04 June 2012

"Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother"


A column by Julia Duin in the Washington Post last week documented the death of a Pentecostal pastor who died after being bitten by one of the rattlesnakes he used in his church services.
Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not...

“Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother” he wrote on May 23...

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his mother. “He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”
The Washington Post photographer for the story has written a thoughtful companion piece, "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith."
As a photojournalist, what role did I have in this tragedy, and what is it now, in the aftermath? Was it right for me to remain in the background taking pictures, as I did, and not seek medical attention for the dying pastor, whose beliefs forbade it? Or should I have intervened and called paramedics earlier, which would have undermined Mack’s wishes? Finally, what was I supposed to do with the images I shot? 
The story is of additional interest to me because I lived for ten years in Kentucky, where I became familiar with the phenomenon of religion-based serpent-handling.  The knee-jerk reaction by cynics would be to observe that antivenom and hospital treatment with dialysis and life support could be viewed as the mechanism God uses to heal those bitten, but of course for the true believers it's much more complex than that.

15 comments:

  1. The funny thing is, those verses in Mark (all of 9-20) are almost certainly a late addition to the text.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16

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    1. Perhaps he was a victim of a semantic distinction he did not sufficiently perceive.

      The Bible quote refers to "taking up" serpents, but it is clear from the article that he was bitten after laying the serpent *down*.

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  2. An act of true faith would be to believe that you can handle snakes any time you want and don't need to prove anything to anybody through theatrical demonstrations and feats of bravery.

    This passage is germane. Matthew 4:

    5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

    6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

    7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

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  3. "The knee-jerk reaction by cynics would be to observe that antivenom and hospital treatment with dialysis and life support could be viewed as the mechanism God uses to heal those bitten"

    I can't see how that would be cynical? Seems far more reasonable than other sentiments in the article. Yet again religious fervor is allowed to cloud the issue - if anyone outside of "mainstream" religion did this they would likely be branded insane/dangerous. I don't accept that religious belief gives him a pass any more than political/personal conviction would.

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    1. For the record, according to Wikipedia, snake-handling in 2001 was practiced in only 40 small, mostly rural churches. It's a distinctly fringe belief and practice, Anonymous, not by any means "mainstream." The vast majority of Christians in this country would brand it insane/dangerous.

      I'm not a believer, but I too frequently see all Christians being painted with the same brush as tiny fringe Christian groups.

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    2. Indeed. I've known many very conservative Christians, and every last one of them would 'brand this as insane/dangerous'. And kind of laugh at the guy, too. I'm sorry for his family's loss, but God only interferes with nature to save people's lives maybe a dozen times in the whole Bible. God lets nature do its thing THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME. Why did this guy think he'd be an exception? Do not put the Lord your God to the test. (Luke 4:12, Jesus speaking.) Because he is kind of an asshole and will sit back and laugh when you get what you're asking for.

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    3. @SL - surely the quotation marks around "mainstream" suggest that I don't consider the practise mainstream? But this guy adhered to christianity, a mainstream religion, regardless of sect.

      I wasn't tarring all religions or all christians with the same brush. I said that society tends to bend the rules for christian/jewish/muslim ideas, or whatever superstition is prevalent. Anything else is "weird".

      My comment was actually in response to Stan's reference to "The knee-jerk reaction by cynics" - I don't get what he meant. And it seemed dismissive of critics while also giving religious folk a bit of a pass.

      Why don't you focus on that rather than my rather tame point?

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  4. "True believers" are fools, but they are adults who have to be allowed to commit suicide by snake as long as they don't clearly demonstrate a mental disorder. Who gives a damn whether the Bible verse is new or not? That's trying to apply reason to a belief system that's irrational. If the species survives long enough, we may find out if logic and rational thinking are better for survival than belief and faith. Of course that's taking a Darwinian point of view, it guess the faithful expect the fairytale End Times to happen any day now...

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  5. Angelus 1:1

    Darwin had a point.

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  6. well... as long as they only kill themselves that's fine.
    What if, say his child had been bitten though? Would he have betrayed his convictions and taken him to a doctor, or stuck with it and become a murderer?

    On another note, interesting quote from the second article: "A family member called paramedics when Mack finally allowed it, but it was too late."
    Some people like to invoke "bedside conversions" when talking about atheists on the brink of death; it's looking like it works both ways.

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    1. My first husband was a Christian Scientist, and he refused to allow our daughter to have the standard DPT shots. Then one night, he was working in the garage and cut himself rather badly. He insisted that I take him right away to emergency to get stitched up and get a tetanus shot. The next day I took our daughter in for her shots, and there was no further discussion about medical care.

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    2. I'm really happy to hear that.

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  7. The ethical dilemma expressed by the photographer on what to do with the photos is understandably humane but also strange given the role of photojournalists as witnesses to the entirety of the human experience. Maybe photographers will always wrestle with what to do when a life is in the balance. Another thought (and really speculation here) is that there seems to be more caginess around showing dying or dead Americans. I don't believe this photographer said anything betraying that kind of bias, but I wonder if a photo of, say, a bitten Moroccan snake charmer would have prompted the same kind of soul searching.

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  9. It is sad to me that this man and others interpret the Bible in ways that can be destructive. There have been so many things that have been added to and taken away from the writings that we call scripture that way too much can be (mis)taken from them. St. Paul did not HANDLE snakes. And what happened to him has been taken out of context. And so it is true; Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Just an opinion.

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