On a sweltering afternoon in late May 2012, in a remote corner of West Virginia, Pastor Mack Wolford was preaching to his spellbound flock with all his usual flamboyance — and his favourite prop to hand.
He’d had ‘Old Yeller’ for years and trusted the large timber rattlesnake, one of North America’s most dangerous reptiles, despite its long fangs and highly venomous bite which experts say causes excruciating pain in victims. Wolford wasn’t afraid — even though aged 15 he’d witnessed his own father, another ‘serpent handler’, die in agony from a snake bite.
During the outdoor ‘homecoming’ service which Wolford held annually in a state park in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, he sang, spoke in tongues and brandished the snake, played with it and even stepped on it in a dramatic demonstration of his faith in the power of the Divine.
The role of snakes — though they prefer the more Biblical description of ‘serpents’ — in the Church Of God With Signs Following is rooted in two passages in the Gospels of Mark and Luke in the King James Bible
Then suddenly, according to one witness, ‘an eerie stillness fell over the picnic site’. One by one the congregation realised their pastor had been bitten — Old Yeller had sunk its fangs deep into his thigh after he sat beside it.
It wasn’t the first time. The 44-year-old had survived at least four previous snake bites. Anxious not to dismay his flock, which included family members he was hoping to draw back to God, Wolford kept on playing with Old Yeller, holding the creature up and examining it.
But as the venom coursed through his veins, he soon became unable to stand. His shirt grew dark with sweat. He tried to insist that the service went on without him, but it came to a halt.
For believers, in what some regard as the craziest fringe of America’s Bible Belt, handling venomous snakes is as key to their worship as reciting the Lord’s Prayer is for members of more conventional denominations
Supported on either side, he was helped away from the site — not to get medical attention but to wait and see if God wanted him to live or die that day.
Pastor Wolford was a member of the Church Of God With Signs Following. For him and his fellow believers in what some regard as the craziest fringe of America’s Bible Belt, handling venomous snakes is as key to their worship as reciting the Lord’s Prayer is for members of more conventional denominations.
Followers of this small but fiercely devout Pentecostal Christian sect also drink poisons, such as strychnine and carbolic acid, or hold flames to their skin to show their faith.
For the most part they reject medical help, leaving it to God to decide if they are bitten, poisoned, live or die. More than 100 documented deaths from snake bites attest to the fact that this is no fairground trick with defanged snakes.
A handwritten sign on the altar warns members of the consequences of picking up snakes and drinking strychnine
Now a book, Test Of Faith: Signs, Serpents, Salvation, has been published by a photographer who spent months documenting Wolford’s uncompromising ministry before witnessing his dramatic end.
Lauren Pond photographed the pastor as he handled the rattlesnake before and after the fatal bite, noting that there had been an ‘odd sense of urgency’ to proceedings compared to previous handlings she had witnessed. Perhaps Old Yeller sensed it, too.
Pond followed Wolford’s family back to his mother-in-law’s house, a 90-minute drive away, where she recorded the preacher’s final hours.
He lay on a couch, semi-conscious and writhing under a sheet as his family surrounded him offering prayers and playing guitars. Not praying for his recovery, mind, but for God’s will to be done.
Mack Wolford was bitten at around 2.15pm and by late afternoon it was clear his condition was worsening.
Urgent appeals went out on Facebook, begging people to pray. Pond watched helplessly as his breathing became laboured, and his skin turned red and blotchy.
He was moved into the kitchen so he could be closer to the air conditioner in the oppressive heat.
‘Then, as Mack’s family members began asking him if they should summon the paramedics, I heard him whisper the unexpected, haunting words: “Call them,” ’ the photographer recalled.
He died at about 11pm — nearly nine hours after being bitten — as an ambulance drove him to hospital.
Pond described Mack Wolford, who kept eight deadly snakes in his spare room, as ‘a victim of his unwavering faith, but also a testament to it’.
His family and friends — most of whom had been present at his final service — were devastated but unshaken in their belief.
‘It’s still the Word, and I want to go on doing what the Word says,’ his mother said.
Mr Wolford was laid to rest next to his father, with snakes being handled by mourners over his open grave.
At his memorial service, his brother Chris, who had taken over the ministry, preached that Jesus had laid down his life for us so ‘we ought to be willing to do the same for Him’.
Fundamentalist: Jamie Coots handled snakes as part of his Christian faith for over 21 years. He died in 2014 after being bitten by one and refusing to go to hospital
The role of snakes — though they prefer the more Biblical description of ‘serpents’ — in the Church Of God With Signs Following is rooted in two passages in the Gospels of Mark and Luke in the King James Bible.
The first, Mark 16: 17-18, says: ‘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.’
In Luke 10:19, it reads ‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’ Mainstream Pentecostalists take the view that these are just metaphors and roundly condemn serpent handling — but for a small, fervent minority it is a key part of the celebration of their belief.
According to Ralph Hood, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee and America’s pre-eminent authority on serpent handling, the practice has waxed and waned in popularity since it began in 1909, in the remote communities of the southern Appalachians, the great mountain chain that runs down the eastern U.S. In its heyday in the Forties and Fifties, the movement boasted several thousand members.
Today, it is a secretive, mainly underground movement, in large part because snake handling is only legal in West Virginia; other Appalachian states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, have banned the practice in public spaces.
Some local police forces are known to tolerate it elsewhere, and the sect’s younger preachers are using social media sites such as Facebook to spread the serpent message.
Dr Hood estimates that around 125 churches now practise serpent handling but stresses that most are tiny affairs, boasting an average of 10 members and based in people’s homes or abandoned buildings, including petrol stations. Members tend to be born into the church rather than converted, he says.
Although the Bible Belt — the stronghold of evangelical Protestantism in America — stretches across much of the country, serpent handlers have always been confined to the Appalachian areas of the southern states.
There, small, remote and fiercely insular communities have a proud history of defying convention, says Dr Hood. Ironically, this is the same region that gave rise to the distillation of illicit homemade and often toxic ‘moonshine’ liquor.
The rare Christian tradition of snake handling is based on an interpretation of the King James Bible in Mark 16: 17-18
Local people will rally round the serpent handlers even if they don’t believe. It also helps that such communities are well accustomed to poisonous snakes, which are rife in the region.
The ‘St Paul’ figure of serpent handling was George Hensley, a 20th-century moonshine maker from Tennessee who became a Pentecostal minister.
Preaching in churches where devils were routinely cast out of worshippers — who would jump over pews and speak in tongues — Hensley became obsessed by the reference in Mark’s gospel to snakes.
He took it as a commandment, once plucking a rattlesnake from a box as he ended a sermon and passing it around his congregation. What developed was a circus-like atmosphere as other preachers took up the practice, emptying sackfuls of snakes on to church floors and challenging worshippers to handle them.
People looking for a miraculous sign became convinced they’d found one as the snake handlers were, by and large, rarely bitten.
Today, serpent-handling preachers keep dozens of snakes — generally indigenous rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths (all huge and venomous) but have been known to add cobras to their menageries. They will take them to their ‘hell and damnation’ services, where they are kept in wooden boxes at the pulpit.
Those congregation members who feel ‘moved’ by the Holy Spirit are allowed to come up and take them out, sometimes several at a time, holding them close to their faces or around their necks as they dance and sway. Worshippers can also drink from jars containing the pesticide strychnine or other poisons such as lye (a drain unblocker) and carbolic acid. (Strychnine is the most popular tipple, and there have been fewer than a dozen recorded deaths.)
In the Bible, Mark 16: 17-18, says: ‘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’
There’s often also a propane torch which worshippers can light and direct at their hands and feet.
Contrary to what the Bible passages claim about God’s protection, serpent handlers don’t believe they won’t get bitten or die.
‘When everything goes well they just thank the Lord for another day,’ says Dr Hood. ‘They call it “supremacy over the serpent”.’ Dr Hood, who has been monitoring serpent handlers in action for more than 30 years, says he’s seen ministers preaching for an hour with a rattlesnake wrapped around their neck. He’s also watched believers get bitten and even interviewed them as they died.
There’s a pattern, he says. At first they tend to fret that they may have done serpent handling out of misplaced pride; then the reality sinks in that they are going to die. Finally, they make their peace and say: ‘Lord, your will be done.’
‘I’ve seen people die quietly and calmly reflecting that, from their perspective, God is calling them home,’ Dr Hood says.
He adds: ‘Like Tibetan Buddhists who spend all their lives preparing for death, there are people in Appalachia who believe that what really matters is how you live at the moment of death.’
To dismiss them as simply ‘crazy, ignorant or backward’ is unfair, he insists.
Dying an excruciatingly painful and lingering death, sometimes stretching over three or four days, from an untreated snake bite is certainly not a pleasant way to go. However, there may be some method in all this madness.
If held properly, venomous snakes are relatively safe. Experts say the preachers clearly know how to do it. Serpent handlers even tread on the reptiles and don’t get bitten.
Dr Hood compares the ritual to Russian Roulette. Eventually, the snake will lash out, he says, but even then, the bite may not be fatal. Most preachers have missing fingers or atrophied hands where they’ve been bitten and the nerve endings have been destroyed.
The most recent fatality, in 2014, was Jamie Coots, a Kentucky pastor who hosted a reality TV show called Snake Salvation. When a rattlesnake sank its fangs into his hand, he smiled, and said: ‘Oh Lord.’
An ambulance was called but one of his friends blocked the door to the paramedics while Mr Coots’s wife signed a form declining treatment.
For their part, serpent handlers have talked of how holding the creatures gives them an intense spiritual ‘high’. Many certainly look like they’re in a trance as they weave around clutching their bizarre dancing partners.
However, they fear their way of worship is dying out as their children forsake the old ways, and the deaths of well-known preachers such as Coots and Wolford have generated adverse publicity.
There are American Christians who regret their decline, arguing that serpent handlers have something to teach about religious zeal. Many more, surely, won’t mourn the demise of such a literal and occasionally catastrophic reading of the Word of God.