It’s not that there are not true committed Christians in Oklahoma and Texas, from what I’ve seen ... it’s more that it PERVADES the entirety of society so that there “appears” to be a large number of Christians. You will hear Christian discussions at MacDonalds, or with people walking along the sidewalk, or like a political campaign I saw once, where one of the “bullet points” for “qualifications of the candidate was that he was a Christian.
Those are the kinds of things that would be rare in Oregon. In fact, if you were talking about praying with someone in MacDonalds in Oregon, you would have everyone in the place stop and look at you. If you put down as one of the “qualifications for candidacy” that you were a Christian (in Oregon) you would likely lose the race on that basis.
So, the point is that it pervades the society in Texas and Oklahoma, whereas it does not in Oregon.
BUT ... when you “drill down” with a lot of these “cultural Christians” as to things of the Bible, how or why you’re saved, you get “startling answers” with many of these cultural Christians ... like, “I try to do right!”, “I go to church,” or they accept many unbiblical positions like thinking that you have to respect homosexual lifestyles and it’s not unbiblical, because they can be good people, too, or thinking that abortion is something okay and that God does not form people in the womb ... many things like that.
You then realize that there is a “large segment” of the population who are simply cultural Christians and are not in the knowledgeable and committed category. On the surface, they do “stand for God” verbally, but when actions and issues come up (either in their life or in discussions) they don’t know the right thing according to the Bible and are not committed to it, even if they know what the Bible says.
SO ... overall ... it “seems” like a very large Christian majority, but it’s not. And I would guess that Christians in our society (across the country) consistmof no more than 20% of the population at most. The rest are really not Christians, but “Christians in name only”.
I know what you are saying but the narrative you propose is more consistent with another part of the country, like the NE. Check out the Numbers in southern Baptists churches in Texas and Oklahoma. Southern baptists adhere to the Bible, not religious political correctness.
Religious church goers, most of them, has been my experience in southern Oregon. Very nice people, just lack an understanding of the truth of Gods word, spiritually clueless. They would not be able to take a stand if prosecution should ever rear its ugly head. But how many could? Would the OK and TX believers convert to islam under penalty of beheading? Or would they die for their belief in Christ, like the Coptic Christians have over and over.