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A Cultural and Social History of Appalachian Snake-Handling, 1910-1955

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A Cultural and Social History of Appalachian Snake-Handling, 1910-1955 “AND THESE SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW”: A CULTURAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF APPALACHIAN SNAKE-HANDLING, 1910-1955 A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Western Carolina University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History. By Jonathan Williams Director: Dr. Mary Ella Engel Associate Professor of History History Department Committee Members: Dr. Alexander Macaulay, History Dr. Richard Starnes, History April 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank my committee members for their assistance. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Ella Engel for her constant patience and encouragement. I would like to dedicate this thesis to Caroline Swanton and Denny Williams. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION: ............................................................................................................5 Chapter 1: “WHO THEN CAN BE SAVED”: THE CULTURAL CREATION OF APPALACHIAN SNAKE-HANDLING..........................................................................40 Chapter 2: “AND THESE SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW THEM”: THE DENOMINATIONAL GROWTH AND EVOLUTION OF SNAKE-HANDLING IN APPALACHIA .................................................................................................................86 Chapter 3: “GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY”: THE EVOLUTION AND EXPANSION OF APPALACHIAN SNAKE-HANDLING DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION ............................................................................................................... 134 Chapter 4; “IN THIS WORLD THERE WILL BE TROUBLE, BUT BE YE NOT AFRAID”: CONFLICT, VIOLENCE, AND APPALACHIAN SNAKE-HANDLING IN THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY ............................................................................ 177 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................210 BIBLIOGRAPHY: .........................................................................................................224 ABSTRACT “AND THESE SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW”: A CULTURAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF APPALACHIAN SNAKE-HANDLING, 1910-1955 Jonathan Williams, M. A. Western Carolina University (April 2013) Director: Mary Ella Engel This paper seeks to understand the creation of a distinct snake-handling culture within Appalachia during the first half of the twentieth-century. As Appalachian snake-handlers molded and created this distinct religious culture between 1910 and 1955 they created a distinct identity in an attempt to make sense of the social and economic battle ground around them. This identity resulted from a distinct cultural process rooted within the power struggle between a regional population (Appalachian natives) and external forces (American modernity), as well as a subsequent desire for social stability and empowerment. Snake-handlers inside and outside of the region turned towards fundamentalist Christianity and Pentecostal doctrine as an escape from the pressures from outside forces like industrialization and mainline Christian ideology within America. They handled snakes as a form of protest to the direction of these outside forces— challenging their cultural exploitation by crafting a set of religious rituals that meet their specific cultural and religious needs. This paper approaches the topic of Appalachian snake-handling from the lens of cultural history. It explores the detailed ideologies and power struggles that motivated the creation of snake-handling, and highlights why the movement occurred inclusively within the Appalachian region itself. 5 INTRODUCTION Tension ran high along the state line between eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia on September 24, 1914. Residents from around the countryside, and the local population hub of Chattanooga, flocked to the little town of Cleveland, Tennessee to observe the religious spectacles of George Hensley.1 Brother Hensley—a fiery Church of God minister who teetered the line between saint and drunkard—cultivated renown throughout southern Appalachia as a worker of miracles and supernatural displays of divine power. He was a strong man, though not overtly broad, with a handsome face marked by an ugly scar from a knife fight with a jealous suitor who ran off with his first wife. Illiterate, Hensley made up for his lack of education with his oratory, claiming fervently that “his sermons were totally unrehearsed…and that the Lord told him what to say.”2 As the preacher approached his audience that September night, he did so with a powerful Pentecostal message that stressed mountain holiness, Biblical inerrancy, and most importantly—the handling of deadly serpents. The tent meeting began smoothly, drawing the condemnation of skeptics and unbelievers. One such dissenter, Oscar Igou, made known his disbelief and “attempted to bluff the Holy Rollers…by bringing in a five foot rattler, with five rattles and a button.” This act failed to faze Hensley and his followers who picked up the snake and “handled it with impunity.” After the snake was passed between the men, the crowd was introduced 1 “He Can Handle Snakes But Will He Walk the River?,” Chattanooga Daily Times, September 24, 1914. 3. 2 David L. Kimbrough, Taking Up Serpents: Snake Handlers of Eastern Kentucky (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 42. 6 to yet another spiritual performance as “a 10-year-old child…in an apparent trance from the influence of Hensley, picked up the evil-looking reptile and played with it for several minutes.”3 With this, Hensley and his snake-handling Pentecostal followers had succeeded in their goal. In their minds, the hecklings of unbelief and dissent had submitted to the dictates of God and the Holy Spirit. The power to handle poisonous serpents and escape unharmed proved the authority of their Gospel to an Appalachian people all too consumed by defeat and exploitation. It offered a power that could elevate impoverished Appalachians out of spiritual and physical bondage, and create, in return, a useable religious identity that promised divine victory. When analyzing the cultural impact of snake-handling within Appalachia during the twentieth-century, it is important to note that the movement and its development of religious identity did not exist within a social vacuum. Snake-handling, like all forms of religion, functioned as a cultural institution that molded to surrounding social pressures. The doctrine of the movement, for example, shifted considerably between 1914 and the 1970s in reaction to the growth of such social factors as industrialization, modernism, and nationalism. These theological changes corresponded smoothly with a gradual evolution in other aspects of the movement ranging from church structure, church leadership, and morality. In essence, snake-handling operated side-by-side with the social evolution of the region. It responded to the changes that impacted the direction of mountain life, and provided a clear religious outlet for a number of disenfranchised mountain folk. It is at the heart of this social flux that the true impact of snake-handling makes its mark on the 3 “He Can Handle Snakes But Will He Walk the River?,” Chattanooga Daily Times, September 24, 1914, 3. 7 direction of Appalachian culture. Moreover, it is within this social flux that the historian can truly grasp the roots of snake-handling culture and the malleable religious identity that it proscribed within mountain communities. With this said it is important to note that the modern religious application of snake-handling that developed during the 1960s and 1970s exists as a movement far removed from the public revivals and healing services made popular by George Hensley and other itinerant handling ministers during the early 1900s. The spectacles created by these early preachers were largely public events that drew large crowds and large responses by mountain leaders and newspapers. Early snake-handlers publicly promoted their Gospel during the 1910s and 1920s because of the initial fervor associated with the newness of the movement; however, these believers also functioned within a common fundamentalist mindset that dominated many early twentieth-century Christian groups. Convinced that Christ’s return was quickly approaching, early snake-handlers within the Church of God (Cleveland) and the Church of God of Prophesy raced throughout the Appalachian Mountains beckoning all to come under their fundamentalist driven professions of faith. These strict doctrines supported the pre-millennial Second Coming of Christ, but they also proclaimed a literal interpretation of the Bible that stressed the subjugation of American and Appalachian society under the mandates of the Holy Word. Within this mode of belief then, it becomes permissible to see how snake-handling leader A.J. Tomlinson stood before his Appalachian following in 1913 and supported the public handling of serpents while subsequently denouncing the social impact of labor unions and 8 business fraternities as the physical “mark of the beast in hand or forehead.” 4 To Tomlinson and other snake-handlers within the region, the operations of society were subservient to the dictates of God and the Bible. Snake-handling religion functioned as a public tool that shifted and moved society to its proper position in God’s Kingdom. Thus, the movement operated as the identifying mark of Christ that proclaimed salvation for both the common mountain believer
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