enrious

Greetings, y'all. I may be soon moving to the St. Louis area and was wondering how many of my fellow IIers are there?

Mind you, based on my visit there a few weeks ago, I wouldn't be surprised if the local radio stations have convinced the inhabitants to throw all of 'em in the river, so if that's the case how about a warning?

ebolamonger

hello! i'm a st. louis infidel myself. my social environment is mostly my school, which is the most diverse in the area (i think also in the state), in terms of ethnicity and religion....so my view may be a little skewed. at least at school, everyone is pretty laid back. we say the pledge, but i don't stand and it's ok. some teachers make a big deal of it, though. all the kids i know are very tolerant as far as religion goes. my family doesn't have a large social network and we keep to ourselves. we've only had one or two door to door religion salesman try to peddle their wares at our house.

however, you can't turn a corner without seeing a church around where i live, there are a lot of "god bless america" signs on stores, the local newspapers run a lot of sappy inspirational religious opinion columns, etc....

but never fear! i've spotted darwin fish on cars on at least two occasions and once i saw a car with a "one nation under goddess" bumper sticker.

and compared with the rest of missouri, st louis is an oasis of culture and freethought. (never go to branson. i think i'd rather have a spinal tap than go to branson again).

if you do find yourself driving through rural missouri, you can always play the "spot the jesus billboard" game.

Zora

Too funny and too true! My favorite is the one where there is a water spigot, and wine is running out of it into a wine glass. Then it says "Got Faith?" The Bible quote ones are good, but hard to read a 65 mph. And, the "Jesus is Lord" homemade yard sculptures, where they spell it out in cow manure painted white (or some such) are nice, too.

St. Louis has gay anniversary announcements in the paper. So, how bad can it be??? Live in Illinois and commute.

enrious

As bad as the gun laws are in Missouri, the ones in Illinois are worse. No thanks!

copernicus

Any St. Louis infidels who work at Boeing?

bradw

I live in St. Louis and work at the Washington U. School of Medicine.

Most of my co-workers are Catholic and are not at all evangelical in their approach. The others are non-committal Protestants or vaguely atheist. I have one co-worker who is somewhat arrogant about her Catholicism, but she's arrogant about everything she does.

My neighbors (south city) seem to be Catholic but in three years I have had only one person knock on my door about religion. They were easily discouraged by a polite no. I spent the previous 12 years in other parts of the city and county, and can recall only one incident where someone irritated me with religion.

Yes, I see the the fundie stuff around here. I'm thinking much of that is out in the surrounding county. In the city we have the Rev. Larry Rice, who is an odd bird. He runs a homeless shelter, chastizes local politicians over spending money on sports stadiums instead of helping people, has a TV station that presents info things like making fuel out of old cooking oil, but still preaches the gospel.

The biggest problem I see around here is racism. Some of the native white folks have a very archaic view of race relations.

The area is considered politically conservative, and I live in one of the more conservative areas, but I've had an anti-war sign in my yard for awhile and no one has said anything. I've attended some peace rallies without any major incidents.

NobleSavage

St. Louis isn't that bad. I've found plenty of like minded individuals. However, if you venture much south of St. Louis it gets very scary. Good Luck

Buddrow_Wilson

You mean, like, Arkansas? *laughter turning to tears* :P

beoba

Close, Kansas City.

In addition to the above mention of Branson, it was the first place that I had seen a Confederate flag anywhere outside of a History book.

Someone had one on the back of a jacket at the shitty amusment park there, which I think is called silver dollar city.

ElectEngr

I use to live in the Central West End, but moved to Belleville to get in-state tuition at SIU-E. The out of state Grad School tuition was a real killer.

Later,
ElectEngr