The Buckle

Looking for God in the Bible Belt hardly resembles looking for Him elsewhere. Other trips have been filled with variety, sarcasm, surprise. Here, there's less shock with our project and more unity in the answers.

This falls nicely with the history and statistics--cliches become so for a reason. If we'd started here, all would be as we'd expected. But over the last four years, we've asked people over 31 states where we can find God. Over those four years, we've come to expect certain answers. "Not here." "God is a force, not a being." "She's in nature." "God doesn't exist."

Unorthodoxy had become so common that I almost overlooked orthodoxy this time. I thought the first couple of people we talked to were just warm-ups before we got to the "real" conversations with the interesting folks. We knew what the Christians would say--we'd previously recorded a few canned answers from isolated outposts of faith. So at first, I only half-listened. But interviewees and waiters and former strangers, one after another, are telling us where find their God. Yes, some canned answers, but something else, too...