Sign Followers, a denomination most prevalent in the southern Appalachian Mountains, derive their peculiar form of worship from a passage in Mark 16:17-18: And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak in new tongues; They shall [emphasis mine:] take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Adherents insist the purpose in passing large angry rattlesnakes and other venomous reptiles and drinking water laced with strychnine is not to test God, but rather a form of obedience.

The Serpent Handlers, as they are more commonly known, have their roots in three strand of American Protestantism: Holiness, Fundamentalism, and Pentacostalism. Holiness, their preferred appellation is derived from early Methodism and its founder, Charles Wesley. They believe in being obedient to God in all things and a reluctance to accept modern culture. They are fiercely independent and thus the death by snake bite of Punkin Brown during a church service and the subsequent ruling of a local church removing his children from the home of Punkin’s grandparents (Punkin’s wife had died three years previously of snakebite) and prohibiting the children from being in attendance at any church service where there might be venomous snakes, has placed a singular burden on the religious faith of these people. (Despite the autopsy evidence, the family insisted Punkin’s death was not due to snake venom, but rather that he had died of a heart attack, and, indeed, he did have a dangerously enlarged heart. He had been bitten many times before, something the coroner said would have eventually made him more sensitive to snake venom and the location of the bite was very close to some important blood vessels that would have taken the poison directly to the heart.

Fred Brown and his wife Jeanne McDonald have provided a singular service by collecting on tape the stories of several of these people. And touching stories these are revealing simple, mostly illiterate, but loving people who are struggling to follow what they believe to be God’s mandate, risking their lives in the process – seventy-six church-related death from snake-bite have occurred since 1900.

John Brown, Punkin’s father, cannot understand why society can be so selective in what they chose to believe from the Bible. If other’s can chose to believe John 3:16, then why can’t he and his fellow believers follow Mark 16: “They shall take up serpents.” “Now they preach that, and they practice that. Why am I not allowed to practice Saint Mark 16. . . .Why should there be controversy there anywhere? The same God said it all.”

It’s difficult not to feel great sympathy and empathy for these people who clearly are smitten with the overwhelming desire to demonstrate their faith and obedience. The area itself has been devastated numerous times by economic disaster, the landscape raped through unthinking coal mine operations, the people ravaged by unemployment and black lung disease. Middlesboro, Kentucky, where one of the families, lives and worships, has some 3,000 people living below the poverty line, out of a total population of 11,000. Faced with financial ruin and seemingly abandoned by the government and industry, they seek solace by turning to the church, heaven being a place worth even dying for. Scores of Fundamentalist churches can be found in Middlesboro, all based on hard-shell religious beliefs. They demand strict living from their adherents, and until economic times improve, “the people will praise God in their old ways, still waiting to get to a better place.”

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