DAVID ISAY: On just about any warm afternoon you can find a weathered-looking white haired man wandering the hills of remote West Virginia, hunting for poisonous snakes — not to kill, but to bring back with him to church. He is a serpent handler.
DEWEY CHAFIN: I’m Dewey Chafin, 59 years old. Been handling serpents 32, 33 years . . . 34 . . . and been bit 115 times. And I’ve never seen a doctor for it.
ISAY: That’s a lot of bites.”
CHAFIN: Yeah, and a lot of hurt.
ISAY: On this Saturday, Dewey Chafin maneuvers his way up Copperstone Mountain.
CHAFIN: Right now you’re in rattlesnake country, and you can find them anywhere in these weeds.
ISAY: This is one of Dewey’s all-time favorite snake hunting spots. We walk over a rock under which Dewey says he one day found 23 deadly copperheads slithering.
CHAFIN: What’s the matter?
ISAY: He tells me not to worry — it’s still early in the serpent hunting season. It isn’t long, though, before Dewey spots a black rattlesnake lying coiled up and still on the top of a rock. Dewey tries to lift it up with his homemade snake hook — a golf club bent at one end. But it doesn’t work. As the snake begins to glide away. Dewey grabs it with his hand, and drops it into a burlap sack.
CHAFIN: I got him. Not too big, but that will kill you.
ISAY: Dewey and I make our way back down the mountain.
ISAY: You sure do know how to have fun, Dewey.
CHAFIN: Well, I think it’s fun.
ISAY: Dewey is a disabled coal miner whose family has lived in these rugged hills for generations. Like his mother before him, Dewey is also a deeply religious man, one of several thousand serpent handlers who can be found throughout Appalachia. Ask Dewey — or any other serpent handler — why they take up poisonous snakes in church,. and, again and again, you’ll get the same simple answer:
CHAFIN: Why I do it is because the Bible said to do it. And that’s just the bottom line.
SINGER (singing): They call us snake handlers well that’s all right. They call us snake handlers well that’s all right. As long as you live in holiness well that’s all right. They say we going crazy well that’s all right. As long as we live in holiness well that’s all right.
ISAY: It’s the following day. Early Sunday afternoon in Jolo, West Virginia — Dewey Chafin’s hometown. Jolo is a disappearing speck on the map, an unincorporated community of rickety houses and mobile homes nestled deep within the Appalachian Hills. At one time Jolo was a booming coal town, until all of the mines began to tap out in the 1960s. Today the town is made up mostly of retired coal miners.
There is not much to Jolo. There’s one snack stand, a honky-tonk, and, on Three Forks Road, there is a simple yellow building surrounded by a gravel parking lot: The Church of the Lord Jesus.
(Sounds of musicians warming up.)
Inside, at the front of the church, taped to the wall behind the pulpit, are two carefully handwritten signs, listing the church’s strict rules.
RAY MCALLISTER: No gossip. No lying. No backbiting. No bad language. No tobacco.
ISAY: This is Ray Mcallister, whose right hand is deformed into a mangled claw from a rattlesnake bite suffered years ago.
MCALLISTER: No women cutting hair, jewelry, or makeup. No men with long hair, mustache or beard. . .
ISAY: These rules are typical of those found in serpent handling churches throughout the poor coal mining communities of this region. Appalachian culture places a premium on determination and courage. In that tradition, these believers are steadfast in their practice of handling serpents. And refusing medical treatment if bitten.
CONGREGANT (to Mcallister): Hello, Ray!
ISAY: Ray Mcallister makes his way towards the front of the church, clutching two small wooden boxes — each containing several poisonous snakes. Ray lays boxes down next to the church’s pastor, Bob Elkins.
BOB ELKINS: I guess it’s about time we got started.. These serpents are new serpents and we’re not responsible for anybody that gets bit. If you handle them you handle them on your own, if you get bit you get bit on your own. Let’s everybody pray at this time.
ISAY: The members of the church all suddenly drop to the floor. Their eyes shut tight, hands clenched under their chins, elbows resting on the pews.
(Congregants pray, many speaking in tongues. The pastor begins a song: ”Well talking about a good time, we gonna have a time . . . ”)
There is no set order or length to serpent handling services. They can go on for hours and hours. Most of the congregants make their way to the patch of bare wooden floor just in front of the stage and begin to dance. Some rock back and forth in place. Others close their eyes and begin to spin around in circles.
(Sound of congregants dancing.)
The intensity of the service escalates quickly. Before long, most congregants are dancing fiercely, whirling around, stomping across the wooden floor. The congregants are receiving ”the anointing.” They believe that the spirit of God is entering their bodies, a spirit that will guide and protect them throughout this service.
BELIEVER: Sometimes I feel like my hair is standing on my head. Sometimes I want to run, sometimes I want to dance, sometimes I want to cry, sometimes I want to laugh.
ISAY: About ten minutes into the service, a young believer dances towards the two boxes of serpents, opens one of them, and gently pulls out two rattlesnakes. He stares intensely at each of them. And then begins to dance again, rattlesnakes in hand.
ELKINS: You’ve got to do what the word said. Not talk about it, but put it in action.
ISAY: The congregation’s pastor, Bob Elkins, is a retired coal miner. He founded this serpent handling church nearly forty years ago.
ELKINS: And there ain’t too many people who want to put their life on the line for the word.
ISAY: The practice of serpent handling is based on a literal reading of a verse from the 16th chapter of Mark.
ELKINS: ”And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall 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.”
ISAY: In 1913, a mountain preacher from Tennessee had a revelation about this passage, and spent the rest of his life traveling these hills — preaching that it should be practiced . . . exactly as it’s written.
BELIEVER #1: In my name shall they cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues . . . ”
BELIEVER #2: They shall speak in new tongues . . .”
BELIEVER #3: They shall take up serpents . . .”
BELIEVER #4: They shall take up serpents . . .”
BELIEVER #5: Serpents . . .”
BELIEVER #6: Serpents . . .”
BELIEVER #7: And if they take drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
BELIEVER: My children take up serpents and I worry, because I’m a mother, but I can’t tell them not to do that because I’d be telling them not to obey the Lord. See you can’t hide anything from the Lord. If I sit here and told you that it didn’t scare me it’d be a lie, because God knows it does.
ISAY: There have been about 70 confirmed deaths in the history of Appalachian serpent handling. Two of those fatalities occurred in this church. The first in 1962 — Dewey Chafin’s 22 years old sister. The second last year, when congregant Ray Johnson was struck twice by a rattlesnake on the left wrist. He died 13 hours later.
BETTY JOHNSON: He believed it, he lived it, and he died for the word.
ISAY: Ray Johnson’s widow, Betty, is in church today as she has been every weekend since her husband passed away.
JOHNSON: He never once asked ’Why?’ He never complained about the pain, and I know he’s in a better place right now than I am.
JEFF HAGERMAN: The Bible says every man’s got an appointed time to die, if it’s driving a car, handling serpents, or sitting here talking to you.
ISAY: That is Betty Johnson’s son-in-law, Jeff Hagerman — a 25 year old with a picture of Jesus on his belt buckle. Jeff is the object of an escalating battle waged by his eleven brothers and sisters to get him to leave this church.
HAGERMAN: They thought that if they caused me a little trouble I might get out of it. But I ain’t going to hell for nobody.
(Sounds outside the Hagerman home: mopeds racing around a track, people talking, etc.)
ISAY: That same afternoon, while Jeff is handling serpents in church, the rest of the Hagerman clan have gathered, as they do every Sunday, at the home of Jeff’s older sister Sherry. The younger kids race go-carts and mini-bikes around a track in the yard. The older ones sit on the porch, talking about Jeffrey’s snake handling. This is Jeff’s sister, Sherry.
SHERRY: When you love somebody, you don’t want to see them doing things to get hurt, and anytime somebody that you love, you see them endangering their life, your automatic instinct is to try to keep them from endangering their life.
BROTHER: It’s like playing Russian roulette, they’re just playing it with snakes.
SHERRY: It’s the same thing. I say here’s a gun, it’s got one bullet, let’s see which one is going to die today. And it’s crazy.
ISAY: Jeffrey’s older brother Steven has been the most vigorous in trying to get Jeff to stop handling serpents, although he says he understands the appeal it holds for his brother.
STEVEN: It’s like a super high. It’s the adrenaline of reaching down and picking up a snake, and knowing that you could get bit. It’s like living on the edge. You know you could die at any second — the adrenaline is going through your body so fast it gives you a super high.
ISAY: Steven says he could only tolerate his brother’s serpent handling up to a point.
STEVEN: One weekend he got bit — it was a Sunday evening he got bit — twice with a copperhead, one on each hand. Monday morning they called me, told me Jeff was bit. So I went straight up there, and I told my wife Nancy when I went in, I said, ”You hold the door open when I go in, because I’m gonna take him out.”
Jeff told me he was going to kill himself, he would kill himself if we just take him to the doctor and I believed him. So I said, ”Alright Jeff, I’m not gonna force you to go, but it ain’t gonna happen no more.” He said, ”What do you mean by that?” I said, ”Just what I said — it ain’t gonna happen no more.”
ISAY: The next weekend Steven and two of his brothers went to the Church of the Lord Jesus during services, grabbed all of the snakes, took them outside and killed them. The congregation called the police.
STEVEN: They took us to jail. The following weekend same thing, and the following weekend we took some more snakes, and every time we went up there and took the snakes we went to jail.
ISAY: Steven says he and his brothers stopped killing the snakes when they realized that with each passing week Jeffrey seemed only to become more devoted to the church and more eager to handle serpents. Steven recently stood trial on two counts of grand theft for stealing the snakes, facing a possible sentence of two to twenty years in prison. He was found not guilty.
STEVEN: If I thought it would get him out of the church I’d go to jail tomorrow.
ISAY: Not all of the relationships between non-believing relatives and serpent handlers play out quite so dramatically.
On the front porch of the Chafin house in Jolo, Geneva Chafin is still waiting for her husband, Dewey, to return home from church. He is the man who had taken me serpent hunting the day before. Geneva spends a lot of her time sitting out here.
When she and Dewey first married, Geneva — a Catholic — tried going to church, but stopped because she couldn’t bear to watch her husband get snake bitten.
GENEVA: The first time I seen it I ran outside the church and cried like a baby. It’s not a good feeling.
ISAY: Is it hard for you not to call a doctor?
GENEVA: Oh yes, yes.
ISAY: The hardest of all, she says, was a year ago August, when Dewey was bitten twice in the chest by two entwined rattlesnakes.
GENEVA: I thought he was gonna die, and so did he.
ISAY: What did that do to you?
GENEVA: Knowing he was hurting and there was nothing I could do? I don’t really know. Love him more, I suppose.
SINGER (singing): I’ve walked with my Lord through sunshine and darkness. I’ve walked everywhere in the light of his love. Temptations are great, but God’s love is greater. God knows all about us, yes, my God understands.
ISAY: It’s Friday night in Scottsboro, Alabama, about 400 miles from Jolo, at the Church of Lord Jesus with Signs Following. The church, converted from an old gas station, is thoroughly ramshackle. And the congregants have something of a ragged look about them as well.
WILLIE MCCOY: My nickname used to be ”Wild Willie McCoy.”
ISAY: Why did they call you that?
McCOY: Because I was wild. I’d just as soon to bust your head as to look at you, but I have no desire to hurt no one no more. But I did, I carried a gun or else I carried a machete or a knife, it didn’t matter. You looked at me crossways I’d straighten it up. So I was a soldier for the devil. Now I’m on the battlefield for my Lord, and I’m going to serve him.
(Congregation sings: ”I got Jesus on my Mind.”)
ISAY: The church of Jesus with Signs Following has become quite well known in this part of the South. Recently, the church’s pastor, Glenn Summerford, stood trial for forcing his wife, at gun point, to put her hand in a box full of serpents. She was bitten twice and nearly died. Apparently Reverend Summerford had found her in bed with another man.
The ensuing court case brought the small town of Scottsboro the most media attention it’s received since the trial of the Scottsboro Boys sixty years ago — when nine black teenagers were falsely convicted of raping two white women, and eight were sentenced to die.
In this case, Reverend Summerford was convicted of attempted murder, and is now serving ninety-nine years in the state penitentiary.
Yet the Church of Lord Jesus with Signs Following continues on. Substitute pastors drive in from hundreds of miles away to conduct Friday and Saturday night services.
And the congregants continue to come to church. Their faith hasn’t wavered. They are as committed as ever to handling serpents, they say, and even see the imprisonment of their former pastor simply as further affirmation of the truth in the word of the Lord.
MCCOY: You know the Bible said some would lose their life for the gospel sake, some would be cast into prison. So when you look at things really the way they are, it’s a fulfillment of the Bible. So if anything that makes my faith stronger!
SINGER (singing): Well they put old Paul in prison, long about the midnight hour. He began to call on Jesus, Jesus sent him power. King Jesus, Lord know you’ll hear me when I pray. For I’m down here in trouble Lord, send an angel by my way. Well you want to take up serpents, and you got just a little bit of fear. Just call on my Jesus.
ISAY: It’s the next morning, a Saturday at The Church of the Lord Jesus in Kingston, Georgia. It is homecoming weekend here, an annual gathering that draws serpent handlers from all over the South. Most of the Jolo, West Virginia congregation have driven for more than eleven hours to attend.
PASTOR (addressing crowd): Now they’s some serpents up here. If I count right, there’s about four boxes. And I’ll tell you boys, they aren’t empty. And the serpents ain’t empty either. They don’t have their fangs pulled. They don’t have the poison milked out of them. Amen.
(Applause)
ISAY: There is a lot of excitement in this room. And a lot of snakes. There is poison to drink as well — strychnine mixed with water — the same Biblical passage from Mark which tells believers to take up serpents, also tells them they can drink any ”deadly thing.” They call it a ”salvation cocktail.”
BELIEVER: It paralyzes your joints, but it ain’t supposed to hurt you. If it hurts you, there’s something wrong. It ain’t supposed to hurt you.
ISAY: It does not take long before this church reaches a frenzy. Jeffrey Hagerman, who’s brothers have been trying so hard to get him out of serpent handling, grabs the bottle of strychnine off the pulpit, takes a generous swig, grimaces and whirls across the floor. Dewey Chafin balances a half dozen rattlesnakes on the top of his head. He passes the slithering mass off to another man, who uses the snake-bundle like a towel — to wipe the sweat off his face.
(Congregants frenetically shout, sing, and speak in tongues.)
Serpent handlers have never had an easy time of it. Believers are ridiculed, churches are vandalized. The practice has been outlawed in nearly every Southern state.
PASTOR (addressing crowd): In his name they’ll cast out devils. They’ll speak with new tongues. They’ll take up serpents. They’ll drink the deadly thing. They’ll lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover.
ISAY: There are also the questions about the scripture itself. Most scholars agree that the verse upon which serpent handling is based was not originally part of the Bible, but was added much later by scribes trying to give the book of Mark a stronger, more dramatic ending. The serpent handlers here have heard this claim before, and just shrug it off as always, holding on tightly to their beliefs. And refusing to allow their faith to waver.
BELIEVER #1: If man could have written that part of God’s word, he could have written any of it. And if I doubted that part of God’s word, then it’d give me a reason to doubt the rest of it.
BELIEVER #2: A lot of people say ”Well, you interpret it wrong.” I hadn’t got but one way to interpret it, and that’s read it for what it says.
BELIEVER #3: They say, ”Well, that’s not what it means.” Well, what does it mean then?
BELIEVER #4: It meant what it said, said what it meant, and if it didn’t say what it meant, why didn’t it write what it did mean?
BELIEVER #5: We either believe it or we don’t believe it, and if we believe it we’re going to do it.
(The service builds to a peak of speaking in tongues and singing and loud music. Then the sound of a single rattling snake.)
ISAY: I’m David Isay.
SINGER (singing): They call us snake handlers well that’s alright. They call us snake handlers well that’s alright. They call us snake handlers well that’s alright, as long as we live in holiness well that’s alright.
