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
