God's country

God's country

A beautiful rural area; also, the back country or provinces, the sticks. This expression, alluding at first to an area considered especially favored by God, originated in the United States during the Civil War. A Union soldier who was imprisoned in the South so referred to the North: “If I could only get out of that horrible den, into God’s country once more” (R. H. Kellogg, Rebel Prisons, 1865).
See also: country
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • stake out
  • stake someone/something out
  • keep within
  • keep within (something or some place)
  • in (one's) neck of the woods
  • in your, this, etc. neck of the woods
  • neck of the woods
  • neck of the woods, this
  • your neck of the woods
  • twilight zone
References in periodicals archive
This was no small thing, as Ronald Byram, who was originally cast in the role of "Peter Burke," her husband in Back to God's Country, contracted pneumonia while filming in the severe cold of northern Alberta and subsequently died, after which Wheeler Oakman was cast as his replacement.
It still stands up today." Tracks such as One Tree Hill, Bullet The Blue Sky and In God's Country have gone on to influence other bands.
We're from God's Country and not to stereotype, but there are a lot of religious people in Utah, and because it's against the law to hitchhike they won't give you a fide.
Associate professor, Concordia University (first two ranked, remainder in chronological order) Pour la suite du monde La Region centrale Back to God's Country. Begone Dull Care Les Raquetteurs Lonely Boy Rat Life and Diet in North America Le Vieux Pays oh Rimbaud est mort Mourir a tue-tete Videodrome
"We are in God's country, in a natural environment." (Mr.
Tim Cavanaugh's review of the new Madalyn Murray O'Hair biography ("In God's Country," February) was interesting, if not especially perceptive.
In his article "In God's Country" (October), Max Blumenthal asserts that the Institute on Religion and Public Policy is a conservative think tank because of the political views of a select group of its board members, including Reverend Schenck and Sen.
Another teen drama making the rounds, God's Country, takes on racism as it recounts the rise of white-supremacist group The Order.
She recently published "The Girl From God's Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema" (University of Toronto Press).
The Wassons farm this bit of God's country near Valeria, Iowa, nearly smack dab in the middle of the state, nearly in the middle of the country, carrying on a family tradition that goes back to 1863.
From the podium at the 1992 Republican National Convention, he blasted gay rights as "not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country." At the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, Buchanan declared in a column, "The poor homosexuals--they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." Also, as a syndicated columnist, book author, and talk show host, Buchanan has been excoriated for anti-Semitic comments, including downplaying the evils of Hitler and the Holocaust.
If Gertrude Stein could say of Oakland that there is no there there, long-time residents of the Puget Sound basin fear there is no here here anymore: that a unique landscape ("God's Country: Please Keep Out" Atlantic Magazine once wryly headlined) has been replaced by a dreary clone of the cul-de-sac subdivisions, office park islands, and car-choked commercial strips found everywhere in America.
Something has gone awry in God's country. No humans are visible, yet Jenney's paintings are suffused with traces of human activity: the wide-open skies and broad vistas in such paintings as Acid Story, 1983-84, are not a vision of a vast untouched environment, but the result of defoliation from acid rain.
This fall, God's Country sounded its alarm in the Bay Area (at Zellerbach Playhouse and Life on the Water), in a joint effort of Goldbrier Productions and the normally ivory-tower University of California, Berkeley, Department of Dramatic Art.
Among his books are The French Race (1932), Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (1937), Romanticism and the Modern Ego (1943), Teacher in America (1945), Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1950), God's Country and Mine (1954), and The House of Intellect (1959).