Charlotte, city of Banking, NASCAR, Religion?

[monsoon]

Indeed. I don't think many people identify an airport hub with the city it is located in. For most, its an ordeal they would rather forget. I used to fly a great deal and I never really paid attention to what cities the hubs that I traveled through were located in.

[Nostyle]

Did I have a post deleted? I had mentioned that Barclays has ties to Charlotte also because they just acquired subprime mortgage lender EquiFirst Corporation, which is based out of Charlotte. I felt that was relevant to a conversation asking what Charlotte is known for. Here is another tie to the banking image.

[Larryfla]

Did I have a post deleted? I had mentioned that Barclays has ties to Charlotte also because they just acquired subprime mortgage lender EquiFirst Corporation, which is based out of Charlotte. I felt that was relevant to a conversation asking what Charlotte is known for. Here is another tie to the banking image.

[BrandonTO416]

Charlotte is known most for NASCAR, and make no mistake about it, NASCAR is big business in Charlotte. I personally don't care for NASCAR, but the spectator sport has the ratings to compete against the NFL.

Behind NASCAR comes Banking and then Religion. Charlotte is known for its bible-theme park that was a flunk, its known for Billy Graham, its known for religious conservatism.

But that's not a Charlotte theme. Its a theme around the region. Orlando is known as a religious town outside the glare of the theme parks. Nashville is known for being the HQ's of the Southern Baptist Covention and the United Methodist Church/Methodist Publishing House/Cokesbury.

In my opinion, Charlotte suffers no more or less from the towns in Virginia to the local protests of the highly successful Gay Days down in Orlando to the churches headquartered in Nashville. Southeastern cities across the board are known for their fragrant churches and its not a Charlotte thing.

So I wouldn't say religion dominates the image of Charlotte, but its there like so many places. The good news is that some religions are extremely liberal, such as the Methodist church in Nashville that condones gay marriage or whatever churches in Charlotte may do the same (I know that Tammy Faye is well known in the gay world for tolerance, but I honestly don't follow it as I'm not religious).

So my vote went for something else. I would say a blend of the three, but Charlotte is certainly not known for its banking when you go outside the Carolinas or banking industry. Little do people know that banking is the most important of them all, and is the reason why the new Charlotte is being built and why its able to bankroll such nice new buildings.

[BrandonTO416]

Oh, and if you want to see the religious makeup of Charlotte and environs, here is a good resource:

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/052.html

You can view other metro areas here:

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/

[Raintree21]

In a previous post, I mentioned how Lowe's Motor Speedway used to be called Charlotte Motor Speedway and that the older drivers still say how much they love racing in Charlotte. Anyone know how often they refer to Charlotte in the telecasts of the 600, 500 and All-Star races or do they correctly say Concord as the location?

[BrandonTO416]

I'm getting interested in these religious stats. Charlotte doesn't appear to be radically more religious than average for the region, take a look at the numbers.

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/052.html

50.1% of metro Charlotte is claimed by the top religious groups

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/016.html

Atlanta is less religious at 44.4%

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/191.html

Memphis is one of the less religious southern metros at 42.7%, although sometimes you wouldn't know it with all the Church of God In Christ followers and COGIC conventions...

This is opposed to some of the more religious..

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/033.html

Birmingham at a strong 56.6%

Knoxville is up there...

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/160.html

61.1%

There are more actual southern baptists in Knoxville than all of Nashville, a metro area well over twice the size.

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/208.html

48.1% of metro Nashville is claimed by some group or another, so that's statistically a few percentage points below Charlotte.

And you wonder why Knoxville is so ... conservative.

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/128.html

Now I know why so many people call Greenville-Spartanburg more conservative than Knoxville. Over 300,000 SBC members in a metro area under 1 million?

Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC looks like my kind of town

http://ext.nazarene.org/rcms/246.html

only 40% claimed by religious groups... Dang that's fewer than metro Memphis or Atlanta.

[BrandonTO416]

In a previous post, I mentioned how Lowe's Motor Speedway used to be called Charlotte Motor Speedway and that the older drivers still say how much they love racing in Charlotte. Anyone know how often they refer to Charlotte in the telecasts of the 600, 500 and All-Star races or do they correctly say Concord as the location?

[Nostyle]

^They show "Concord" on the screen graphic when looking down from the blimp, but they refer to Charlotte pretty much the rest of the broadcast. They even show Charlotte skyline shots.

[Skyline49er]

In a previous post, I mentioned how Lowe's Motor Speedway used to be called Charlotte Motor Speedway and that the older drivers still say how much they love racing in Charlotte. Anyone know how often they refer to Charlotte in the telecasts of the 600, 500 and All-Star races or do they correctly say Concord as the location?

[redjeep77]

I heard DW say "Charlotte" Motor Speedway more than a couple of times, so you are right about the older drivers still calling it Charlotte Speedway. I didn't get an accurate count though

[cityboi]

^They show "Concord" on the screen graphic when looking down from the blimp, but they refer to Charlotte pretty much the rest of the broadcast. They even show Charlotte skyline shots.

[LJinPA]

Let's see... around where I live there are a lot of people who confuse Charlotte with Charleston, even educated people. (The same type of people who thought I was a geek in grade school for knowing my state capitals) To a lesser extent some confuse it with the Research Triangle also. I think in the Northeast there is ignoranceand apathy among many of life between DC and Orlando and between Pittsburgh and Phoenix-Las Vegas. For that reason I love showing people flattering skyline pics of places like Charlotte, Nashville, Richmond, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Indianapolis or Denver to see their reaction. Perhaps a "Real World...Charlotte" would help...

I see the piedmont cities along 1-85 of almost a border between the Upper South and the Deep South.

The Glenmary Research Center releases county maps of the prominance of all religions in 2000. In one map it showed the prevalence of all the "Evangelical" (Baptist, Assembly of God, Missouri Synod Lutherans, and others) Protestant groups which seems to roughly define the bible belt. Using that Charlotte is definately in the bible belt...but less so than areas further west (Upstate SC, East Tennessee, North Georgia, North Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahama...)

Charlotte definately is associated with NASCAR, but NASCAR and racing in general is just as associated with Indianapolis and Daytona Beach...

I think what most shaped Charlotte's roots (this is just my opinion) is that it was heavily settled by Scotch-Irish Calvinists (Presbyterians...many of which are Southern Baptists today). PA Germans may of had influence to a lesser extent, but Western NC had some of the heaviest Scotch-Irish settlement.

The Scotch Irish seemed to be the biggest influence in the inland south, parts of New Hampshire, the Ohio Valley, the Western 2/3 of Pennsylvania, the Ozarks, Country Music, Stock Car racing, American cowboy culture, and much of today's definition of American "conservatism"...there is plenty of info on the net to back this up if you look up Scotch-Irish. Even banking may have been helped by the "Calvinist work ethic".

Now Charlotte today is growing bigger, more cosmopolitan, more urban, and a little bit if everything and I cant wait to see how much it has grown in the 9 yrs since I've been there last...But the vibes I remember... the hum of the land... I think the Scotch-Irish Calvinist roots set the overall tone there for this poll I guess that would fall under religion...