Kentucky snake handling preacher, reality TV star dead from snake bite

[struggle4progress]

20. Snake-handling "Christianity" is a cult that appeared in the Bible Belt only about a century ago

Most people do not seem particularly sympathetic to the idea, and various states passed laws against it

Kentucky Statutes 437.060
Use of reptiles in religious services
Any person who displays, handles or uses any kind of reptile in connection with any religious service or gathering shall be fined not less than fifty dollars ($50) nor more than one hundred dollars ($100)

Tennesseee Code 39-17-101
Handling snakes so as to endanger life prohibited
(a) It is an offense for a person to display, exhibit, handle, or use a poisonous or dangerous snake or reptile in a manner that endangers the life or health of any person.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor

Snake Handlers <New Georgia Encyclopedia>
Original entry by Brad E. Kelle, Emory University
04/07/2006

... The history of snake-handling churches extends back to the early 1900s in East Tennessee. Tradition attributes the practice to George Went Hensley, a rural preacher working near Cleveland, Tennessee, around 1909. From about 1910 to 1920 snake handling was widespread in the Church of God based in Cleveland, but by the end of the 1920s the denomination had renounced the practice. From then on, it existed only in independent churches in Appalachia.

Snake handlers in Alabama and Georgia also trace their heritage to James Miller, a preacher who independently began the practice in 1912 in Sand Mountain, Alabama. Under his influence the movement spread into Berrien and Cook counties in south central Georgia by 1920. Beginning in the 1940s, several southern states, including Georgia, passed laws prohibiting snake handling in religious services. The law in Georgia developed after a six-year-old girl was bitten during a service near Adel, in Cook County. Police arrested both her father and her pastor, Warren Lipham, who later stood trial but was not convicted for the earlier death of a worshipper in 1938. In 1941 Georgia passed a law that made snake handling a felony punishable by twenty years in prison in the case of injury to another, or by the death penalty in the case of a fatality. The law was repealed in the 1960s. Today, the handling of poisonous snakes in Georgia is legal only by permit ...