Keith G. Tidball and Chris Toumey

Abstract

Intense media coverage of Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling sometimes causes a switch in signifier/signified relationships. The snakes used symbolically in this practice are grounded less in traditional religious meaning, and more in a certain recent secular meaning: from signifying faith in the Holy Spirit to indicating the value of celebrity status. This phenomenon is analyzed in a framework of theories about symbols and rituals, and is then described in a series of ethnographic observations at a serpent-handling church in Kentucky. This case study raises some troubling issues about how cosmopolitan media represent a distinctive local culture.

[1] Why do some Pentecostal Christians handle serpents in their religious services? This practice, so firmly associated with low-income white Protestants in the Appalachian mountains, has received a great deal of scholarly attention, which in turn has generated a series of explanations. Here we summarize three, and explore them at length in a subsequent section. Mark 16:17-18 (KJV) teaches that “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.” And so according to one explanation, that reference, in and of itself, accounts for this practice, in the sense that serpent handling is an act of faith defined by a biblical text.

[2] A second theory suggests that serpent-handling symbolizes socio-economic issues which transcend Biblical belief. The serpent represents the Devil—a common Christian image—but the Devil is equivalent to evil forms of capitalism which have stolen natural resources and destroyed communities in Appalachia. In this view, the religious features of serpent handling are part of a larger whole.

[3] A third account of serpent-handling in Appalachia develops the idea that serpent handlers are oppressed and exploited by outsiders, but it adds an intriguing interpretation to that observation. It tells us that the larger American society has taken almost everything of value from the people of Appalachia, and has confined them to such negative social categories as "hillbillies," "holy rollers," and "poor white trash." Some Appalachian people have then reacted against those who have exploited them by embracing a cultural practice which is so peculiar and so perplexing that it cannot be co-opted or exploited. In other words, the ritual handling of serpents is a dramatic act of symbolic resistance to cultural imperialism. Again, the religious features are nested within large-scale socio-economic dynamics.

[4] It is not our intention to dismiss these theories. We recognize that a full appreciation of serpent handling includes all three of them. We especially appreciate these explanations as case studies which contribute to serious thought about symbolism and ritual. We would, however, like to introduce a newer interpretation of Appalachian serpent-handling. We argue that the behaviour of some Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handlers is strongly motivated by certain media representations, and that this phenomenon has several important implications: first, that serpent handling is changing; second, that secular values are competing with religious values, thereby upsetting the religious basis of this practice; and, third, that some developments in ritual and symbolic theory can help us understand the changing nature of serpent handling in Appalachia.

[5] To elaborate our argument: we observe that intense coverage in the print and electronic media has made secular celebrities of some Appalachian serpent handlers. That process gives superficial attention, at best, to the religious meanings associated with this practice, while emphasizing instead the danger and excitement of dealing with poisonous snakes. Some Christian serpent handlers have then enhanced their own celebrity status by presenting themselves primarily as skillful snake wranglers, that is, heroes who can face danger and control it. They may not intend for this to overshadow their genuine religious motivations when their serpent handling is represented in the media, but it does. The media may still portray serpent handling as an exotic symbol of something else, but in this media-driven process it need not be closely identified with religious belief. Instead, it becomes a secular symbol of a secular value, that is, personal fame derived from one's ability to flirt with dangerous snakes. Serpent handling then becomes as much a path to celebrity as to sainthood.

[6] We present our interpretation in three steps: first, a brief review of historical accounts of the early days of Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling; secondly, a selective discussion of theories about symbols and rituals, as they pertain to serpent-handling rituals; then, a description of recent developments in this phenomenon, including a case study which indicates how secular meanings are intruding upon the religious meanings behind serpent-handling.

Histories and Interpretations of Appalachian Serpent Handling

[7] Industrialization began to have an effect on Appalachian society after the Civil War, when investors from the East and abroad took an interest in Appalachia's vast supplies of coal, lumber and other natural resources. Prior to that, much of mountain social life was centered on isolated local communities rather than the larger society, so that many mountain communities possessed a sense of political and economic sovereignty (Eller 1979). "Capitalist practices such as the accumulation of profit remained alien to rural people," who enjoyed egalitarian societal relations rather than hierarchical relations (Kimbrough 1995, 70). Ronald D. Eller observes that:

Status rather than class distinctions ... were the most important social divisions in traditional mountain society. … In remote mountain neighborhoods where economic differences were minimal ... the rural social order was divided not into upper, middle, and lower classes but into respectable and non-respectable classes, and each local community determined its own criteria for respectability (Eller 1979, 83, 109).

[8] C.L. Albanese notes a distinctive feature of Appalachian religious thought: in a setting that was rural, agricultural, and mountainous, "mountain people surrounded themselves with a symbolic system based, for the most part, on nature" (Albanese 1981, 236). The serpents of the Old and New Testaments, which stood for the hidden, lurking, and dangerous qualities of evil forces, were very real to people who were well aware of rattlesnakes, copperheads, and other poisonous vipers.

[9] When capitalist industrialization began to change the social world of mountain communities, its principal mechanism for doing so was the transfer of land and mineral rights from residents to investors. In the words of Shaunna Lynn Scott,

The agents of major investors used a variety of means to acquire land and mineral rights. Most Appalachian farmers, unaware of the market value of their coal, sold mineral rights and untillable land to these speculators for as little as $.25 to $5.00 per acre. These resources seemed useless to the subsistence farmer; to receive any cash in return for them appeared to be a good deal. Little did they know that the deed they signed, called the "broad form deed," gave the new owner the rights to all mineral wealth, including those which had not been discovered. It also granted them the right to use whatever means they deemed necessary to remove minerals (Scott 1988, 60).

An ethos of self-sufficiency was displaced by a capital-and-proletarian social order (Waller 1988). Accompanying that change was a wave of missionary work: "missionaries and capitalists saw Appalachians as morally weak and lazy because of their indifference to the forced pace of time-clock capitalism" (Kimbrough 1995, 82).

[10] Serpent-handling began to thrive shortly after Appalachian people lost the rights to the minerals under their land, the lumber from their woods, and the stability of their social order. George Went Hensley, the apostle of serpent handling, may have seen others handle serpents before he did it himself, but after picking up a rattlesnake, he began to preach this doctrine vigorously; first in Grasshopper Valley, Tennessee, and later in the mountain counties of Tennessee and Kentucky during the first decades of the twentieth century (La Barre 1962). His impassioned sermons focused on the power of faith in God's signs and miracles, as presented in Mark 16:17-18: casting out devils; speaking in tongues; taking up serpents; drinking poison without having ill effects; and healing by faith. Those who were moved by Hensley's message saw a means of reshaping a world they thought was going to hell (Kimbrough 1995).

[11] For many decades now, the ritual practice advocated by Hensley has been well known in the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. In addition, it can be found in churches populated by Appalachian emigrants in nearby cities, including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Columbus, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. It is estimated that there are at dozens of independent churches whose members handle serpents in their religious services (Birckhead 1996, 261; Daugherty 1976).

[12] What, then, is the relationship between exploitive capitalism and serpent handling? To answer this, we turn to a series of theories about symbols and rituals.

Some Theories of Symbols and Rituals

[13] The study of symbols and symbolism is both interesting and problematic because a symbol is, by definition, something which stands for something else. This field of study asks a host of questions, but the two most prominent are: (1) what does a particular symbol stand for, that is, what is the idea or the thing behind the symbol?; and (2) how does a symbol represent something else?

[14] In his historical account of theories concerning symbols and symbolism, Raymond Firth describes the systematic and empirical features of twentieth-century anthropological studies (Firth 1973, 92-106). Two characteristics are especially important. The first is that the study of symbols, at least in anglophone anthropology, is usually centered on ritual. Let us define ritual as patterned (or routine) collective symbolic behaviour. With this understanding, the anthropologist can observe and describe the repetitive and predictable aspects of a ritual, and can thereby avoid dealing with isolated or idiosyncratic symbols. And, because a ritual is an instance of collective behaviour, there ought to be some common understanding among the participants of what the various symbols are supposed to represent. By treating a symbol as a phenomenon which occurs repeatedly in a regular pattern, and by deriving the abstract signified from the interpretations of multiple participants, the ritual-centered approach gives a good empirical grounding to the study of symbols and symbolism.

[15] Secondly, the anthropological approaches rely very much on Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic theories from his book, Course in General Linguistics (Saussure 1966). Saussure taught that a symbolic relationship includes "signifieds," that is, ideas which need to be expressed by devices such as words, and "signifiers," which are the devices by which an idea is represented. (Anglophone anthropologists often use the terms "signifier" and "symbol" interchangeably.) Ideally, the signifier constitutes a clear, direct, and faithful representation of the signified, in which case the two together are called a sign. More commonly, however, sensory signifiers—words, emblems, images, slogans, and so forth—cannot entirely represent abstract thoughts, if only because the sensory can never be equivalent to the abstract.

[16] This brings us to the first interpretation of serpent handling. The key Biblical text, Mark 16:17-18, tells us that taking up serpents is a demonstration of the power of one’s faith. Pentecostal Christians who handle serpents are most likely to account for this practice by pointing directly to its biblical justification in Mark, and perhaps also to a corroborating verse at Luke:10:19. In this sense, serpent handling is an exercise in Saussurian signs: a clear, direct, and faithful representation of the signified, that is, the Christian belief championed in Mark. In addition, this view avoids theories of socio-economic causation that would relativize the ritual in question.

[17] The most persuasive argument for this view comes from Bill J. Leonard, who says that “the people called serpent-handlers are in a real sense the ultimate biblical inerrantists” (Leonard 1999, 229; also pp. 234, 235, 238). There are several different influences that shape Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness faith, he writes, and there are some interesting issues of Biblical hermeneutics that concern Mark 16:17-18, but in the end these people handle serpents because they conclude that the King James Version of the Bible clearly tells them to do this (Leonard 1999).

[18] Likewise, accounts in the print media often allude to bible texts, but their analysis usually stops there. We see this in stories in Time (1 November 1968), the Washington Post (2 December 1979), the Herald-Leader of Lexington, Kentucky (17 September 1995), and Smithsonian (January 1996), to name a few: each indicates that these people handle serpents simply because the bible tells them to.

[19] We do not disregard the connection between the practice and the text. We recognize that Christians justify their ritual practices partly by referring to biblical texts. But this simple analysis is very incomplete. At the very least, A Saussurian explanation fails to explain why other Pentecostal Christians decline to handle serpents. The Pentecostal style of Christian faith emphasizes that the gifts of the Holy Spirit should be as prominent as one’s personal salvation that comes through Jesus: one must accept Jesus as one’s personal saviour, but must also complete one’s Christian life by accepting the presence of the Holy Spirit (cf. Burton 1993, 6). Very few congregations, however, include all the signs of the Holy Spirit, that is, casting out demons, speaking and interpreting in tongues (glossalalia), handling serpents, drinking powerful poison with no ill effects, and faith healing. Most Pentecostal groups emphasize either faith healing or glossalalia or both, and then eschew the other signs.

[20] Now if serpent handling is a legitimate and necessary expression of the presence of the Holy Spirit, then we must ask either why the other Pentecostal Christians do not handle serpents (which amounts to the impossible task of proving a negative), or, why this practice is specific to some Appalachian people. Why is serpent-handling so distinctly confined to that class of white Protestants who have been most disadvantaged by the change from small-scale social autonomy to large-scale proletarian status?

[21] Leonard reports an intriguing answer to this question: serpent-handling Pentecostal-Holiness Christians believe that all five signs in Mark 16:17-18 ought to be practiced, but it is not necessary for all Christians to practice all five. As long as each of the five signs is practiced, then Christianity as a whole is faithful to Mark 16. As long as these Appalachian congregations practice the signs that other Christians won’t practice, namely, handling serpents and drinking poison, then they are performing an extremely valuable service for the rest of Christianity, both Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal (Leonard 1999). Actually this does not exactly explain why others do not practice those two signs. Instead it makes the question irrelevant.

[22] There is also a related historical question: why did serpent handling arise in Appalachia just as industrial capitalism changed Appalachian life so drastically? We conclude that the phenomenon of handling serpents is more complicated than a Saussurian sign.

[23] Another relevant theory of symbol and ritual is that of Victor Turner. In his book The Forest of Symbols (1967), Turner presents a method for dissecting a ritual and inferring the signifieds that lie behind the individual signifiers. First and foremost, a ritual and its symbols are situated within a social structure. Considering that social structures contain tensions and contradictions, one can expect the same things to be reflected in rituals (1967, 33; 1974, 45-46, 55). Likewise, social structures change, leading to changes in rituals (1967, 20, 112-113; 1974, 24, 37, 44; see also Sullivan 1984, 161).

[24] Next, the individual symbols are the building blocks of ritual, so that a full understanding of a ritual requires an understanding of what the symbols represent, and how they represent those thoughts (Turner 1967, 19, 45, 48, 132). "Every symbolic item," writes Turner, "is related to some empirical item of experience" (1968, 43). Different participants might interpret a symbol differently, and this must be taken into account, but ultimately the anthropologist analyzing a symbol ought to be able to trace one or more signifieds behind the signifier.

[25] This approach is reflected in a second style of interpreting serpent handling in which the serpent is a religious symbol of a secular evil. It is said that mountain people resorted to religion to "sanction and preserve the traditional order" (Billings 1990, 12). In general, Pentecostal Christianity attempts to make the gifts of the Holy Spirit approximately as prominent as the grace of salvation that comes from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pentecostal-Holiness is an Appalachian variant of the larger Pentecostal tradition which offered more emotion and less social hierarchy in their worship styles. Pentecostal-Holiness churches also serve small communities without being part of any larger church organization. According to W.J. Cash, "it is just in this decade of most rapid expansion of Southern industrialism, of speculation, and of the widening of the physical gulf between the classes that we find such sects (i.e., Pentecostal-Holiness churches) establishing themselves widely and solidly in the South—in the mill villages, in the poorest sections of town, and even in the countryside" (Cash 1969, 296; see also Rosten 1975 regarding the history of Pentecostal-Holiness groups). These Pentecostal-Holiness churches gained popularity by filling a "religious vacuum" created by rapid socio-economic changes (Parker 1969, 196). Pentecostal faith and practice, then, was a response to the "anomie that had resulted from the emerging capitalism" (Kimbrough 1995, 93). All of this is congruent with Anthony Wallace's well-established theory that religion may be used to symbolically recover a by-gone world that has been erased by social change (Wallace 1956).

[26] One feature of Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness faith was the view that the Devil had brought corrupt capitalism and its consequences to the mountains. Considering that the Holy Bible sometimes attributes the form of a snake to the Devil, and that dangerous snakes were a well-known part of the natural world in the mountains, then one can understand how some people were "primed to believe George Hensley when he preached that the snake was the Devil... The snake became a symbolic intermediary in the contest with the evil capitalists" (Kimbrough 1995, 95). We also note that many other religions use serpents as symbols of evil (Mundkur 1983; Birckhead 1993; Daugherty 1976).

[27] According to Stephen M. Kane, the serpent is interpreted by many Holiness people as:

Man's worst enemy in the animal kingdom, a creature governed by a more or less unremitting urge to hurt and kill ... The serpents of the present day are animated by the spirit of the Devil, or as some would have it, by a mean spirit akin to that of the Devil (Kane 1987, 115-127).

Then, when the serpent-as-Devil is equated with capitalism, the disintegration of traditional mountain life is morally equivalent to being expelled from the Garden of Eden. To be tricked out of the rights to one’s land is equivalent to eating the apple offered by the serpent: foolish and tragic, but also irresistibly tempting, because the agent of evil cleverly conceals the true consequences until it is too late to undo one's actions. "The capitalist system that coal mining introduced was a frightful distortion of the mountain social and economic order, and snake handling represented a form of supernatural retaliation" (Kimbrough 1995, 96). Handling serpents in church services provided mountain people with a symbolic sense of control over their lives, and power over the evil one who had stolen so much from them. "If not bitten, and if able to handle the snakes, the worshipers then gain 'victory' (over the Devil)" (Schwartz 1960, 410; see also Daugherty 1976). In the words of J. Kenneth Moore,

Snake Handlers are sending a defiant socio-economic message in their sermons, testimonials, and songs. This message, clothed in double entendre, states that though the Snake Handlers may not be economically powerful, they are spiritually powerful. This power, derived from God and proven through acts of faith, elevates them, they believe, to a position superior to those who have not found the true way to salvation (Moore 1968, 11-28).

As Victor Turner says of certain ritual dramas, the "structurally inferior" became the "morally and ritually superior"; "secular weakness" became "sacred power" (Turner 1968).

[28] This style of analysis is also found in a very eloquent and sympathetic account of serpent handling by Mary Lee Daugherty:

The handling of serpents is their way of confronting and coping with their very real fears about life and the harshness of reality as experienced in the mountains in years gone by and, for many, even today (Daugherty 1976, 235).

This view is entirely congruent with two important features of Victor Turner's analysis of ritual. First, ritual is generated by social tensions and contradictions, and it reflects those conditions, which is to say that a ritual is a dramatization of social conflict. Secondly, a complete understanding of a ritual requires one to trace back from a symbol to the meaning, or the multiple meanings, which it represents. And so we have a tension between poor Appalachian people and the capitalism which exploits them, plus a dramatization of that tension. We also have a chain of signification—serpent, Devil, evil, capitalism— which explains how the serpent-as-symbol fits into Appalachian Pentecostal belief and practice. Thus the unique ritual of handling serpents is connected to large-scale social phenomena, and a sacred event is articulated with secular processes.

[29] It is clear, we trust, that this line of thinking produces a more complete understanding of serpent handling than that offered by the basic Saussurian explanation. Even so, there is still a problem with the question of instrumentality. People often engage in ritual with the expectation that there will be a particular result: that they can either control their circumstances, or perhaps change their condition, by executing a ritual. In Turner's theory of ritual, one posits that a tension has arisen in the social order, and that a ritual is enacted to address that tension, and that in the end the ritual helps the community heal the tension or restore some kind of equilibrium (Turner 1967). But there is no such social healing in Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling. No one would seriously claim that serpent handling causes the owners of coal companies and poor white Appalachian people to appreciate each other, or that it results in good feelings about common interests. On the contrary, it seems to consolidate and intensify the tensions that set capital against proletariat in the Appalachian coal fields.

[30] Another theory about ritual as a reflection of social structure comes from Mary Douglas. In her book Purity and Danger, Douglas devotes much attention to the idea that the identities of social groups have boundaries and margins which are constantly threatened by external dangers. Her most vivid example is that of the Indian caste system: the members of a high-ranking caste worry that people from lower castes will intrude into their world and pollute it. These feelings of boundaries, margins, and intrusions are then expressed, says Douglas, in certain rituals, particularly bodily rituals and cooking rituals. The integrity of the human body stands for the integrity of the social order; the margins and boundaries of the body represent the margins and boundaries of the social system; and something which does not belong in the body symbolizes a threat to the social system. "The powers and dangers credited to social structure (are) reproduced in small on the human body," says Douglas (1966, 115). Ritual, then, is "an attempt to create and maintain a particular culture ... Rituals enact the form of social relations, and in giving these relations visible expression they enable people to know their own society" (1966, 128).

[31] That being so, a third style of interpretation offers a theory of instrumentality. It concurs with the idea that serpent-handling rituals arose as a result of capitalism reducing Appalachian people to a rural proletariat dispossessed from its lands, and then it intensifies that premise: the cultural and socio-economic deprivations of many Appalachian people are so severe that almost everything of value, whether material or symbolic, has been taken from them. How, then, can they keep something for themselves? How can they insulate something, anything, of mountain culture from the depredations of the outside world? How can they keep themselves from being totally absorbed by the large-scale processes that have caused them so much pain and loss?

[32] In this line of analysis, serpent handling is an answer to those questions of identity. The handling of dangerous snakes within Christian services is so peculiar, so exotic, so bizarre, that it will never be stolen from the impoverished people of Appalachia. So much else has been stolen, but this is one of the distinctive features of mountain life that will never be taken away. In the words of Bill J. Leonard, “serpent-handlers seem determined to resist domestication in both the text of scripture and their own religious practices” (Leonard 1999, 232).

[33] Thomas Burton writes that serpent handling gives its practitioners "a sense of community" which contrasts sharply with the difficult socio-economic realities that they must acknowledge: "It demonstrates at least to them that they are important, that they have power over obstacles, that they are supported by temporal as well as eternal forces" (Burton 1993, 130; see also Lawless 1988). Nathan Gerrard argues that serpent handling offers a "promise of holiness [which] is one of the few meaningful goals in a future dominated by the apparent inevitability of lifelong poverty and idleness" (Gerrard 1968, 22-28). Men who were once considered beneath the rest of society "become strong, brave, important, big, as they challenge deadly snakes and drink strychnine" (Sims 1988, 130).

[34] This kind of commentary makes sense in light of Mary Douglas's theory of symbols and rituals. To Douglas, symbols and rituals are instruments by which social groups establish and protect their own unique identities. They use these devices to define themselves as good and pure, while diagnosing outsiders as impure and dangerous (Douglas 1966, 128). Symbols and rituals, then, are a way to mark the boundary of a social order and defend it against intrusions from the external world. Note that in this case, it is the ritual of handling serpents, and not the snake itself, which establishes the serpent-handlers’ symbolic boundary. This, too, helps make sense of Appalachian serpent handling, for it attributes both a positive purpose to those who handle serpents in their worship services and a symbolic instrument for achieving that purpose.

[34] As we try to put serpent handling into a larger theoretical framework, we are satisfied that most interpretations of Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling conform either to Sausurre's concept of signs, Turner's theory of ritualized social conflict, or Douglas's view of symbolic boundaries, even though the various interpreters do not necessarily refer to those three theorists. Another approach is Weston LaBarre's psychoanalytic style, in which the snake is thought to represent the human phallus and the handling of the snake is an attempt to work out certain psychic problems (LaBarre 1962). We will not pursue this theory, however, for three reasons. First, it greatly neglects the obvious socio-economic forces which surround Appalachian serpent-handling. Secondly, we agree with James Peacock’s commentary on psychological analyses of Pentecostal-Holiness religion. Peacock does not deny that psychological processes may be relevant, but he emphasizes that the Pentecostal symbols and rituals must be taken into account. The various psychological approaches tend to overlook these elements:

[In] the psychological approach … little attention is given to the forms [of the symbols and rituals] themselves. Though [E.M.] Pattison purports to explain fundamentalist ritual, only 1½ pages of his 40-page article is devoted to describing that ritual. LaBarre likewise gives little attention to the forms of snake ritual. The assumption is apparently that ... if one knows the psychology, one need not treat the ritual in detail or in its own terms (Peacock 1984, 40-41).

Thirdly, even when one can specify some emotional features, we are uncomfortable with the idea that subconscious conflicts are resolved in conscious rituals: how can one consciously address a problem which is, by definition, subconscious? (See also Gerrard 1968 and Goodenough 1974).

[35] Recently there have been some interesting changes in Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling. Before describing them, we present some newer developments in ritual and symbolic theory which, we believe, will help make sense of our observations.

[36] The deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida offers a startling perspective on symbols and related phenomena. Derrida seized upon Saussure's observation that relations between signified and signifier are usually arbitrary, and he then radicalized that by saying that those relations are entirely unstable: one cannot know a signified from a signifier, says Derrida, since every signifier leads to nothing but more signifiers. "Fundamentally nothing escapes the movement of the signifier and ... in the last instance, the difference between signified and signifier is nothing" (Derrida 1976, 22-23). Ultimately there is no such thing as a "transcendental signified," according to Derrida, in which case language and culture are nothing but the interplay of many signifiers, leading only to other signifiers (Derrida 1972, 249).

[37] This idea, that culture is nothing more than a lot of mischief with signifiers, also has a less radical interpretation. Some might say that the relation between signifier and signified is unstable, but that the signified still exists, even if our perception of it is problematic. One problem in the instability of the signified/signifier relationship is that a given signifier might be switched from representing one signified to representing another. Not all contemporary symbolic theorists are deconstructionists to the radical degree of Jacques Derrida, but a concern about the instability of symbols is one of the main themes of current theories about symbols and rituals. We will return to this point when we present recent empirical observations of Pentecostal serpent handling in Appalachia.

[38] This brief commentary is certainly not a comprehensive review of all theories about symbols and symbolism, nor is it meant to be. It is highly selective, even in its discussions of Saussure, Turner, Douglas, and Derrida. We have not addressed the theories of Edmund Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, Jean Baudrillard, and other major theorists. We present our information this way both because many interpretations of serpent handling conform to the first three theories of symbols and rituals, and because our more recent observations echo the last one. As we return to Appalachian serpent handling and its interpretations, we ask our reader to keep in mind these four concepts:

(1) Saussure's sign, in which the signifier constitutes a clear, direct, and faithful representation of the signified;

(2) Turner's view that a ritual embodies social tensions, and that one must trace the meaning or meanings behind a symbol in order to understand a ritual;

(3) Douglas's theory that rituals represent a shared feeling that the integrity of the social order is threatened by external dangers;

(4) A hypothesis that a signifier can be unhooked from its usual signified, and then reattributed to a different signified.

That four-fold theoretical framework now enables us to make sense of some recent developments in Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling.

Religious and Secular Meanings in Appalachian Serpent Handling

[39] Three decades ago, a person who handled snakes in Pentecostal services told how he disliked attention:

I've been asked t' get out here and handle serpents and let 'em take my picture. I don't believe in nothin' like that. If somebody catches me in the spirit handlin' serpents, that's all right. But I don't get out here for show. The only time that I handle anything is when the Lord moves upon me— the Spirit of the Lord (Foxfire Magazine 1973, 40).

Subsequently, however, serpent handling in Appalachia has received attention in Time, Newsweek, the N.Y. Times, the National Inquirer, Playboy, and Hustler, to name only a few such national periodicals. There have been scholarly books, popular books, documentary films, and stories on radio and television. James Birckhead notes that one particular church in Tennessee, with fifty or less members, has appeared in three documentary films, two documentary videos, and three shorter television stories, not to mention two popular books, a volume of photos of Appalachia, a doctoral dissertation, seventy-five newspaper stories, various national magazine stories, and chapters in several books. Members of this church are seen from time to time on television talk shows and are heard on radio programs (Birckhead 1993, 174).

[40] How, then, do the more recent forms of media attention depict serpent handlers? Birckhead has written extensively about this media coverage, emphasizing how the media sensationalize serpent handling and dehumanize serpent handlers (Birckhead 1987; 1993; 1996). He traces the process by which a certain congregation is depicted in a BBC documentary in 1983 and an accompanying magazine article. The report sets the congregation in a rustic scene by presenting images of mountain farmers in overalls, but none of them are members of the church in question. It implies that the church is culturally isolated, but it ignores the fact that they tend to "work in the many manufacturing plants in the area, drive trucks, or work in the local tourist and hospitality industry" (1993, 183). The pastor is described as a "lumberjack," without disclosing that he is also an entrepreneur selling satellite dishes. The report shows an old photo of snake handling, but it is not from that church. The church had largely abandoned serpent handling and had explained this to the BBC crew, but the narrator accounts for the absence of snake handling by saying that they "wished to keep their secrets" from the outside world—even as they permitted the BBC to record their rituals and their lives. The report includes a scene of a man handling a snake outside the church, but he is from a different congregation, and in fact his behavior and his presence are unwelcome at the church featured in this "documentary" (Birckhead 1993, 182-84).

[41] Then there is Dennis Covington's 1995 book, Salvation on Sand Mountain, which received a great deal of favourable attention. Its genius was to forgo the usual scholarly treatments of serpent handling—symbolism, psychoanalysis, socio-economic theory, and so on—in favour of the more popular genre of personal confessional. And so Salvation tells its readers, look at me, I'm wondering about serpent handling; look at me, I'm hanging out with serpent handlers; and, in the climax of the book, look at me, I'm handling serpents. That much is harmless. After the climax, however, the author needs to exit the society of serpent handlers, for it is clear that he is not about to make a regular habit of holding poisonous snakes. He excuses himself from their world by suddenly discovering that he does not like serpent-handling folks after all. (See also Birckhead's commentary on Covington [Birckhead 1996]). We do not prefer that Covington takes up snakes again if he does not want to. Rather, we find it regrettable that the people who made his story so interesting are treated as disposable props.

[42] In another account of serpent handling, The Discovery Channel’s website posted a feature titled “Tabernacle of Death” in 1996. It included some straightforward documentary-style information, but it emphasized the pathetic and the macabre: a pastor is an unemployed roofer; serpent-handlers cannot spell “strychnine”; a pastor has been convicted of attempting to murder his wife, and so on. The titles and subtitles in the text are written in crude, jagged blood-red lettering, as might be written by a deranged person, or used in a horror film. The consistent theme of “Tabernacle of Death” is that Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling is macabre mixture of faith, danger, and crime.

[43] While “Tabernacle of Death” is more lurid than other accounts, there is nevertheless a general trend which frames Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handlers in a series of stereotypes, caricatures, genre conventions, and predictable stylistics, none of which are favourable to the people they describe (Birckhead 1993; 1996). Complementing them are some fictional accounts, including a 1986 performance of Jane Martin’s play, Talking With …, which included a scene of a Pentecostal-Holiness woman named Caro handling a serpent. Caro's monologue emphasizes that some kinds of snakes make "a good show," and others do not. Both the actress playing Caro and the play’s director said that they knew very little about Appalachian serpent handling, so they based the character on the dangerous and depraved Southerners in Deliverance and related tales of Southern Gothic. "Extreme fanaticism and sexuality," said the actress, was the key to portraying a serpent-handling woman (Birckhead 1993).

[44] In a similar vein, an episode of The X-Files, from January 2000, depicted a church of Tennessee serpent handlers, and contrasted them with a more conventional congregation. A killer is using poisonous snakes to murder his enemies, and the pastor of a local serpent-handling church is the prime suspect. The Holiness folk are loud, sweaty, and emotional during their services. The pastor has a crude Southern accent. His wife is said to have died from multiple snake-bites during a church service. In his overwrought sermon, the pastor justifies the practice in question: "People ask me why I handle snakes. It's because Scripture tells me to." The story hints that the pastor had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, and had gotten her pregnant. Supposedly this explains why the daughter renounced her father's congregation, and why the serpent handlers have kidnapped her to force her to rejoin their church. One of the FBI agents, Dana Scully, observes that "It's an intolerant culture," and her partner, Fox Mulder, replies that black-and-white morality may be very powerful for people who feel threatened by moral confusion. Meanwhile, the more conventional congregation is shown to be tolerant, modern, and nonjudgmental toward the young unmarried pregnant woman.

[45] By the end of the episode, it is revealed that the pastor of the tolerant church was the one who had gotten the young woman pregnant, and was also the murderer who had manipulated poisonous snakes to kill several people. So the serpent-handling preacher is absolved of impregnating his daughter and of killing several people, but he and his congregation are still guilty of being sweaty, emotional, intolerant and morally simplistic, to name only a few of their social vices. Furthermore, the real criminal was, like the Pentecostal-Holiness folk, an expert snake wrangler.

[46] Notice a certain trend that runs through these cases: the spiritual features of serpent handling are mocked, diminished, or ignored, while the dangers of holding poisonous snakes remain both prominent and exciting. If Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling is a combination of religious faith and snake wrangling, then the former feature receives less and less serious thought, while the latter feature becomes more and more prominent in media accounts. This style of representation can make celebrities of those serpent handlers who appear repeatedly in media accounts, but their celebrity status is derived more from their snake-wrangling habits than from their genuine religious motivations. After all, their religious motivations lead not to celebrity but to notoriety, since religion equals depravity, in these accounts.

[47] If this is so, how do serpent handlers react to this media phenomenon? How does media coverage of Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling change the feelings and the behaviour of serpent handlers? Birckhead tells of a pastor who demonstrated serpent handling to a newspaper reporter. He admitted that "he was not fully anointed when he grasped the rattler and dangled it over his head, but wanted to show it was real." Later he appeared on a television talk show, where he "handed a snake to a female saint who refused it because she did not have the anointing. She later stated that the pastor was cross with her for not taking up the serpent, and had told her that he did not have the anointing either and that he had wanted her to show that 'sisters took up serpents, too'" (Birckhead 1982, 5).

[48] To summarize: Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling is often a combination of religious faith and snake wrangling. Earlier interpretations, whether conforming to Saussure, Turner, or Douglas, paid serious attention to the forms and sources of religious faith, even when they connected them to socio-economic determinants. More recently, however, fictional, journalistic, and sensational stories tend to ignore or scorn the religious features, and focus instead on the exciting danger of handling poisonous snakes. How, then, do serpent handlers in Appalachia react to these changes?

[49] We pursue these questions by presenting some observations from ethnographic work undertaken by the first author, Keith G. Tidball, between 1996 and 1998. Ethnographic methods included participant-observation in worship services at a serpent-handling church in Eastern Kentucky; visits to the homes of members of the congregation; twenty-three interviews with church members; and, an analysis of 87 photographs from seven decades, mostly in newspapers and magazines, showing people handling serpents during church services. After presenting these observations, we will return to the question of how media affect ritual and symbol.

[50] Early in 1996, Appalachian serpent handling received a great deal of new media attention when a serpent handler died after being bitten during a Pentecostal-Holiness worship service in Southeastern Kentucky. Tidball and another researcher, Brian King, visited the church in question shortly thereafter. They began by going to the home of the church's pastor, a third-generation serpent handler, in a low income housing project, at a time when the pastor, his wife, and other members of the church were especially sensitive to lurid media accounts in light of the recent snake-bite death. The pastor's wife explained that "the real reason we are in church is to worship God. Snake handling comes after that. We believe in it, but it's not everything." In her view, outsiders were only interested in hearing about the snakes, and not about the other signs presented in Mark, e.g., healing the sick. Those comments seemed to indicate that serpent handling should be firmly placed in a context of Christian values and beliefs. The family's living room contained many photographs of serpents and of snake-handling services, plus a stuffed snake, coiled and poised to strike, with fangs bared, on top of the television. But the room contained no Christian iconography per se.

[51] Likewise, the pastor's contributions to the conversation were heavily weighted toward the nonreligious features of dealing with snakes, including how to obtain them, how to keep them healthy, and how to dispose of them. Another frequent topic was snake bites. The pastor had recently recovered after nearly dying from a bite that had kept him bedridden for a week. He spoke with admiration about Dewey Chafin, a Pentecostal serpent handler in Jolo, West Virginia, who is famous for having survived more than 120 snake-bites. Mr. Chafin is said by scholars who know him to be very modest, not bragging about his dangerous experiences with snakes. But he is a hero to other Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handlers, despite his own modesty.

[52] These initial observations raised a provocative question: with all that has been said and written regarding Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling, why were these images of snakes, and words about snake handling, not closely connected to religious symbols? Were these snake symbols disarticulated from Christian meanings? If so, how and why?

[53] Before we pursue that topic, we can affirm that serpent handling was indeed a part of this church's Christian rituals. That first visit included a service which began with about an hour of music from three acoustic guitars, some cymbals and some tambourines. Gradually the rhythms quickened, the volume increased, and the members' movements grew more animated. Then two young women who were singing ecstatically on the altar platform noticed that the pastor was gently shaking a wooden box next to the altar. Their expressions changed and they hurried off the platform. One of the male members stretched a rope between the altar platform and the rest of the church. The pastor raised two snakes heavenward, then tossed the larger snake to the man who had roped off the front. That man smiled at the snake, caressed it, and held it high.

[54] The serpent handling electrified the congregation. They shouted, and waved their hands about, and danced in place. The music stopped abruptly, and the pastor launched into a fiery sermon about faith and resistance to vice, while a snake slowly writhed in his hand and coiled itself around his wrist. Then he and the other fellow returned the two snakes to their box, as the congregation breathed a collective sigh of relief. Other services on other occasions had no serpent handling. It seems impossible to tell beforehand when the snakes would be brought out, although they were usually on hand in their cages by the altar.

[55] That service and others during the next two years contained an array of tangible symbols: snakes, a bottle of poison, musical instruments, olive oil, wine, and bread. There were no large crosses, stained-glass windows, or Christian flags.

[56] After the occasion of those initial observations, the pastor got a better job and a higher salary with a coal company, whereupon he and his family were able to live in a single-family house and buy a newer car. A visit to the new home included a gracious tour by the pastor and his wife. Next to the television was a library of videocassettes: the pastor's serpent tapes, as he called them, from various television interviews. The stuffed snake sat prominently on a curio cabinet in the dining room, and the hallway included two large collages of the pastor and others handling serpents. Most of the photos, he explained, were copies that reporters had sent him. In the bedroom was a large wooden snake pen containing several poisonous snakes, close beside the bed, and in the kitchen freezer was a recently deceased canebrake rattler. The tour included a viewing of television stories about the pastor from local and national TV stations, especially the network tabloid program A Current Affair.

[57] After a service on another Sunday, the pastor spoke at length about snake lore. There were three ways to get snakes, he explained: (1) trading them with other snake-handlers, or receiving them as gifts; (2) buying them from strangers or brokers; and, (3) capturing them in the woods. The first method was the most common, he explained. Snake-handling pastors from neighbouring states make up a network for trading poisonous reptiles, giving and receiving according to need. Numerous times after Sunday services, the male members of the congregation would huddle together to discuss snakes. Where the new snakes came from; how one likes to eat one kind of prey, while another prefers a different meal; which congregations need to replace a snake or two; and so on.

[58] Buying snakes from strangers or brokers happened somewhat less often. One reason was that if the stranger was a sensation-seeking reporter or an undercover police officer, then the buyer and his congregation could suffer. The pastor emphasized that he was very cautious in these dealings. He would drive to a pre-arranged location away from the church to meet the seller.

[59] Often, said the pastor, the snake would be held in a burlap bag or a pillowcase. He found this amusing. To experienced snake wranglers, whether religious or not, a pillowcase is so thin that it does not prevent a poisonous snake from biting the wrangler through the fabric. The pastor explained that he would reach into the bag—he did not say how—and pull the snake out to inspect it. He loved picking up those snakes, he claimed. This raised an interesting question: if one is bitten in those circumstances, as opposed to receiving a bite during a worship service, does it reflect one's Christian faith the same way? In that case he would be "on his own," he said, for it would be outside of the "anointing of Jesus."

[60] The third method, capturing snakes in the woods, took place only in the Spring. That is when the snakes first come out from their shelters, and are still lethargic. Often, groups of snake handlers hunt together, and when they capture a serpent they handle it spontaneously. After obtaining the snakes, they had to be contained in a safe place. One is a wooden transport case, about eighteen inches wide by thirty inches long and four inches deep, with two hinged doors on the top, which are covered with plexiglass or fine-mesh chicken wire. These snake boxes, as they are called, are handmade, and often have scriptural passages or inspirational slogans carved into them. Another container is a holding pen, about three feet by five feet by four feet, also with two hinged doors on top. These pens are filled with wood chips and logs to simulate the snakes' natural terrain, and heated with a utility lamp and a 75-watt bulb. A snake crook—an instrument like a golf putter with a hook on the end—is used to move the serpents between the boxes and the pens. While the snakes are held in captivity, they are treated as pets and are well cared for. They are fed a rat or a hamster every couple of days, and do not require much maintenance otherwise.

[61] After a snake dies, it is frozen as soon as possible. Afterwards it might be stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist, but it might also be skinned to make a belt or a guitar strap. The pastor and other male members of the church have shown in their conversations that they are very familiar with snake behavior and ecology, including sexual dimorphism, foraging theory, predator/prey relations, perceptual mechanisms, mating systems, habitat selection strategies, thermal ecology, venom chemistry, and other topics. In a memorable demonstration, the pastor had a viper strike at his wallet, so that one could see how quickly they bite. When a visible amount of venom remained on the wallet, the pastor explained that the venom lost its strength when exposed to oxygen.

[62] Dennis Covington affirms the same kind of thing elsewhere: serpent handlers are "always trading specimens back and forth. It appears to be a ritual after services for handlers to give snakes to one another, like an offering of brandy or after-dinner mints or hand-rolled cigars in other circles ... They often become objects of affection in the homes of handlers and their families" (Covington 1995, 146).

[63] At various times, the pastor affirmed that to handle snakes is to demonstrate, in Biblical signs, that one is a true believer. On other occasions he spoke at length about the personal enjoyment of snake lore and snake wrangling. Other times he gave a third motivation: to promote and preserve mountain culture. We do not imply anything pejorative in this. There is nothing wrong with multiple motivations. Nor is it unusual that those who handle serpents know a lot about the behavioural ecology of snakes. Rather, we raise this point to indicate that the religious features of Pentecostal serpent handling must co-exist with its secular features. The latter are shaped largely by strong media influences, and so we ought to understand what role they play in this ritual practice.

[64] As we develop the idea that media-driven secular meanings are intruding upon the traditional spiritual meanings that have inspired serpent-handling practices, we understand that our interpretation requires more substantiation than the words and actions of one pastor. We now draw attention to two kinds of recent changes in Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling that make sense in light of our interpretation. The first concerns the direct interaction between snakes and snake handlers during this ritual practice. In photographs from the 1920s through the 1940s, those who handled serpents during church services usually had entranced, stricken facial expressions as they looked upon the vipers in their hands. This, of course, is congruent with the idea that the serpent embodies evil. But during services at the church in question in Eastern Kentucky in the late 1990s, the snake handlers typically look at the serpents with friendly smiles as they hold them. They caress the creatures often, and in one especially memorable instance, a member kisses the snake he holds. Consider how different this is from treating a snake as a repulsive and despicable creature.

[65] In the same vein, a photograph in Thomas Burton’s book, Serpent-Handling Believers, shows a believer’s arms cradling a Bible, but the man also shows plainly that he has a tattoo of a rattlesnake on his right forearm (Burton 1993, 170). If the image of the Bible establishes his credentials as a Christian, and if the rattlesnake indicates the embodiment of evil, then how could the believer be proud of both at the same time? He cannot. Instead, we interpret this photo to mean that he is showing both that he is a Christian and that he is comfortable with dangerous snakes, which is to say that in this case, serpent handling is less a confrontation with the devil than a source of pride.

[66] Then there is significance of being bitten. It is clear from both scholarly and popular descriptions that, in the earlier phases of Pentecostal serpent handling, it was a sign of spiritual strength to handle serpents without being bitten. Thus did a saintly worshipper demonstrate a holy power over the devil. In that understanding, to be bitten by a snake during a church service was an indication that one's spiritual status was not what it should be. A death resulting from a worship-related snakebite was a terrible dilemma. The victim had exhibited righteousness in belonging to a Pentecostal-Holiness church and handling serpents, but his or her suffering implied that the power of the devil had been stronger than the spiritual goodness of the person and the church.

[67] Now, however, some serpent handlers gain fame and prestige for being bitten multiple times and surviving those injuries. Dewey Chafin of West Virginia is the best known of the Appalachian serpent handlers, for people say with admiration that he has experienced more than 120 incidents of being bitten by poisonous snakes. And, in the Kentucky congregation described in this paper, men are proud of their bites, their scars, and their recoveries. They talk freely of these experiences. One male member can recount eight bites, including one from a copperhead which left two fingers immobilized on his right hand. This, too, stands in stark contrast to the religious meanings that steered the earlier history of Pentecostal serpent handling.

[68] The habit of affectionately caressing these dangerous creatures during church services is incomprehensible in light of the early history of Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling, which sometimes included treading on the vipers. The same is true of taking pride in being bitten multiple times. Both of these practices invert the well-established and often-observed symbolic relationships in which serpent handling constitutes a righteous confrontation with evil.

[69] And yet, the people who do these things are surely Pentecostal-Holiness Christians, and they trace their own practices to the earlier days of Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling. To make sense of this puzzle of symbols, we must take into account a recent influence which can profoundly affect the ways people see themselves, the ways they want to be seen, and the ways they employ symbols of themselves. This is the kind of media coverage which has descended upon some Appalachian serpent-handling churches. With all due respect to earlier observations and earlier scholarly interpretations, we argue that a full understanding of contemporary Appalachian Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling must recognize that the secular media have the power to confer a desirable social status on people who have been socio-economically deprived and oppressed. To be featured in an on-going series of newspaper and television stories about serpent handling is to be changed from being almost a nobody to being a celebrity.

[70] The reader may object that this kind of status is trivial, superficial, transitory, and exploitive. We do not dispute that. But we insist that, to many people, being a media celebrity—even a minor or local celebrity—is an extremely desirable status according to the cultural values of today's America. To be seen often on TV, and to be mentioned often in the print media, is really to be someone.

[71] The catch is that one cannot ordinarily expect to have one's celebrity status on one's own terms. For the most part, the media accounts of serpent handling in Appalachia do not do justice to the Christian theology that surrounds Mark 16:17-18. Nor do these reports include hermeneutic lessons about chains of signification like serpent-devil-evil-capitalism. These stories are uninterested in the subtleties of religious ritual and are not likely to tell stories about capital versus proletariat. Instead, they centre on the excitement of willingly flirting with dangerous snakes, whereupon they depict Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handlers in terms of sensational snake wrangling. This kind of representation de-Christianizes these people by separating their distinctive practice from its religious context, so that they are equated with the side-show snake wranglers of traveling carnivals. And then, if some Pentecostal serpent handlers respond favourably to this secular form of celebrity status, and if they behave so as to maintain and enhance it, then a peculiar cultural process is well under way. Gone is the feeling that the serpent symbolizes the evil institutions that have robbed people of their rightful status; replacing it is the feeling that the serpent is the source of a desirable status. Serpent handling is more a path to celebrity than to sainthood. The media construction of this already-marginalized religion thus tends to eviscerate its spiritual meaning, and to replace it with a secular celebrity phenomenon.

[72] This interpretation, we believe, brings together numerous observations which are otherwise incongruous in relation to each other: (1) the early history of Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling, including the religious meanings that animated the symbolism of that practice; (2) the invasive, prurient, and sensational attention from recent television, radio, newspapers, magazines and films about serpent handlers in Appalachia; (3) the pastor's view of himself in relation to poisonous snakes, such that his genuine Christian belief must make room for his secular celebrity (which is also shared by some other men in the same congregation); (4) the habit of affectionately caressing the snakes that previously embodied so much evil; and (5) the pride which some serpent handlers derive from their multiple snake bites.

[73] Our views also imply a problem of a fault line between liturgy and performance in the handling of serpents. This practice used to be entirely religiously-inspired liturgy for the spiritual benefit of small congregations. There have also been snake wranglers in carnivals who entertain visitors for entirely secular reasons. But if it is true that secular entertainment considerations are infiltrating into Pentecostal-Holiness practices, and if media are present to portray these practices, then liturgy and performance could be present in the same church services.

[74] It is our hope that others who observe and interpret Appalachian Pentecostal serpent handling will be alert to the issues and information we have presented here, and will notice whether serpent handling is changing in other congregations as well. If so, it is worth discovering which churches embrace and internalize secular celebrity, and why, and which adhere to a more traditional, strictly religious experience of serpent handling. Is this changing Pentecostal-Holiness theology? How?

Coda

[75] We conclude by recalling the idea that serpent handling is a cultural device for protecting a part of one's identity from being co-opted by the external forces which have stolen almost everything else, both material and symbolic, from the lives of low-income white Appalachian people: that Pentecostal-Holiness serpent handling is purposely so peculiar that it will never be stolen by outsiders. We find it convincing that, at one time, this was one of the motivations behind serpent handling. It is not realistic, however, to expect this to remain static. Some kinds of attention, whether labeled journalism or entertainment, possess a powerful cultural alchemy which co-opts serpent handling.      

[76] And so we interpret these developments as a case of unstable relations between signifier and signified. The ritual of serpent handling becomes detached from its religious meanings, and connected instead to the secular ethos of achieving fame. The signifier/signified relationship has come undone. The signifier—a practice of handling dangerous snakes—is the same, but the signified is very different. This happens both in some nonfictional journalism (newspaper and newsmagazine stories, television news programs, film documentaries, and books), and in forms of entertainment which owe nothing to the standards or values of journalism (Talking With ..., Tabernacle of Death and The X-Files). Whether journalistic or fictional, many of these accounts indicate that serpent handlers are either religious in a most macabre way, or secular in a frivolous way. If those who handle serpents in their Pentecostal-Holiness liturgies had to choose between these two styles of representation, it would be a grim choice indeed.

[77] But can serpent handlers really choose? These various styles of representation appear repeatedly without needing permission from those they represent. And so a special symbol of Appalachian culture is being expropriated twice by external cultural influences: first when some Pentecostal-Holiness Christians internalize a secular image of themselves as snake-wrangling celebrities, and again when serpent handling serves as a code for the supposed depravity of Appalachian people. A hundred years ago, the clever theft of mineral rights by coal companies left some mountain people with little more than an exotic symbolic practice to call their own. Now even that unique practice is being gobbled up by sensation-seeking media.

[78] We are not cheerleaders for serpent handling. It is not for us to say whether people should include poisonous snakes in their worship services, or whether they should speak with reporters, or whether they should enjoy being celebrities. Our lesson, rather, is an observation about a relation between local, distinctive cultures and the larger, cosmopolitan media that surround them. If national and international stories about serpent handling and other unique practices constitute a kind of connection between a distinctive culture and the larger cosmopolitan civilization around it, then we can say that Appalachia is being connected to the rest of the world. Its cultural isolation is eroding. But this is happening almost entirely on terms established by the cosmopolitan media, with little regard for the interests or values of the people of Appalachia. Surely there are better ways for serpent handlers and other Appalachian people to have identities in relation to the worlds beyond the mountains.

Acknowledgments

We are most grateful to these people whose comments and advice have assisted us: Mary Anglin, Emily Bernier, Dwight Billings, R. James Birckhead, Don Davis, Benjamin Gallagher, Brian King, L. Eric Lassiter, Peter Little, Ron Pen, Celeste Ray, Scott Schwartz, Shauna Scott, and Monica Udvardy. The imperfections of our paper are our responsibility, not theirs.

We also thank the members of the Pentecostal-Holiness congregation which is described in detail in this paper. They were extremely generous in talking about their lives and what serpent handling means to them. In the history of research on Appalachian serpent handling, some writers are very protective of the people they study; in other cases there are hard feelings when Pentecostal-Holiness Christians conclude that they have been misused. With that in mind, we hope we will not be adding to the kinds of negative portrayals that have displeased some people. We know that some accounts of serpent handling use confidentiality to protect their informants, while others freely name the informants and their churches. We know that it is not realistic to promise total anonymity, but we maintain a measure of confidentiality: the members of the congregation can and will decide for themselves whether to identify themselves in this article or in any other descriptions of them.

Finally, we acknowledge generous funding to Keith G. Tidball from the University of Kentucky Research and Creativity Grants, which greatly assisted this research.

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