One Service You Won't Sleep Through

As we move on in Luke 10:16, Jesus tells His disciples that anyone who accepts the message, accepts Him and anyone rejecting the disciple, is rejecting Christ Himself. I pause to think how wonderful and forgiving our God is, as I recall all of the times I rejected His word before accepting it.

When the disciples returned to see Jesus, they were pretty happy to report that when they encountered demons during their travels, the demon’s obeyed their commands. Jesus responded by telling them that, as His followers, they had the power over the enemy and they were impervious to the bite and sting of scorpions and snakes. He went on to say that this power comes in league with a believer’s citizenship in heaven.

Growing up Catholic in southern California tempered one’s view of Pentecostal religious activity. In the word’s of my dad, “those people are crazy”. He was just referring to standard “holy roller” activities like singing loudly, raising hands in praise and speaking in tongues. Snake handling in a religious service would have sent him over the edge.

Some folks take these words of Luke and Mark 16:18 literally and make snakes and poisons part of their worship services. I have included a recent newspaper article that reports a story about the death of a snake handling pastor in 1998, It said;

One of the prominent leaders of snake-handling churches in the Southeast died Oct. 3 after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a church service at the Rock House Holiness Church in rural northeastern Alabama. John Wayne “Punkin” Brown Jr., of Parrottsville, Tenn., was preaching with his own 3-foot-long timber rattler in hand when the reptile sank one fang into his finger.

According to a Knoxville News-Sentinel report, eyewitnesses from the congregation said that after being bitten, the 34-year-old evangelist “emerged from behind the pulpit, stepped down onto the church floor and toppled over.” Church officials immediately phoned for a medical team, but Brown died just 10 minutes after being bitten. Some members of Brown’s family have offered that his death may have been the result of a heart attack.

Brown, who began handling snakes in worship services at age 17, had been bitten 22 other times before the fatal bite. Three years ago, his wife, Melinda, died after being also bitten by a timber rattler during a church service at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus’ Name Church in Middlesboro, Ky.

According to the News-Sentinel report, “It is a misdemeanor in Tennessee and Kentucky to endanger others with a deadly animal in a church service.”

Those espousing the snake-handling religion base their belief on the often-disputed concluding verses of the 16th chapter of Mark’s gospel.

I have included an link to a web page that tells more of the story of religious snake handling at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0407_030407_snakehandlers.html. It
tells a unique story about Christian churches that make snake handling part of their religious services. I have edited some of the information and offer a partial report. To read the whole website just paste or click on the link that I have featured above.

Serpent handling is always controversial and in many areas illegal, yet it shows no signs of disappearing from its traditional home in Appalachia, the mountainous regions of the Southeastern United States stretching from Georgia to Pennsylvania.

The practice began in the early 1900s. Its popularity has waxed and waned through the years. According to Ralph Hood, a professor of social psychology and the psychology of religion at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, serpent handling is currently at a fairly low ebb of popularity. Such fluctuations are characteristic of a faith that persists throughout Appalachia.

The perception that communities that practice serpent-handling church services are poor, isolated rural areas is simply no longer accurate, according to Hood.

"Historically that's where it emerged, but that's no longer the case," said Hood. "Some of these churches are near cities like Atlanta, Georgia, or Middlesboro, Kentucky—and the middle Appalachian region itself is less rural than it used to be. Serpent handling is no longer restricted to miners."

While a number of churches with small congregations around a dozen members survive throughout the heart of Appalachia, the faith is also practiced in adjacent states of Ohio and Alabama.
What is it that inspires these worshipers to handle poisonous snakes? Like other Christian fundamentalists, serpent handlers' beliefs are rooted in a literal interpretation of the scriptures.

These activities don't dominate services, but play a limited role within more traditional worship. "In almost all serpent-handling churches, they don't handle them all the time. They usually don't even handle them every Sunday," Burton explained.

Tom Burton, a professor emeritus at East Tennessee State University, has attended many snake-handling services and studied the practice for over 30 years. He's the author of Serpent Handling Believers, an authoritative study of the belief. Burton says that much of what goes on at such churches would be familiar to other Christians. "If you were there when they were not taking up serpents, or even during other parts of a service where they did, it would be like many other Pentecostal groups," he explained. "There is singing, preaching, laying on of hands, praying, testifying, and that sort of thing. It's kind of an expressive church service where people freely share emotions, a very participatory service like most Pentecostal services."

But those anointed by the Holy Spirit answer the calling by taking up the deadly reptiles or by drinking poisons. Burton said: "Only certain individuals commonly handle serpents, and it goes without saying that they warn people: 'If you're not directed by the Holy Ghost to do this, you'd better not.'"

While few outsiders are drawn to the dangerous and controversial practice, Ralph Hood predicts that it's future is assured. "Since the beginning people have been predicting that it will disappear, but as long as there is Appalachia there will be handlers," he explained. "It's an integral part of Appalachian tradition and it's not going to fade away."

These believers are in a minority in the American Christian church and if I show up at church this week and Pastor Jim is dancing with a Cobra, I will know that he took the word of God literally like my brothers and sisters do in some of the southern churches of this great country.