Finally Some Good News: Snake handling and the issue of faith

http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/finally_some_good_news_snake_handling_and_the_issue_of_faith/sports/5928/

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

There was a lot of nervous laughter in the room. Some of it was mine. I was leading a church discussion on religious practices in Appalachia. The topic of the night was snake handling. The multitudes had not shown up; I think it was because of the subject.

Just the thought of snakes, much less the thought of handling them, gives most folks cold chills. A number of people in the room alluded to Wendy Bagwell’s old story of singing in a West Virginia church. Bagwell described how people had begun to take snakes out of baskets and boxes while his group sang. Turning to the pastor, Bagwell nervously asked where the church’s back door was. When the pastor told him there was not a back door, Bagwell asked the pastor where he would like one! snip

“And these signs will accompany those who believe: they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them,” Mark 16:18. Those words are in the Bible, but not originally. However, I am certain that they were in Melinda Brown’s mind when a 4-foot long Timber rattler fatally bit her forearm during a church service in Middlesboro, Ky. Refusing medical treatment, she died in Middlesboro leaving five children with her husband, John Wayne Brown Jr.

“Punkin,” as his family and friends called John Wayne, had suffered 22 snakebites over his 34 years. Finally, three years after his wife Melinda’s death, Punkin Brown picked up a massive yellow rattler while preaching in a church service in Sand Mountain, Ala. As Brown attempted to return the snake to the box, it latched on to the base of one of his fingers. Other ministers in the building held him up as the dying evangelist lifted his arms and said, “Jesus, Jesus… God is still God, God is still God, no matter what happens.” In a room filled with people including a number of children, John Wayne Brown died on the floor where moments before he had stood preaching what he considered was the truth. The courts granted his parents partial custody of the five children. The grandparents were also snake handlers.

There's a reason for every living creature, I hear.

But fangs for the post.

"They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them (Mark 16:18).”

And yet they get hurt and sometimes die. What the fuck?! Do they not stop and think?

is the problem. :)

And if they did, they probably have sense enough not to believe all of it.

is that these two morons procreated before having their Darwin Award handed to them.

Sorry if that seems callous, but I'm of the belief that we are no longer evolving (smart is not being selected anymore).

Especially if bit on the finger. I wonder if he had a heart attack or stroke from the panic of getting bitten.

only about 100 years or so, probably started by a huckster who was desperate enough to get more butts in the pews to risk fatal snakebite.

Unfortunately, it caught on in a part of the country where the only hope most folks had came from religion, since neither coal nor moonshine paid all that well and both were likely to get them killed.

All states in the region have passed laws against the practice, so the churches and their members tend to be very closed mouthed about the practice. Law enforcement only hears about this stuff when there's a body, and even then they won't tell them where or how it happened. It's very rare that anyone talks to the press, usually a concerned neighbor or other outsider.

The only way to kill this crazy practice off is to give these folks real hope for a better life.

I can't think of anything else that would do it.

Comprehension unfortunately followed posting.

A little genetic engineering here, a little frikkin' laser beam attachment to the head there... we could produce a generation of snakes against which these pig-ignorant troglodytes would stand no chance. Gawds if only...

as you so kindly put it. They're not bad people. Instead of getting drunk and being assholes, they go to churches where they occasionally get a huge thrill out of facing death and beating it.

You don't seem to get what hopelessness does to people.

Ignorance is fixable. Lack of empathy probably isn't.

I've got relatives in Appalachia. Luckily none of them are quite this insane. Fundamentalists are bad enough, I don't think I could take snake-handlers.

Oh and on edit:
Teh Stoopid! It hurtz!