Source: National Journal

http://www.uga.edu/bahai/News/042801-2.html

On April 28, 2001 National Journal ran an article on the increasing religious diversity in Greenville, S.C. as an example of a trend across the Bible Belt: "Historically, Greenville residents' passion for churchgoing has been manifested most prominently at conservative Christian churches, particularly Baptist denominations. That is still true today in Greenville, as elsewhere in the South: Recent surveys show that more than half of native Southerners identified themselves as 'fundamentalist,' compared with less than a quarter of those who were not raised in the South...The most obvious additions are active populations of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Baha'is; some Muslims, for instance, have requested, and received, special workplace rules that allow them to worship during the workweek. Even Greenville's established, yet distinctly minority religions-including Judaism and Catholicism-have been expanding noticeably...To curb some of the latent intolerance, several of the nontraditional religious groups have banded together to form an ecumenical group called Greenville Faith Communities United."