Snake Handling

and what it taught me about the Florida Gators

“Ever hear a rattlesnake rattle?” The gentleman asking about my experience with venomous reptiles was the leader of a small but enthusiastic snake handling cult. Only he didn’t call it that.

He introduced himself as the Pastor of an Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church. A Christian religion that emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit.

The Pastor’s question about my familiarity with angry rattlesnakes wasn’t rhetorical. He was holding a homemade wooden box a few feet from my face; a container with a long handle on the top and screen mesh at the front.

I couldn’t see inside the box, but there was no doubt what it contained – not when he shook it. And shake it he did. Hard.

As sure as Jesus was the Pastor’s Lord and Savior, the snake went into full rattle mode. I’d never heard a rattlesnake rattle before, but I didn’t need anyone to tell me what it meant: fuck off or die.

Point taken. Don’t get me wrong: the Pastor wasn’t trying to scare the Jewish reporter who’d journeyed into the north Georgia mountains from CNN’s Atlanta HQ.

For one thing, he didn’t know I was Jewish. For another, I was there to follow-up on the death of one his flock. Bitten by a venomous snake.

The Pastor wanted to set the record straight. The real story wasn’t the congregant’s decision to “take up the serpent.” Snake handling was ancient, worshipful and, he stressed, legal.

An important point.

The Pastor had grown up during the 27 years when snake handling services were banned in the Peach State. Practiced “underground.”

In 1968, some fifteen years before my visit, the State Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected the practice, come what may.

The Pastor asserted that Holy Scripture commanded it. Specifically, the Gospel of Mark 16:18.

“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.”

Notice the “they will recover” part of the passage.

“I wouldn’t say people get bit all the time,” the Pastor prevaricated when pushed. “But they do get bit.”

“And live?”

“Yes.”

“Without medical treatment?”

“Without anti-venom, yes.”

“But not in this case.”

The Pastor paused and stared into my eyes, looking for God knows what. And then it came out. Someone had called an ambulance.

A non-believer inside the Church had infected the service with their non-belief. And then invited other non-believers to enter God’s House (in the form of EMT’s).

Did this secret someone summon Satan? The Pastor wouldn’t commit, but he admitted it was a distinct possibility.

The Pastor told me he’d tried to calm his followers by quoting Romans 14:1.

“Accept the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters,” the Pastor repeated. “There’s a whole lot of quarreling goin’ on,” he added with a smile.

As we sat in the Pastor’s modest house, Church members shuffled in and out, attesting to their faith, testifying in front of their Shepard and the stranger.

And then it was time for Sunday service, the first after the fatality.

It was a small church, a hot morning, a tense atmosphere. Our giant camera did nothing to lower the temperature in the chapel, and much to increase it.

The last thing I wanted: another snake bite victim. Followed by another hunt for a non-believer in their midst.

The second-to-last thing I wanted: not to return to the CNN newsroom without snake-handling video.

Around 50 people crammed into the small, unadorned church. After the Pastor’s introduction and a couple of off-key hymns, members began speaking in tongues.

Indistinguishable words and sounds bounced off the wooden walls and rafters. More and more members let loose, giving voice to the Holy Spirit. Soon, the noise was deafening.

The flock entered a deep trance state, en masse; their bodies swaying and jerking, their eyes glazed.

Seven male members in their sweat-stained Sunday best took center stage. The handlers were gone, mentally speaking. Enraptured? Clearly.

The handlers removed the venomous snakes from the boxes. There were at least two rattlers. If they were rattling I couldn’t hear it over the otherworldly cacophony.

Some of the handlers draped the serpents over their shoulders like a shawl. Others performed a bizarre dance, swinging the snakes, holding them up to God, moving around the small stage with what looked like random abandon.

I was freaked, completely out of my depth, genuinely scared of what was about to happen in that hot, crowded, snake-infused space.

The sights and sounds reached a crescendo, like a gigantic wave slamming onto the beach. A monster that slowly slipped back into the sea, its power spent, its towering majesty a memory.

The members fell silent. The snakes went back in their boxes. The Pastor made his concluding remarks, giving voice to his congregation’s collective relief.

God had blessed them with His protection. Again. Still.

Back in The City Too Busy Too Hate, my colleagues – hard-bitten cynics all – considered the dramatic footage a freak show.

They gathered around the monitor and laughed at the sight and sound of a Church coming together in the face of a terrible tragedy, in accordance with their faith and traditions.

A self-inflicted tragedy? Sure. But I didn’t share my compatriots’ condescending contempt. In fact, I found it ironic.

What was CNN if not a cult? A tightly knit organization with its own beliefs, rites and rituals? Spreading a secular message with a thousand times more reach than a small God-fearing church buried in the Appalachian mountains.

I thought about the snake handlers this week. I was binge-watching a documentary on a University of Florida football team, national champions led by a Bible-quoting quarterback and his monomaniacal coach.

I viewed the hyper-violent Floridian football cult from the same remove as I viewed the snake handlers and CNN.

They’re all admirable in their own way, but something important is missing. Individual introspection. Freedom from subconscious harmony.

My father used to say that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You can’t make that call when you trade critical thinking for the ecstasy of communal togetherness.

My reluctance indeed refusal to subvert my will to a group has made me something of a lone wolf.

Or, potentially, a snake. Someone to be boxed and shaken for the satisfaction of those who view independent thinking as a threat to everything they hold dear.

Either way, I keep my distance. And shudder at the memory of the strange sounds that came out of my mouth that bizarre summer day in rural Georgia.