The self-perpetuating hell of fundamentalism.

This is a clip from the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. If you don’t know what a redneck is, you will after watching this film. The Whites are alcoholics, drug addicts, drug dealers, swindlers, fighters, they disturb the peace, engage in acts of vandalism, and a couple of them are murderers. The documentary sugarcoats nothing. We see the absolute worst side of this family, and all of their dysfunctions are on full display.

But the documentary also humanizes them. We discover that they have been belittled, mistreated and abused since earliest childhood by other family members and by the community at large. These people were taught daily that they are scum, and it sank in. There is also a fatalism present in this family that reflects the greater culture of the south. There’s this idea that things are the way they are, and there’s no way to change any of it.

In this clip, we see Mamie laughing in the face of death, but in the full documentary, the scene goes on, and Mamie stops being defiant. She becomes quiet and reflective, and she eventually reveals that she believes in hell. Mamie is convinced that she is going to burn in hell forever. Even though Mamie isn’t at all religious—you’re not going to catch Mamie going to church on Sunday morning—she still internalized the basic fundamentalist beliefs that permeate the culture in which she was raised.

I think large sections of rural America are, at least in part, like this. Even many of those who aren’t religious have basic fundamentalist beliefs. It’s in the air, and many never hear about alternative worldviews. Many grow up without having any role models who are educated. Many know little about history or science, and they have little respect for school or learning or reading. It’s not that they’re stupid. Many people like Mamie are, in their way, quite clever, but their intellectual skills have never been developed, and their knowledge base is minimal.

When David Barton and others claim that this country was founded as a Christian country and that our Constitution was inspired by the Bible, and when Ken Ham and others claim that creationism is just as scientifically valid as evolution, they are speaking to people like Mamie and their family members and neighbors who have gotten religion. They don’t know any better. It sounds legit to them.