Snakehandlers

 

Snakehandling churches are one of the weirdest elements of Pentecostalism.  They are something of an embarrassment even to mainstream Pentecostals, who sometimes even deny that snakehandling churches still exist.  Although more rare now than they used to be, these churches do still exist, primarily in rural areas of the southern United States.  They are known as Holiness churches (although, to be fair, not all churches categorized as 'Holiness' practice snake-handling).

Holiness Pentecostalism was founded in the 1920's by a Pentecostal preacher named George Hensley.  Based upon the Bible verse that says that believers shall "take up serpents" (Mark 16:18), Hensley and his followers made a practice of routinely picking up and even dancing with poisonous snakes (usually rattlesnakes or copperheads) during wild worship services.  Holiness Pentecostals believe that, if they are sufficiently filled with the Spirit, they will be supernaturally protected during these events.  Those who are bitten usually blame themselves for lacking the requisite anointing to handle snakes without harm.  There are scarcely any snakehandlers who have not been bitten by snakes, and some have died.  Hensley paid a heavy price for his strange practices; he died in 1955, vomiting blood after a snakebite.

 

Holiness church often do not call for medical treatment when someone is bitten, relying instead on prayer to heal the victim.  In 2004, Pentecostal pastor Dwayne Long was bitten by a rattlesnake during an Easter service in Virginia.  No one sought medical treatment for him, and he died the next day.

 

Snakehandling is illegal in every state except West Virginia.  However, laws against it are rarely enforced.  In 1999, courts in Tennessee faced the question of how to handle the custody arrangements of five children who lost both parents in different snakehandling incidents.  Their mother, 28-year-old Melinda Brown, died of a snakebite at a Pentecostal revival meeting in Kentucky.  In 1998, their father, John Wayne Brown, Jr, died at the age of 34, after a snakehandling service in Tennessee.  He had been bitten on 20 different occasions over the years before he suffered the fatal bite.  The children's paternal grandparents also belonged to the snakehandling church, and the maternal grandparents petitioned the court for custody of the children to keep them out of harms way.  However, the court split custody of the children between the grandparents, merely ordering the paternal grandparents to refrain from bringing the children to the snakehandling church.  At the time that the judge gave this order, however, the paternal grandparents admitted that they had already taken the children to other services at the church, in violation of an order by a previous judge.

 

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