For Heavens Snakes

Mark 16

[18] They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
[19] So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
[20] And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen

The year was 1975 I think. I was living with my family in Brevard NC. There was a discount store in town, at that time, called Sky City. Sky City was just one of those businesses in small towns all across the country just waiting to become cannon fodder before Wal-Mart, but at that time it was the place in Brevard to go for a number of things including cameras and film. I was in the store on some forgotten errand when I passed the camera department and overheard an elderly lady talking to the young man behind the counter. The story she was telling him ignited my natural attraction to the unusual and interesting. She was telling him that she was a member of a church in Georgia which took Mark 16 18-20 to be for real. They practiced snake handling as the center piece of their worship service and she wanted to photograph an upcoming event. She knew nothing about photography, but she was there to buy a camera and film and was hoping the sales person would teach her how to use it. Now it was obvious to me that the guy’s knowledge of cameras ended with the price. For sure the worshiper was not going to get any photos that would convince anyone that these were God fearing snake handlers and not fishermen baiting their hooks with night crawlers. So I decided to offer my services as photography instructor. In short order it became clear that the finer points of camera craft was not something this lady was going to master, so I grabbed the opportunity to do what I wanted to do from the beginning. I offered to do the photography for her. I wanted to experience this thing. She accepted this offer at once and invited me to go to the service as her guest.

The event I would be photographing was to be two day home coming for the extended congregation of the church. It would take place over a weekend at a little country Holiness Church outside Rome Georgia. Rome is in western Georgia near the place I grew up in eastern Alabama so I have some knowledge of the area. Services were scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday morning. Those were the starting times. Who could guess when they would end?

I drove to Rome with my wife and daughters on the appointed Saturday and checked into a motel in Rome. These kinds of services are usually conducted in the dog days of mid to late summer. This one was no exception. The service was scheduled early evening so we left the motel and started out to the church just as the sun was setting. There had been light rain earlier in the afternoon and the country road which led to the old clapboard church was now mostly slippery red Georgia clay. We passed a house with a county sheriff department car in the driveway, presumably the home of a deputy, but no one seemed to care. Snake handling services are technically illegal in Georgia, and all other states accept West Virginia, but local law generally looks the other way. 

We arrived at the place where so many people had for so long gathered to worship in their way. And somewhere along the way Mark 16: 18-20 had become a part of their lives and the center piece of their faith. Snake handling, as a religious ritual is only about 100 years old. It started when a reformed moonshiner in Tennessee, seeking forgiveness for his life of sin, came across a rattlesnake in the mountains and having just read the banner passage from Mark, decided to test his faith. He picked up the snake, and to his amazement, suffered no harm. The story spread across the rural south like wildfire and many fundamentalist believers picked up on it and tried it. For some reason, they say by an act of God, the serpents did not behave in the way usually expected of their species. Who can say? The practices are the same age, and have more Biblical support , than the doctoring of the assumption of Mary, which is dear to the hearts of millions of Roman Catholics. Neither is a part of my faith but there seems to be more evidence to support the snake handlers. Anyway I pass no judgments. I am here to observe and learn. I park my car in a damp grassy field surrounded by tall southern pines. There was a number of vehicles already in the field, all bearing evidence of the sticky nature of wet Georgia clay. I could see that a large tent had been erected next to the little church building. This was a special service and the usual building could not possibly accommodate the expected number of worshipers. This was reminiscent of tent meetings of the past, both those I have read about on the American frontier of the nineteenth century and some from my childhood. There were a number of people milling around the tent and the old church building. These were people of the land. Farmers, just from the fields and happy that the cotton was laid by so they could knock off before dark with having to choose between their deeply held religious beliefs and feeding their families, loggers and pulpwood cutters who made a hard living in the forest, and people who worked various, usually unskilled jobs around Rome. The men wore bibbed overalls or blue jeans, a few wore their best slacks and a good shirt. The women all wore dresses of at least knee length. There was already a lot of sound to be heard, people talking, tree frogs and insects in the surrounding trees, and musical instruments being tuned up in the tent. We walked across the field to the tent. Along the way we were greeted by people who did not know us but who were very friendly and assured us we were welcome. I know this kind of people. I grew up with people who, except for the snakes and poison, were very much like the worshipers I met there. They were simple poor honest hardworking people with, for the most part, very little formal education. But they have strong faith and take the Bible to be the complete and true word of God.

On entering the tent we saw a large open area with folding chairs setup in a way to maximize their number.  They were closely arranged in circles following the contour of the tent walls. Facing the semicircles of chairs was an open area, where a podium or lectern, surely borrrowed from the church building, had been paced. A crucifix, which would have looked more at home in a Catholic church, hung from one of a tent support poles. There were several tables scattered around the open area and enough high powered audio electronics to make a hip teen’s mouth water. This was for sure not going to be a quite service of meditation. We soon met the lady who had invited up. She was very happy to see me with my camera equipment. I think she was not sure I would show up and this service was very important to her.

                                                                  My Hostess

 She was getting on in years and I think she thought of this as some as getting ready to meet her maker. But she was very friendly and introduced us to many of her friends and to the church pastor who would be conducting the service. The pastor was a likeable young man with an obviously committed faith. I think it is unlikely that he graduated with high honors from Harvard Divinity School, but he was a man who could quote long passages from the King James Bible and he seemed to truly believe all of it. He welcomed us to his church but he offered his apologies for the inadequate service he was about to conduct. True, they had rattlesnakes, copperheads, and some other snake he said came from Mexico, with venom he could vouch for, but the man who was expected to bring the cobras had experienced car trouble and was unable to get there. He would do the best he could but you just can’t compensate for missing cobras. He assured me that they were happy to have us with them and that there would be plenty of snakes, such as they were without cobras, and that even though I was not a member of the church, I was welcome to help myself any time I felt the call to pick one up. I thanked him but thought that was an opportunity I was unlikely to avail myself of.

                                                           The Pastor

           

The tent soon started filling up with people and the service got under way. The pastor opened the service with some announcements. He expressed his deepest regrets for the absence of the cobras. He also stated that if anyone got bit to night the unfortunate worshiper could choose to go the hospital in Rome if they wished. If so someone would take him or her to the emergency room, but “if I get bit, just pray for me”.

      

 With that the action was on. Much of it was like a fundamentalist revival meeting from my childhood. Very loud, long emotional prayers and singing, and people would get to testify, tell personal stories of their faith and beliefs, usually with strong emotion and tears streaming down their cheeks. I had seen all this many times before but then things got unique. Boxes were opened and all manner of snakes were dumped out on the tables and on the podium. The music was still and several people would be testifying all at once. No one could be sure what anyone else was saying but there was high excitement. Someone would come forward, often while still testifying, and pick up the snake of his choosing from whichever pile was handy.

People of all sorts came forward to proclaim their faith in very dangerous ways. Now there was nothing physical going on to prevent any snake from biting anyone at any time. I have heard attempts to discredit these people and religious snake handling as some sort of hoax. Without question, the snakes still had their fins and venom sacks. I have heard it claimed that as snakes are cold blooded, if you put them in the refrigerator for a while they will go to sleep and not be aggressive. That did not happen. I saw the serpents in the open on a hot Georgia night for several hours. If they had been cold they had plenty of time to warm up. And they were completely active. They moved around and behaved as one would expect a snake to behave in all ways except, for the most part, biting people. As I will explain later, they were surely capable of biting people. I am sure these people truly believe they are doing the will of God. This is real to them and it is definitely not about money. They didn’t even pass a collection plate during the entire two day event.

The service started about sunset and went on until past midnight. Sometime in the wee hours they took a break and came back on Sunday morning. They outlasted me. We left some time after midnight with the service still going on. I only know they took a break at some time because when we got back on Sunday most of the people had changed clothes. 

Early on in the evening two men got bit. (At least 50 or 60 others did not) One of the bitten men panicked and wanted to go to the emergency   room. So, as promised, someone put him in a car and drove him to the hospital. The other man got both fangs of a large rattlesnake between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He simply put the snake down and confessed that he had been sinning and said he was going to pray and repent. He sat down in a chair and started his contrition. I watched his left swell and turn black. This went on for 2 or 3 hours and then the swelling started to go down and the color returned to normal. And before we left, he was up with more snakes in his hands. He got no more bites. When we returned the next day, I ask about the man who had gone to the hospital and was told he was still in the ICU. Who knows?

                             This Fellow Got Bitten

                              Repenting

                      Forgiven

Anyway the service went on and on. Mark 16:18 also talks about drinking poison and these people were determined to be complete.

                           A Handfull of faith

Several of them started drinking a clear liquid from one quart bell jars. They said it was strychnine. Now I was not the only nonbeliever present that night. There was a grad student from the University of Georgia there do research for his PHD thesis in some related subject. He came over to me and asked if I thought that was in fact strychnine.  I told him I could only see a clear liquid in the bell jars but I do know what rattlesnakes and copperheads look like and I was willing to take the pastor’s word for their Hispanic associates, so I assume that was the claimed toxic. The inquisitive student had a small bottle with him and he just walked up to the pastor and told him he wanted a sample of the liquid to take to the university chemistry lab to be analyzed. The man of the cloth did not hesitate. He filled the sample bottle from one of the bell jars. I never saw the student again, but I am sure the sample tested positive for strychnine.

This was a weekend to remember, a chance to experience something uniquely American and from the hearts of good, strong people who hold a strong personal faith. I do not claim, nor do I deny, that I saw a miracle in Georgia. I only report what I saw.