And these signs will accompany those who believe: by my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.
I am not a religious man.
But I find religion to be infinitely interesting, as a phenomenon. Take the case of one George Went Hensley.
You probably don't know his name...nor, probably, have you any reason to. He died on July 25, 1955, a year before my birth. He had been preaching in Calhoun County, Florida, for the previous 3 weeks. He preached a strange strain of Pentecostalic religion that focused upon a single verse in the New Testament: The Gospel of Mark, 16: 17-18. Some may cite another passage from the New Testament as a basis for his faith: Luke, 10:19:
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
He was 74 years old at the time, and had been preaching like this for decades. He was, by most accounts, the founder of serpent handling as a component of fundamental Christianity in the U.S. He started down this path around 1910.
But on one July day, in Althea, Florida, he handled one too many snakes. He took a five foot long venomous snake out of a lard can, draped it around his neck, and proceded to give a rousing sermon to the assembled faithful. At the conclusion of his sermon he went to return to snake to the lard can he had taken it from, and it bit him on the wrist. His arm immediately began to show signs of discolorization, and he became ill, but he refused medical attention. The next day, George W. Hensely was dead. The Calhoun County coroner ruled his death a suicide. One can disagree with the coroner's conclusion, but one cannot disagree with this: You can tread upon and even handle serpents, but no matter your faith...they can hurt you.
Who was George Went Hensley? How did this religious movement take hold? Where did it take root? Is it still alive today? How many people have met the same fate?
All good questions.
George Hensley was born sometime in 1880 in East Tennessee, a state that, to this day, has one of the highest percentage of self identified evangelicals of any other state in the Union. His family was Baptist. But then again, what Southern family wasn't? In his teens, the family was living in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he witnessed a woman during a tent revival at a coal mining camp handle a venomous snake to demonstrate her faith in God during a meeting. Young George was impressed, no doubt. I'm sure most everyone else was, too. I mean...let's face it. Your faith has to be strong to pick up a copperhead, a timber rattler, or a cottonmouth snake as if it were a kitten.
Either that, or you must be crazy. In George's case, his sanity is open to debate, but he at least looked in the mirror and decided that, sane or not, he's no longer a Baptist. One step forward, two steps backwards, I always say.
Hensley gained regional notoriety in Tennessee around 1910-1914. According to Wikipedia he had a conversion, (after a period of moonshining), while out in the woods, when a snake approached him. He knelt down and picked it up. Afterwards, he preached to anyone who would listen that they, too, should test their faith in the same manner.
He became a hot ticket on the evangelical circuit in rural Tennessee. Crowds gathered to listen to his sermons, and watch him handle snakes. Some were merely thrill seekers. One time, during one of his fire and brimstone sermons, a man approached the alter and dumped a basketful of poisonous snakes at his feet as a taunt. Hensley bent down, according to witnesses, and proceded to pick up the collection of rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths as if they were cord wood.
His reputation was secured.
In point of fact, Hensley was bitten several times over the course of his life. By some accounts (most notably his own) he was bitten over 400 times during his preaching career. I would note that, while extremely painful, most snake bites are not lethal. They can cause serious damage to the tissue areas around the bite, and while I won't post any pictures here, you can google snakebites to get an idea just how gruesome some of them can be. It's nothing to mess around with, let alone tempt fate with. But a healthy person will often survive a snakebite from these vipers.
But that's not even the point.
Why...and how did such a movement...such a religious sect take hold? It wasn't a universal religious movement, that's for sure. It was strictly a regional cult, within the Central and Southern Appalachian region of this country mostly. What explains the attraction of such a man, and such a religious sideshoot?
As snake handling religious sects took root, deaths from snakebites naturally followed. To the true believers, it was written off as either a flimsy faith or God's will. Nothing else really needed to be explained. But over the years in the mid 20th century, even State Governments throughout the Bible Belt became a little queasey about this particular practice, and took steps to outlaw, or at least corral it.
Hensleys followers hailed from the poorest parts of the Southeastern Us. W. Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Eastern Ohio, Georgia and the Carolinas. They were coal miners, mill workers, dirt farmers. Like Hensley himself, many were illiterate. The illiterate preaching to the illiterate, and pointing to a Gospel as proof that noone could actually read. But who needed the Written Word, when there were boxes of poisonous snakes at the side of the altar? A demonstration of faith is worth a thousand words that nobody can read.
It's estimated that, during the 20th century, some 100 people have died as a result of this religious practice. That is why it's illegal in all states but West Virginia, but to be sure..illegal though it may be, it still takes place in rural areas of the Southeast, and local authorities mostly look the other way. Freedom of religion...you know.
Just this past May, a preacher in Morgantown, West Virginia by the name of Mark Wolford, died after being bitten on the thigh by a timber rattler. His father, in whose footsteps he followed, died in 1983 after being bitten by a snake.
This is a religious phenomena, but it is also a southern, and more specifically Appalachian Southern phenomenon. You don't read about snake handlers in Boise, Idaho, or Tuscon, Arizona, or St Louis, MO, or Philladelphia. I'm sorry...you just don't.
It is a function of despair, and ignorance, and backwardness, and hopelessness, and poverty, and provincialism, and living in such a small world that the only thing you can imagine to expand your horizons and step outside of the normal is something as drastic as this.
Hensley died in 1955, but the movement he initiated lives on in scattered places throughout Appalachia and the Southeast. Mack Wolford's death and following is proof of that.
But hey...it's West Virginia. You can do anything there. Except find a job.