Serpent Handlers

This morning, I read a news story about Pentecostal Christians who believe that physically handling poisonous snakes, such as rattlesnakes and water moccassins, was an important way of demonstrating their faith in God. The story highlighted a group of fervent believers in East Tennessee, and the point of the story is that these folk are in violation of a longstanding Tennessee law against private possession of dangerous creatures. Serpent handlers have been around since the early twentieth century, and as part of the Pentecostal movement within American Protestantism, they have cited scripture to justify the practice. Apparently there is currently a regular TV show about this, but I have not seen it.

However, several years ago, I was part of a research team that studied this phenomenon in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Many people who hear of snake handlers within a religious context believe they must be nuts. So did our team going in, and we were given a grant to find out. We travelled to the areas where this behavior was most common. We attended services and took voluminous notes and made recordings. As with most Pentecostal congregations, there was a lot of music (very good), prophesying, speaking in tongues, dancing, and a high level of emotional rhetoric. Then the snakes came out. We stayed well clear of them but took extensive notes. There was a lot of handling, dancing, and even throwing snakes back and forth. Several people also drank battery acid. I passed.

During the days of our stay, which was close to two weeks, we conducted extensive psychiatric and social interviews and gave psychological tests, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality  Inventory (MMPI). And what did we find? No higher level of psychiatric symptoms than is found in the general population. Although the behaviors during services look disturbed, in the general day-to-day functioning of these believers, we saw no unusual level of mental illness.

Religious fervor does, indeed, make us step outside our normal boundaries, at least some of the time.