Reply #41: RE...Rev. Teddy Haggard.

[Hubert Flottz]

"They Shall Take Up Serpents" (even those one eyed serpents I guess!)

http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/they_shall_take_up_serpents/transcript.php3

Serpent Handlers

aka Snake Handlers and the Signs Following Movement

snip...

History:

Snake Handlers are more generally known as the Church of God with Signs Following. Under this umbrella term falls the loosely organized "Pentecostal churches, ministers and itinerent preachers popularly known as snake handlers." The practice itself developed out of the Pentecostal-Holiness movement which flourished in the first two decades of the twentieth century (Melton 1996, 636).

The practice is believed to have started with George Hensley in the hills of Tennessee (Melton 1996, 636). As church lore has it, snake handling started sometime in the later part of the first decade of the twentieth century while Hensley was preaching at the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. During Hensley's sermon about Mark 16 some men dumped out a box full of rattlesnakes in front of him. Without missing a beat Hensley reached down and picked up the snakes, preaching the entire time. By 1914 the practice had spread throughout the Church of God, however, the actual act of snake handling was only practiced by a small portion of the members (Melton 1996, 636).

Hensley then settled to preaching in the Grasshopper Valley region of Tennessee a few miles away from Cleveland. He stayed here for a number of years. When "a member almost died from a snake bite moved to Pine Mountain, Kentucky." By the Late 1920s the support for snake handling vanished in the old Cleveland church and many of the Church of God branches. By 1928, snake handling became the activity of only a few independent churches nestled in the Appalachian Mountains where it stayed until its revival in the 1940s (Melton 1996, 636).

In the 1940s snake handling saw a resurgence led by Raymond Harris and Tom Harden. These men went on to start the Dolly Pond Church of God with Signs Following in Grasshopper Valley. Lewis Ford a member of the Dolly Pond congregation died from snake handling in 1945. His death led to the official banning of snake handling in Tennessee in 1947 (Burton 1993, 81). Hensley, still alive and practicing, was arrested in Chattanooga under new the statute in 1948. North Carolina which followed suit and banned snake handling as well shut down the Interstate Convention of believers in Durham in 1947. These incidents started the battles with the government over the right to handle snakes...more

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Snakes.html

OMG!