just another white guy picking on a black woman. meh.

#43: The original Zion proper was built around the central church, with diagonal streets and cross streets branching off. The town has grown quite a bit since then, but if you were to look at the original property map, you'd see the shape.

And not "some" but all of the original north/south streets are names from the Bible.

Interestingly, Zion-Benton Township High School has a history of over-the-top pranks by its senior class.

Much of the reaction to the prank is probably lingering not from the Utopian ideals of the founding church, but from press 4 or 5 years ago on MTV documenting one of their pranks.

To get an idea of what the town was like in olden days, see: Zion City: Twentieth Century Utopia by Phillip Cook.

Zion was a dry town until a few years ago. It is built in a wheel / spoke design, where the Church was the hub. Oh, and all the North/South streets have biblical names.

But it is hardly a utopia, as you can see if you examine crime stats for the region. And despite what some of the above commenters inferred from above, it is not really that strict of a place to be anymore.