How is the party atmosphere Mencken finds in the town square of Dayton different from the revival meeting he has just witnessed?

From the tag on this question, I assume that you are
asking about H.L. Mencken's column "Among the Believers" that is included in many
anthologies of documents for history students.  In that column, Mencken is arguing that
the people of Dayton itself are not really all that religious.  The truly religious, he
says, are the people from back up in the hills.  The party atmosphere in town, then, is
different from the revival meeting because there is no true belief there -- it is more
like a circus than it is like the revival meeting.

Mencken
clearly thinks that the hillbillies at the revival meeting (and other true believers
like the woman who thought Coca-Cola was from the devil) are ignorant and backwards.  He
cites the example of the woman who thought that reading books was wrong.  But he does
not doubt that they truly believe.

By contrast, Mencken
says, the people in Dayton see the theology as a form of entertainment.  They listen for
a while, he says, and they go off to get a drink.  The "real religion," Mencken says, is
not present in Dayton -- it is only off in the hills.