#serpent handling

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

[agirlnamedbone]

Hort's Handmade Sign // ph. Shelby Lee Adams

[folk-vision]

Dale “Breezy” Ellis

Saints Serpents & Sign.

[henry-harrison-mayes]

A rabbit-hole too deep to go down further, but by researching the Ohio Bluegrass and Gospel scene I came across the Preacher, Businessman and hustler, Kash Amburgy.

Kash D. Amburgy was a Pentecostal preacher who promoted the ministries of members of William Branham's campaign team.[4] Amburgy was well-known for his open support of snake handling in the church, which drew great skepticism from the general public — especially after faithful congregants were injured, and fought to oppose laws created by the Kentucky State Legislature to protect innocent victims in the snake-handling churches. -- Source

[dyingforbadmusic]

Brother Tinker of Greenville, South Carolina, and Reverend Jimmy Ray Williams of Newport, Tennessee. "This was taken at a Jesus name church in Chester, South Carolina," explains Brother Floyd McCall. "Brother Tinker wasn't the pastor of this church. He was just helping Reverend Sloan out. You can see Brother Liston Pack to the left and Brother Tommy Kootz at the microphone.

From the scrapbook collection of Reverend Floyd McCall.

[insipid-drivel]

My Great-Great-Great Grandmother Was A Pentecostal Serpent Handler

In the early 1900′s, my 3x Great Grandmother, Nancy, had just moved with her husband and 2 boys to Okfuskee, Oklahoma. They were very sociable and threw little block parties every weekend for neighbors, friends, and family, to the point that they even cleared out the bottom floor of their house to make room for guests. One day, a couple of Serpent Handlers showed up to talk to them about their religion. Essentially, based on various pieces of scripture, they believed that venomous snakes wouldn’t bite them due to the power of their faith. They also had a habit of speaking in tongues, “sign reading” (seeing portents and messages from god in stuff), healing through touch, and never taking medicine or going to the doctor. They also sometimes drank strychnine to flex on people, which they would’ve done anyway since strychnine poisoning causes agonizingly painful muscle spasms.

These two preachers began to deliver their message and spiel to my great-great-great grandparents and their sons, who were descended from Baptists and Quakers, and their two boys did the 20th century equivalent of “pics or it didn’t happen” and went out to find the angriest rattlesnake they could. Then they poked it with sticks a few times to make sure it was very, very angry, and then called the preachers over to demonstrate their supposed command over snakes.

The preachers balked and came up with excuses. So my 3x great-grandmother, Nancy, decided, “Welp, I don’t need to know my faith is strong, so I’ll pick the giant angry rattlesnake up!”

Her two sons just about fainted in horror as their mother sauntered over, grabbed the snake... and didn’t get bitten. According to our surviving letters from relatives, the rattlesnake didn’t even try to deliver a dry-bite (biting without injecting venom). It let her handle it before she let it go and it slithered off, probably confused and in need of a session in Anger Management.

The preachers promptly shat themselves, and my great-great grandfather and uncle were both baptized immediately in the pond on their property, and one went on to become a serpent handling preacher. As for what happened with Nancy herself, we don’t really know.

My aunt had no idea about Nancy when she was just a little girl collecting snakes in the basket on her bicycle to play with.

I didn’t know about Nancy when I was very young and sneaking into the woods to feel my snake friends glide through my fingers.

We never got bitten, either.

[folk-vision]

Fred Webster - Serpent Love Children That Obey The Master

[dyingforbadmusic]

Gary Monroe -  The Mystic Marriage of Saint Barbara Elkins of Jolo WV Chalk, charcoal and pastel on paper 76"x 49"2005