As the author of this document, I had promised to respond to VANGUARD12345's further comments about my statement that "Mobile is a Baptist-saturated city." That was some time ago, and I don't know if he/she is still around, but I feel I should make at least a general response. I offer a few points specific to the issue further below, but first I need to say this: "Up from Southern Baptism" might or might not become something more than a first chapter of an entire book, but what it was never intended to be is a dissertation on the sociological aspects of the city of Mobile! So I do not care a whit whether or not someone at The Mobile Register (or elsewhere) might want to nitpick one sentence of mine that makes a (possibly) arguable statement about the city's religious complexion. It would be like a reviewer of Booker T. Washington's "Up From Slavery" seizing on the author's statement: "I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square," and arguing at length about whether or not slave cabins actually had those particular dimensions. Washington was not writing as an archaeologist of slave plantations; he was conveying his personal experience of slavery and its aftermath, his struggle to overcome the conditions of his birth, and his thoughts on the best way to advance the circumstances of his people. Similarly, my book (if I ever actually expand it to that length) would be some combination of personal memoir and reflections (with perhaps some scholarship on Southern Baptist history and theology) on the doctrine of hell and its effects on people. Unless one could show that Baptists were an insignificant factor in Mobile's culture (something only an ignorant or crazy person could contend), then to try to discredit me by attacking my statement about the city being "Baptist saturated" as an exaggeration would indeed be akin to dismissing Washington's life story and his thoughts on race because he (possibly) exaggerated the diminutiveness of the cabin where he was born. Now for my general response to the question of Baptist dominance of Mobile, by which I mean religious dominance certainly, but also cultural and political as well -- VANGUARD12345 makes a lot of the Catholic influence in Mobile. So for the record: I am not at all ignorant of the significant role that the Catholic church and its local leaders and lay people played in Mobile's past and continue to play today. It is a large part of what gives Mobile a flavor that is distinctly different from the rest of Alabama. Mobile was settled by the French and owned by Spain for many years. This made it, like New Orleans, historically Catholic. Catholics are a significant portion of the population (though outnumbered by Baptists!); their bishops, priests and ordinary members are frequently active and outspoken on political and social issues and often wield a good deal of influence in those matters. As a long-established Jesuit institution, Springhill College has had a major and ongoing impact on Mobile's development and on its culture. Mardi Gras itself stems ultimately from Catholic customs, or least the customs of Catholic France. Having said that, I stand by my statement that Mobile is (and certainly was when I was a child) a "Baptist saturated" city. Just compare Mobile with "Catholic saturated" New Orleans, 150 miles away. In Mobile you cannot buy hard liquor outside of a state liquor store; when I was young you could not even buy wine in a grocery store. In New Orleans the supermarkets have row after row of liquor of all kinds; at one time, and probably still, you could find drug stores with liquor aisles. I remember an uncle who made regular trips from Mobile to New Orleans to stock up on liquor because it was so available there, and relatively less expensive too. Now certainly part of this difference is because the state of Alabama as a whole makes the laws concerning where retail liquor-by-the-bottle may be sold. Yet this sort of neurotic Baptist attitude toward drinking extended to other areas. Baptists drank -- the adults in my life did at least -- but they did so furtively and with what seemed a sense of shame. For many years it was hard to find a restaurant in Mobile where you could buy a beer; the exceptions tended be the seafood restaurants (the more famous of which were owned by Catholics or others with roots in fishing communities such as the Catholic town of Bayou La Batre). I remember my mother wanting to enjoy a drink while sitting on her carport, but being afraid to because the preacher might drive by, and hers was not an isolated attitude. Whereas when I lived in New Orleans people openly drank everywhere (not just on Bourbon Street), without fear of censure or embarrassment. You can check this difference out for yourself: Drive into New Orleans on one of the major highways and count the number of billboards advertising liquor. Then do the same in Mobile. The difference will be startling. What accou