Proud to be a Tennessean, Reason #692: A
front-page story in the Sunday edition of our Great Metropolitan Newspaper is
about snake-handling churches. The piece is not just a snippet but is a full
five-page splash, with pictures of cretins fondling deadly serpents while
yawping or praying and sometimes swooning from the sheer ecstasy of it. The
reporter, with admirable journalistic integrity, refrains from editorializing
in his in-depth coverage of the phenomenon.
Readers are
treated to the testimony of yokels as to the spiritually invigorating effects
of playing with poisonous snakes, as well as the inspiration and justification
for it. (Mark 16:17: “And these
signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils;
they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents…”) Though the
cultists are violating state laws prohibiting snake handling and possessing
poisonous snakes, they say it’s worth the risk of punishment to experience the
power of the Lord coursing through them.
The article quotes Wiley Cash, author of a
“best-selling” book about a snake-handling church, who says that people want to
believe they’ve been singled out by God, and “What better proof than to pick up
a timber rattler and not have it bite or to survive a bite?” Can’t think of
nary a one, but the good folks at the church in LaFollette can: drinking
strychnine. (The passage in Mark continues: “If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”) The
reporter did not get to witness this at the service he attended, as “All the
poison was drunk at a previous service and they’ve not had time to get more.”
He also noted that “Most serpent handlers
think drinking poison is optional.”
Women are discouraged from handling snakes,
and they’re also not allowed to preach in Pentecostal Holiness churches. They
must wear skirts or dresses, and are not allowed to wear earrings or cut their
hair. Snake handlers themselves can’t drink (under the theory that alcohol
might make them crazy?), curse or have sex outside of marriage. (They can have
plenty inside marriage, though: the
preacher profiled, age 21, has four kids.)
The article reports that a pastor in West
Virginia, the only state where snake handling is legal (thank God for small
favors: at least we don’t live in West Virginia), died about a week ago from a
rattlesnake bite. He was following in the hallowed footsteps of his father, who
died at the hands (or jaws) of a rattler in 1983. The pastor of the church in
LaFollette prayed that his congregation wouldn’t lose the faith.
“The only thing I know to do,” he said, “is
to encourage the people of God to keep on, keep doing the signs of God.”
Maybe so; after all, life is always a
hit-or-miss proposition.
