On July 3, 1944, LIFE Magazine released an edition covered with headlines on the success of D-Day and the Normandy Invasions during WW2. The edition is a treasure trove for WW2 history buffs, with images that captivated Americans who were so intrigued by the scenes in war-torn Europe. Towards the end of the edition, LIFE shifts to a “religion” focus, which lands on a striking series of photographs depicting the actions of what they term “Holy Faith Healers.” If the title, along with the first picture were not enough to convey who they were talking about, they gave the subtitle “VIRGINIA MOUNTAINEERS HANDLE SNAKES TO PROVE THEIR PIETY.” While no doubt an oversimplification of the intentions of those in frame, it is nonetheless a valuable piece of history.

Up until this time, reports on serpent handlers had largely been limited to regional newspapers (primarily in the south). Occasionally, a particularly interesting story—usually a death—might do the rounds in the back page of a more nationally recognized newspaper. This edition of Life Magazine took incredibly evocative photographs of secretive holiness churches, and distributed them nationally. Importantly, it shifted the focus from snake handling as a Pentecostal extremity to snake handling as its own, highly specific ritual—thus rendering it outside the scope of mainstream religion in America.

So, I sought out to get my hands on it, and I did! You can view the pages of the magazine HERE.

The rest of this explores the language and choice of words used throughout these 4 pages. To begin, we are giving a location: Stone Creek, a “mountainous mining pocket of southwest Virginia.” The writer tells us that thirty-five “glossy-eyed members of a religious cult called the Holiness Faith Healers gathered last month for an outdoor demonstration of their singular form of worship.” He goes on to quote Mark 16:18 to provide readers their “Biblical Tenet.” He records members passing venomous snakes around, letting them coil, playing with fire, and of course stamping about in a “rhythmic frenzy.” One Dr. Axel Brett, a University of Tennessee psychologist offered brilliant insight: “jitterbugs and snake handlers have a lot in common.” Thank you, Dr. Brett for your brilliant work.

“Accompanying their strange rites was off-beat music of guitars playing old revival hymns, tom-tom clapping of hands, moaning exhortations to ‘sweet Jesus’ and screaming in the ‘unknown tongue,’ a frenetic gibberish to which the cultists resort when their religious fervor moves them beyond intelligible speech.”

The language in the report is certainly worth pondering on. However, I take no real issue with the accuracy of the reporting above—although I would be inclined to disagree on the comment surrounding the musical ability of serpent handlers, I find the music remarkable and the people playing it remarkably talented. All of the scenes described thus far are paired with images, and here are a few:

Having given a close up on a service, it seemed the writer wanted to take a step back and provide more general information about the group. He said the following:

“At this meeting a diamond-back rattlesnake and yellow-mouth copperhead were used. They did not bite. But in the eight years since Holiness Faith Healing was introduced to the illiterate mountaineers of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, some 100 cultists have been bitten. The Healers, who call themselves ‘saints,’ refuse all medical care, and those who recover from their bites are considered to have proven their piety. Despite several brushes with the law, the cult has increased its membership from a handful to several thousand. Its primitive emotional appeal was summed up by a Holiness preacher: ‘The serpent is the devil. How are you going to conquer a big devil if you can’t conquer a little snake?’”

While I disagree, of course, with the general takes that are missing a great deal of nuance—and perhaps a slight more research—this article is no doubt important. It set the standard of reporting on serpent handling communities in a way that framed them as the secretive other who must be exposed for their primitive and dangerous ways. This has had untold amounts of ramifications, and handlers—who are so often secretive—certainly have a right to be. It is not as if this kind of journalistic report died after this edition of LIFE Magazine. This is why historical work is so important, to understand serpent handlers today, we must make attempts to understand reports such as this one. If nothing else, this edition does have one of the most amusing pictures: