This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about front-line

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

John Shelton Reed is the William Rand Kennan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of North Carolina

at Chapel Hill. He was also their director of the Howard Odom Institute for Research and Social

Science and he helped to found the University's Center for the Study of the American South.

He's been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the National Humanity Center, and a fellow

of the Center for Advanced Studying Behavioral Sciences.

He's been president of the Southern Sociological Society and the Southern Association for Public Opinion

Research and he's also one the world's greatest experts on barbecue.

John Shelton Reed, welcome to thinking in public.

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Mueller.

There are other people who would claim to no more than I do about barbecue.

We could fight about that.

Well, I tell you what, I do find you a great guide to that, and we'll get to that eventually but I want to begin with

what's been at the heart of your project as a scholar from the very beginning.

I want to ask you a question. Does region really matter anymore? Does regionalism really factor into our cultural identity any longer?

Obviously I think it does and I think most ordinary people think it does

uh...

w j cash wrote a book back in 1940 called the mind of the south

and at that time he said there are these people who say that region doesn't really

...