Recently a PBS show Globe Trekker, aired an episode on The Deep South. In it, a southern baptist minister in Georgia was giving a 5 hr sermon which included rattle snakes.
The idea was, that if the snake didn't bite you, God was "protecting" you from harm.
The members were all in a fervor and they were shaking and their eyes rolling into the back of their heads...
Strange.
Are you certain this was a Southern Baptist church, Rick? Southern Baptists eschew this type worship and generally their doctrine doesn't recognize it. It is a practice that is found in a handful of charismatic Pentecostal churches in the rural northern mountains of Georgia, in Appilachia, Tennesse and a few spots in Arkansas. These
snake churches are illegal in some cases as well. When studying religion at university I did a research paper on these churches and interviewed a journalist who authored a book about such churches, having spent a great deal of time with them in Tennessee. She said they receive light bites, administering low doses of venom and over time build an imunity to the venom. They also do this with arsenic.
