Yeah it does. Firstly, outside the former confederacy segregation wasn't as sticky of an issue. That's not to say we aren't racist, we're just less comfortable announcing it. In the Midwest people of his generation would be using euphemisms. Like I'm in my 30s and spend most of my life in Ohio and never heard an old person in that region call for segregation even when they're shitfaced, instead they talk about drugs, crime, "inner city types", and rap music when they want to be anti black.

American bigotry has very regional flavoring and southern is notoriously shameless.

The other big thing is that the Christianity he's rejecting sounds like southern Christianity. Every region of the US has it's vibes of what they mean when they say Christian.

So yeah it's everything he reads as foreign to me as an Aussie. The mason Dixon line feels to many Americans as much a cultural divide as the border with Canada, though ontarians have always seemed more reasonable than southerners.