornings, but most importantly it has seeped into the social fabrics of my small hometown. Our teenage population is so small that there are only two high schools, and one is a recent addition, but we do have two private Christian schools with kids ranging from preschool to seniors. Everywhere you turn you’ll see one of those little bright orange signs that read “Thank you, Jesus!” Religion, specifically Christianity, has wiggled its way into the social ladder of southern society. If you aren’t a Christian, are you a good person? Are you fit to carry the title of a Southerner? Or are you dangerous? Questions like this weave through the minds of many in my hometown. 

Those private Christian schools I was talking about, well I’ve attended both. I went to one for preschool and the other I attended for five years for the grades of second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, before I ultimately transferred to public school. Growing up in a Christian school is difficult to describe, mostly because while you’re there, especially when you’re young, you think everyone else at all the other schools is learning the same thing. But the truth is, they aren’t. The best way I can describe Christian school, and the term I’ve used for it ever since I left was this, “It’s like being stuck inside a Jesus bubble.” When I transferred to public school, my Jesus bubble was popped and I realized there was so much more that I didn’t know. Looking in from an outsider’s perspective I realized how much your level of Christianity affected your social status. For instance, a lot of my friends were baptized, I never have been. Whenever they would come into school the day after their baptism everyone would be so happy for them, it was basically causing a party. For me, however, whenever a friend would be baptized and everyone started comparing their experiences, it caused me shame. I felt like a bad person like I didn’t deserve to be Christian. It’s not that I wasn’t allowed to get baptized, or that I didn’t have the opportunity, no, it’s the fact that unlike my peers I questioned what they were teaching us because I was able to look at it from an outside perspective. I realized that all of the curricula were made with a veil of Jesus over it. The history was twisted, the science was twisted, and don’t even get me started on the actual Bible class we had. (Yes, we were graded on our knowledge of the Bible.) All of this made me realize who I was depended on whether or not I prayed every night. 

The thing is though, as I transitioned into the public school system, I realized that it wasn’t the school, it was the town, and if not the town, this whole damn region of the United States. My high school now has a group that meets every week. It’s a youth group and it’s led by one of the teachers at the school. A lot of people attend this youth group, but what I’ve noticed from all the pictures, is that it seems to be the upper-class kids of this town. The popular people you might say. But the irony of it is, those same kids are the ones that party every weekend and get wasted on a Friday night. They aren’t all Christian, they go to the group because of public perception. Not all of them are like this, but even worse than the youth group kids, might be the ones that feel the need to post it all over social media. A Bible verse a day on their Insta stories. Or some even have a whole account for it. I understand they’re Christian, I get that, I am too, but I don’t want somebody to shove it down my throat every time I click on the circle with their face on it. Again, this relates to public perception. These people post stuff like this on social media to let everybody know they’re Christian instead of simply being a nice person in real life. Generation after generation, the parents and their kids not only are avid worshipers of God, and everyone knows it, but not so coincidentally they also rule the social standings of the whole town. 

Since we are constantly suffocated by the religion surrounding us, there is a level of peer pressure that factors in. The idea constantly being pushed on you that if you aren’t a child of God, who are you? I don’t want this to sound as if I’m not Christian, I am, but I don’t want the religion I choose to be factored into my social standing. I am who I am, no matter who I worship. I don’t want the Southern culture to ever create the stigma that other religions are evil. I’ve met people that aren’t Christian, and they’re great people. Our world has enough issues as it is with division, we don’t need to create more or add fuel to the fire. This, however, is exactly what is happening in my very own hometown, because people believe that if you aren’t Christian, you aren’t good.