Two Churches In
Two States: An Ethnographic Observation Among Serpent Handling Believers
The morning of September 11, 2004, began the way most of my Saturday mornings began at that time. I awoke at 5am and worked briefly on the computer before cutting my hair to its usual skin tight burr, showered, and awoke my wife, Candice, who is bound to a wheelchair, to assist her with her early morning routines before leaving the house to conduct a court ordered visit in the home of a client and then drive to a graduate class at Lindsey Wilson College’s branch campus program in Jackson, Kentucky. As I left the house, I inserted the Ralph Stanley “Saturday Night” CD into my player and listened to the opening song “Mountain Folk”, one of my favorites, as I thought about the weekend ahead and the people I was about to meet.
I attended the morning session of the class as usual before leaving the all day session at 11:30am to return home to prepare for a trip to a small, rural community in Western North Carolina. By the time Candice and I left home, I had already been up 8 hours and driven over a hundred miles. We were on our way to an area just north of Asheville to attend the annual homecoming meeting of a tiny, but somewhat famous, serpent handling church, at the invitation of the pastor who is the brother of a deceased signs following preacher who died after receiving a rattlesnake bite while preaching in a different church in an adjacent state. That deceased preacher’s wife had also died of a rattlesnake bite received in a similar church in a third state about five years earlier. Their five children had become orphans upon the deaths of their parents and were being cared for by their father’s surviving parents who were also signs following believers. The grandparents continued to handle serpents as did their sole surviving son and his wife. I felt honored that I was about to meet these people about whom I had read so much and yet, somehow, knew that I knew so little. I state for the record at this point that I have chosen to leave these people and all the serpent handling believers I have known anonymous for their own privacy and peace of mind.
I left West Liberty, Kentucky, and drove south through Salyersville, Prestonsburg, and Pikeville toward Western North Carolina, where we intended to stay in a motel about 20 miles from the church. From Prestonsburg to North Carolina, much of the route was along US 23 and wove through the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina in settings which reminded me of my childhood as a native Appalachian and helped to prepare me for this initial experience in a world about which I had been told since childhood, the world of the signs followers or “snake handlers”, as their detractors so often refer to them. It is important to state that such a misnomer is just that, nothing more, nothing less. Serpent handling believers is more appropriate nomenclature since their actions are based on their personal interpretation of Mark 16: 17-18 from the King James Bible. To these people the poisonous reptiles which they sometimes handle in church as a sign of their faith are quite simply a sacramental object much as the bread and wine in a communion service.
We arrived at our motel in North Carolina to learn that the city had been flooded and was without water which the reservations clerk had not told my wife when she made the reservation the day before. I looked at the time and realized I had only an hour and a half before church began 25 miles away. The clerk informed me that the water would likely be on that night or the next morning and I chose to stay in the motel. I did not have time to drive from motel to motel searching for a wheelchair accessible room suitable for my wife which had running water when my first opportunity to be an ethnographic participant-observer of the signs following world was at stake.
We checked in and quickly changed clothes to go to the church. I helped Candice to put on a long green dress, hose, and plain black dress shoes before putting on my own simple blue dress shirt and white khaki pants. It was our intent to respect the customs and beliefs of these people and to dress in a similar manner to the clothes they wear on a daily basis. We drove to the little courthouse town near which the church is located, got last minute directions at the fire house, and proceeded to the church. Our first trip up the holler revealed a small, treated wood church in an idyllic setting. But no one was visible in the parking lot.
Just down the hill, at the next driveway, several dozen cars were parked, an open tent was set up, and tikki torches burned. We turned in the driveway and were met by a young man who looked baffled when we asked for the pastor by name. It seemed that this gathering was either a party or a wedding and we decided to travel to a gas station at the forks of the road for more precise directions. At the forks of the road, we saw a man of about seventy with hair cropped as short as my own and a plain shirt only slightly darker blue than mine standing outside his car. On the hunch that he might be a member of the congregation, I asked where I might find the pastor. The man introduced himself by name and told me he knew where the person I was seeking would be in about thirty minutes. We followed him back to the church and this time found the pastor and his family standing on the little covered porch. I recognized him instantly from the many photos I had seen in books about their religion.
We introduced ourselves and the pastor recognized my name from conversations we had previously. The pastor and the man who had led me to the church shook hands, hugged each other, and obviously were well pleased to be together again. They spoke of the time since they had seen each other, talked of growing older, and of events that had transpired in their lives. It suddenly struck me, when the pastor smiled and said “The Lord has been good to me”, that this was a unique and resilient man who loved his God and lived his faith. No man on the face of the earth had more reason to doubt his beliefs than this man and yet, in the first three minutes I had been in his presence, he had reaffirmed his faith in the justness and fairness of God. He had lost his only brother and sister-in-law, as well as numerous friends, to religiously based snake bites and poison ingestion, had been involved in a long drawn out custody battle, along with his parents, in their effort to retain custody of their grandchildren, and yet he freely and happily reaffirmed that “The Lord has been good to me”.
As the two men caught up on recent events in their lives, I noticed a small cemetery at the edge of the hill below the church. It contained several graves shaded by trees, planted with Hosta, azalea, and rhododendron. It was a quiet, peaceful, and even idyllic setting. I walked to the graves and began reading markers as I have done since childhood when I was growing up near three small such cemeteries in Knott County Kentucky. The first name to strike me was a man who had died after drinking strychnine in a church service. I realized that, finally, I was standing on some of the most hallowed ground of the signs following world and I was glad to be there. I knew I had come to the right place to learn the truth about these people.
Shortly afterward, the congregation began to trickle in from the road. They were men in plain shirts and simple pants like my own, women in long dresses and long hair, children who had learned to obey their parents and proved it as they went to their seats. They were clean, neat, orderly, well mannered, respectful, and obviously deeply religious. They always shook hands, often breathed “Praise the Lord” as they greeted each other, and moved to their seats as several musicians including the pastor and his wife began to tune instruments. There were several guitars, an organ, a set of drums, and numerous tambourines which found ready hands among the congregation.
“Are you happy to be in the House of the Lord?” asked the pastor several times as he walked through the crowd shaking hands, greeting friends and strangers, and making even me, a visiting writer new to this world, feel welcome. A common, simultaneous prayer was offered in rising and falling cadences and two young women in long hair, long denim dresses, and measured modesty went to the microphones at the front of the church where they began to sing with their backs to the congregation. The music began in a driving, syncopated rhythm which often vibrated the seat beneath me. The congregation joined in freely. The songs changed from one to another as the music remained the same. People began to dance in the spirit. “Hallelujah” and “Praise The Lord” could be heard all over the house. I was in the House of the Lord and I felt honored to be there.
Eventually, the pastor arose to preach in a structured, well thought out sermon about obedience of the servant to the master and of the wife to the husband. Suddenly he reached behind the lectern where an unseen serpent box lay and brought out a rattle snake about 3 feet long and held it, much like an offering, as he passed behind the altar continuing to preach. “Amen” and “Hallelujah”, as well as “Preach it brother” and “Help him, Lord” could be heard rising intermittently throughout the congregation.
The sermon ended and he called on several people to testify, even eventually calling on me. I simply said, “Thank you for opening your door to a stranger”. The service came to an end with a few songs of a less strident nature and the crowd left in the same manner in which they arrived with hand shakes, gentle words, and a few “We’ll see you in the mornings”.
As I drove back toward my motel, the cars from the party next door mixed into those leaving the church, and the believers reentered the world. In the motel room without water, eating a hot pickled sausage because the restaurants had no water either, I realized it was nearly midnight and I was not tired. I knew I had come to the right place.
Sunday morning, September 12, 2004, we awoke at about 8am, found a small stream of cold water pouring from the faucet in the sink and none in the shower. I realized that, in the overall scheme of life, this was a minor inconvenience. Candice used bottled water to wash her hair. I shaved in the sink and each of us used a wash cloth to perform the minimum ablutions before getting back in the van to go to church. I stopped at the motel office and argued only briefly with the manager who refused to give any discount for the lack of water and said “I have a meeting in one hour” as I left the motel.
I drove eagerly back to the church and found only the pastor’s family there ahead of us. I mentioned our motel inconvenience to the preacher and inquired if Candice’s blue jeans and dachshund house slippers were inappropriate for church. He assured me that they were not and I began to help him and his sons set up a large tent for the dinner on the grounds.
The next person to arrive was a well-known signs following preacher from Newport, Tennessee, with whom I had also been corresponding recently. We introduced ourselves and finalized plans for Candice and me to follow him and his wife back to their home before attending services at their church in Newport that evening. He also began to help with the tent and the crowd began to arrive. As each family arrived, the labor became less, a series of tables beside the church grew steadily in the food they held, and the spirit of the previous evening began to multiply even before the service began. Several congregants carried in serpent boxes of wood with hinged Plexiglas lids and arranged them side by side in front of the altar.
The service began in much the same way as the night before with a common prayer, and the music drove to what seemed to be even greater stridency. Congregants began to dance in the spirit; a few began to speak in tongues, a young minister from Harlan, Kentucky, delivered a sermon which was fiery, exhortative, and voluble. Once again, the pastor initiated the handling of serpents by bringing out the same rattlesnake of the night before. But this time, several others also joined in the activity and several copperheads were also passed from hand to hand.
The music and dancing vibrated the floors, seats, and walls of the little church. Joy could be seen, heard, felt, and nearly touched. Adrenaline could be sensed all round the room. Several people went forward to be prayed for and have hands laid on them. A young woman of about thirty began to dance in the spirit, went to the altar for anointing oil, and finally came to my wife Candice in her wheelchair. Kneeling before Candice, the woman wept freely, gently removed the dachshund house slippers from each of her feet, and slowly, gently, thoroughly, lovingly caressed each foot and lower leg speaking softly worded prayers of supplication and healing. I found myself crying profusely and the man who sat beside me said or did nothing allowing me to live within myself and the moment. The woman gently replaced the dachshund house slippers on Candice’s feet, and rose to pass her hands over my wife’s entire body before returning to the altar. Then she opened a fire bottle, had it lit by the minister from Harlan and passed it along both hands and arms as she danced in front of the altar. The minister finally took the bottle of fire from her, handled it for awhile himself, blew out the flame, and replaced it on the altar. The young woman returned to her seat in front of me where she continued to sing and dance for several minutes. Eventually my crying ceased, the service ended with another handling of the serpents, and the singing of songs such as “Sometimes I Feel Like Heaven’s Come Down”.
As I walked outside to the dinner on the grounds, I suddenly realized that I know what Jim Birckhead, a tenured professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia who researched signs followers for more than thirty years, meant when he stated to me recently that he misses “being able to attend spirit filled services”. The food was abundant, well cooked, and freely given. Fellowship and discussion of the services and signs following beliefs continued until, at last, Candice and I said goodbye to our new friends, got into our van, and followed the Cocke County pastor across the state line to his home in Tennessee.
The winding, pristine drive across the mountains into Tennessee was the ideal setting to deescalate from the powerful, emotional experience of the service. We crossed the French Broad River several times on US 25, passed through the little town of Hot Springs, encountered a street called Serpentine Way which seemed somehow appropriate, and finally found ourselves on the front porch of this second pastor.
This particular man has spent much of his life attending and preaching in signs following churches and has collected a vast amount of articles, books, and photographs about the practices. He carried several large binders of material to the porch where we shared and discussed it. Eventually, he took me to the small, double locked outbuilding where he keeps his serpents. We discussed serpent catching, the police intervention imposed on signs followers in his native Cocke County, and techniques for keeping serpents alive in a Tennessee winter.
He showed me his collection of serpents, serpent boxes, and a winter den which is dug below the frost line and lined with a large section of ceramic drain pipe. Finally, he placed a large copperhead in a locked serpent box and we prepared to go to his church a few miles away. As he made the final preparations to leave, he set the copperhead in the serpent box on the porch near Candice’ feet in the dachshund house slippers. We walked back out in the yard and he showed me the rats he raises to feed his serpents while Candice watched the caged copperhead near her feet. Before we left the house, the preacher went inside one last time to retrieve a handmade Appalachian doll which he made as a gift for Candice. Today it sits on our mantle and has been christened in his honor.
The preacher, his wife, Candice, and I traveled the few miles to his little church in a setting nearly as idyllic as that in North Carolina. We walked over the church grounds, looked at a second collection of memorabilia in the church and talked about signs following beliefs until 7pm, the scheduled time for services to begin. No one else had arrived and I wondered if this minister would continue to talk to us or begin a service. Earlier in the day, he had told me that attendance was not strong in his church and blamed it on the police attitude in Cocke County. He stated that he continued to “show up and keep the doors open”.
But, at the stroke of 7pm, this solitary signs following minister, stepped behind the pulpit and said, “It’s time to start the service.” The four of us sang, none well or melodiously, “Amazing Grace” and “I’ll Fly Away”, our four voices joined in a weak, discordant, sometimes faltering choir and then the preacher’s wife, with her back modestly turned toward the congregation, sang a few other songs which Candice and I did not know. Her husband stood, prayed, and began to preach from the sixth chapter of Revelations and delivered a full sermon in which he also briefly handled the copperhead. We sang another song, the preacher said a prayer and the four of us walked out into the warm Tennessee night to say goodbye. As we drove toward the interstate, Candice said suddenly, “You know, I think that even if we hadn’t been here, he would still have preached.”.
As I wrote these notes, I cried once again just as freely as I had when the young woman in North Carolina placed the anointing oil on Candice’ feet. I may well never fully understand everything to which I have been exposed in these past two days. But I do know, without a doubt, that these people are sincere, deeply religious believers who support their beliefs with their lives on a daily basis and the world is a better place because they are here. I also know that I am a better man for having come to know them. I have now come to know family members of three people who all died of snakebites received in church services about five years apart. The five children of one of pair of those people are orphans who are cared for by their surviving grandparents who continue to handle serpents to this day as do their sole surviving son and his wife. I felt honored that I was about to meet these people about whom I had read so much and yet, somehow, knew that I knew so little.
In the seventeen years since this unusual weekend of ethnographic study, I came to the decision to not reveal the names, personal details, or residence information about any of the serpent handling believers I have met. I now no longer spend time among them and never completed a book I had been working on about them primarily because I realized, over time, that they have suffered far too much at the hands of both the media and researchers because of their beliefs. They are ordinary, hard working people just about like all their neighbors around them. They raise families, hold down ordinary jobs, strive to achieve the same dreams most of the rest of us seek. They simply choose to interpret several key verses of the Bible differently than the majority of their peers. They also choose to literally place their lives on the line for their beliefs on most of the occasions when they attend church. One of the serpent handling preachers who was present at that North Carolina church when I attended the meeting described in this paper has died since from a rattlesnake bite. In the time I knew him, I came to respect him for his dedication to his beliefs and knew full well that in the event he suffered a serious serpent bite in church he would never agree to be transported to a hospital. He fulfilled that expectation on my part by returning to his home the night he suffered his fatal bite and died with his family and friends praying with him and for him in his bedroom.
I do not make any judgments about these people or their beliefs and I place no negative opinions on them. They are loyal to their religion and view a fatal serpent bite as an opportunity to be rewarded in Heaven for their faith on earth. I cannot say they are right. I will not say they are wrong. They are simply people who hold beliefs which are different from those held by most of us who are in the majority. They are to be respected, not shunned or belittled. They should be allowed to practice their unique religious beliefs under the protection of the United States Constitution just as everyone else is. They are no better or no worse than you or I.
Copyright 2021 by Roger D. Hicks
