1914 A.J. Tomlinson (leader of the Church of God) writes in defense of the act of handling snakes in services
1947 Police raid Zion Tabernacle Church in Durham, North Carolina (my hometown) and arrested Colonel Hartman Bunn for handling venomous snakes at a service
1955 George Went Hensley dies from a rattlesnake bite
2012 Randy “Mack” Wolford dies from a timber rattlesnake bite
circa 1910
George W. Hensley
George Hensley, a Tennessee Holiness preacher, becomes one of the earliest and most influential figures associated with the practice of handling serpents in worship. Later accounts often credit Hensley with introducing or popularizing serpent handling in Appalachia, though he was far from the first person to practice it, and the tradition’s origins are difficult to trace definitively.
July 3, 1944
LIFE Magazine’s “Holiness Faith Healers”
LIFE magazine publishes a photo essay on Appalachian Holiness worship, bringing practices including faith healing, ecstatic worship, and serpent handling to a national readership. The images helped establish a lasting popular visual image of the practice.
See it in the archive
See the blog post
July 25, 1955
George Hensley’s Death
George Hensley dies after being bitten by a rattlesnake while handling it during a worship service in Florida.
1966-1967
Holy Ghost People
Peter Adair’s documentary Holy Ghost People brings Appalachian Pentecostal snake handling to a national audience, documenting worship, healing, and serpent handling at a West Virginia church. The film becomes one of the most influential visual representations of the practice.
February, 1992
Glenn Summerford’s Trial
Summerford, an Alabama Pentecostal preacher and snake handler, was convicted of attempting to murder his wife using a rattlesnake. The trial attracted substantial national attention and became one of the most notorious legal episodes associated with serpent handling.
January 20, 1995
Salvation on Sand Mountain
Journalist Dennis Covington publishes Salvation on Sand Mountain. What began as an assignment to cover the Summerford trial became an account of his encounters with the serpent-handling congregation in Scottsboro, Alabama. Blending reporting, memoir, and ethnography, the book became one of the most famous accounts of contemporary snake-handling.
September 10, 2013
Snake Salvation
National Geographic’s Snake Salvation documents contemporary snake-handling churches in Appalachia, following practitioners and exploring the biblical and religious convictions underlying the practice. The series renewed popular attention to serpent handling and offered a more sustained look at the communities behind it.
February 15, 2014
Jamie Coots’ Death
Jamie Coots, a Kentucky serpent-handling preacher featured in National Geographic’s Snake Salvation, dies after being bitten by a rattlesnake during worship. His death receives widespread national media attention and becomes one of the most prominent contemporary cases of a serpent handler dying from the practice.
