Book provides account of snake-handling
This is probably the closest you"re ever going to get to Christians who handle serpents as part of their worship.
At least that"s true for me, because I am deathly afraid of any kind of poisonous snake. You won"t catch me within a mile of those snake emporiums you can find out in the desert, for instance. When I see a sign announcing a snake emporium five miles down the road, I increase my speed at least 10 mph.
But I felt compelled to read "Salvation on Sand Mountain" by Dennis Covington (Penguin Books, $11.95), because it is a firsthand account of people in remote areas of Appalachia who handle serpents during evening worship services that get about as fervent as anything you will find in the United States.
They also drink poison - strychnine - right out of canning jars just like moonshine whiskey. They sometimes die because of these strange practices, but the survivors keep putting their lives in jeopardy because handling serpents and drinking poison gives them such a faith rush they just can"t resist.
Covington was in St. Paul, Minn., recently to promote his book, and we had a chance to sit down and talk. He said it"s not courage that makes it possible for people to handle serpents.
"When I first started going to these services, my friends asked me if I ever would handle serpents," Covington said. "I said I wouldn"t unless I felt an anointing. I asked for signs in prayer. And lo and behold, it happened. I was under an anointing all three times I handled. I never would have done it otherwise. I had no fear. It was just like picking up a hat."
Snake-handling actually comes out of Scripture, Mark 16: 17-18 - "... by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them ..." (New Revised Standard Version).
Covington is a Southern Baptist and a deacon in his Birmingham, Ala., congregation. So his presence in the Pentecostal Holiness churches felt a bit strange at first. But as he built relationships he also began to understand the lure of handling serpents. On one occasion he was completely absorbed in the emotion of the moment.
He watched as Aline McGlocklin and her husband, Charles, who calls himself the End Time Evangelist, stood in the front of a church near Jolo, Va. Covington knew the McGlocklins and enjoyed their company, but he had never seen
Aline handle before.
"Her hands were raised, her face upturned. Her lower jaw was trembling, and I imagined the sound before I heard it: "Akiii, akiii, akiii ..."
"In front of Aline stood her husband, Charles, with a four-foot black timber rattlesnake outstretched in his hands. He was getting ready to hand it to her.
"The rattlesnake was so big Charles could hardly get a hand around it," Covington wrote. "He would later tell me that the Lord spoke to him in that moment and asked him, "Who do you love more, me or your wife?" Charles said the answer was God, and so he decided to go ahead and give her the snake."
Covington says the snake twisted in the husband"s hands and rolled over once and then twice. He handed it to the preacher of the congregation, who prayed over it and then set it gently into Aline"s hands.
"Her face changed," Covington wrote. "It seemed to open out. The sound that she made did not resemble human speech. "Have your way, Lord," someone said as Aline trembled in ecstasy with the big black rattlesnake outstretched in her hands."
Covington, a reporter for the New York Times, landed in the middle of the serpent-handling Christians while he was covering the trial of Glenn Summerford, a snake-handling preacher who tried to kill his wife by forcing her hand inside a box filled with rattlesnakes. Covington met another serpent-handling preacher during the trial and got himself invited to a worship service.
Instantly he was drawn to the fervent and raucous form of worship. At first his interest was entirely academic, but then he began to wish God would give him the gift to handle serpents.
Since Covington"s book was published, four of the snake handlers he knew have become victims of snakebite and died. Obviously, handling serpents isn't for everybody, even if you think the Holy Spirit has given you the gift.
Clark D. Morphew
3-23-96
