Serpent Handlers: Three Families and Their Faith

by Fred W. Brown, Jeanne McDonald

Overview

Church members who take Mark 16: 17-18 as a central tenet of their faith call themselves Signs Followers. Previous accounts of the Signs Followers focused on the sensational aspects of the religion: picking up poisonous snakes, drinking strychnine, speaking in tongues.Within these churches are several families whose history in the tradition stretches back as far as the religion itself, which dates only to 1910. In The Serpent Handlers, the authors use extensive interviews with the participants to tell the stories of three of the most prominent snake-handling families the Brown family of Cocke County, Tennessee, the Elkins family of Jolo, West Virginia, and the Coots family of Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780895873521
Publisher:	John F Blair, Publisher
Publication date:	09/28/2007
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Until his retirement, Fred W. Brown was a long-time reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Read an Excerpt

Barbara Elkins always fretted about her son Dewey Chafin, child of her first marriage, one of the best-known handlers among the Signs Followers. Dewey, who is in his sixties, has a penchant for fearlessly handling exotic snakes, and he has been bitten 132 times. A couple of years ago at the Kingston, Georgia, homecoming, before Barbara took to a wheelchair, Dewey picked up four large rattlers, two in each hand, which is his signature move. The atmosphere in the church was already thick with tension. Earlier that day, a young woman had been bitten when she was handed a snake by her husband. Barbara Elkins felt ill at ease. Somehow, the air seemed different. By late afternoon, the sky outside was black with an approaching storm. The barometer was falling, the church lights ocasionally blinked off and then on again. Suddenly, a vicious thunderstorm flashed across the Georgia Piedmont, and the lights flickered and went out, leaving the tiny church in near darkness. The congregation, which had been singing, fell silent. After each crash of thunder, the buzzing of rattlesnakes could be heard above the rain.

Dewey Chafin was a victim of the elements. He could not see to put the snakes into the boxes, and putting them down would have placed the congregation at risk. He stood in the dark holding four venomous snakes, and when the lightning flashed again, Barbara Elkins could be seen at his side, her hand on his shoulder. It was a ghostlike negative image. For fifteen minutes Dewey held the writhing snakes in the darkened church, and for fifteen minutes Barbara Elkins remained by his side, keeping her hand on his arm. When the lightning and thunder receded into the distance and the lights of the church came on, Dewey stood before the pulpit with glassy eyes. He seemed disoriented, but there was no mistaking the emotion of Barbara Elkins. She was angry. She was angry at Dewey for having held the snakes throughout the storm and angry at the other men for not coming forward to help him. Most of all, she feared that Dewey had not been fully anointed when he took up those serpents, that he was handling on faith. Barbara always warned her children not to handle unless they were anointed, because that is the time when God gives his permission for the Sign Followers to handle serpents.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dr. Ralph W. Hood, Jr	ix
Preface	xiii
The Brown Family
Brown Family Tree	1
Cocke County, Tennessee	3
Manner of Death, Accident: John Wayne "Punkin" Brown	8
A Tongues-Talking, Serpent-Handling Holiness Woman:
Melinda Duvall Brown	23
To Speak in Tongues: Peggy Moore Brown	36
Avoiding the Lake of Fire: John Brown	54
The Lord Just Shouted Me: Rachelle "Shell" Martinez Brown	72
My Heart's Desire: Mark Brown	83
From Violence to Victory: Richard Cameron Short	104
The House of Prayer in the Name of Jesus Christ	120
The Coots Family
Coots Family Tree	127
Middlesboro, Kentucky	129
The Serpent Died: Louvernia Christine Owens Coots	133
God-Given Songs Sung by Tommy Coots	144
A Little Yeller Rattler: Gregory James "Jamie" Coots	147
Getting God's Attention: Linda Smith Coots	171
Living by Faith: Gregory Coots	200
Streets of Gold, Gates of Pearl, Walls of Jasper: Linda
TurnerCoots	210
The Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name	222
The Elkins Family
Elkins Family Tree	231
Jolo, West Virginia	233
A Soldier of God: Barbara Robinson Elkins	237
Pray without Ceasing: Joe Robert Elkins	253
Nobody Can Stop Me Now: Barbara Jeanean Church Coleman	266
Straight from the Bible: Dewey Chafin	282
Getting Your Heart Repented: Lydia Elkins Hollins	295
Waiting to See the Lord: Melissa "Missy" Gay Hamilton
Evans	306
Living the Hard Life: Charles "Junior" Church	315
The Right Time, the Right Place: Lucille Chafin Church	323
Coming Home to God: Cynthia Church	335
The Church of the Lord Jesus	341
Acknowledgments	351
Index	353

Editorial Reviews

Husband-and-wife team Brown and McDonald here introduce readers to the Elkinses of West Virginia, the Browns of Tennessee and the Cootses of Kentucky. The book provides a fascinating foray into the life of these faithful snake-handling families. Especially absorbing are discussions of the miraculous healing of Gregory Coots's eye, which was damaged by gunshot when he was six years old; the poignant story of matriarch Barbara Robinson Elkins's 23-year-old daughter, Columbia, dying of a snakebite wound; and Joe Robert Elkins's testimony that he once died of a snakebite wound, ascended to the "most beautifuliest place I ever seen" and was brought back to life because God listened to the earnest pleadings of his fellow church members. Interspersed throughout Brown and McDonald's analysis are passages, drawn from interviews, in which the snake handlers speak for themselves; these sections, without question, are the richest in the book. The authors insist that their subjects are fiercely independent mountain people, but the frequent gestures in the direction of abusive coal-mining fathers and pious God-fearing mothers box the three families into familiar cliches. Readers with time for only one book on snake handling should stick to Dennis Covington's prize-winning Salvation on Sand Mountain; those less easily sated will enjoy this, but they may want to skip Brown and McDonald's commentary and go straight to the handlers themselves. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

While snake-handling Christians, called sign followers, have been the subject of periodic media attention, they have rarely been allowed to tell their own stories without editorial comment. Brown and McDonald (coauthors of Growing Up Southern) have interviewed members of three families to create a clear picture of these believers. The text derives from taped interviews, and each of the participants was allowed to read and approve the final text to eliminate misconceptions or errors, What results is a remarkably unbiased presentation that avoids sensationalism while offering a vivid glimpse into the lives and beliefs of these people. Though the authors present the historic and doctrinal background of the sect, the most important part of the book is its firsthand accounts. Neither charlatans nor lunatics, the sign followers have intense faith and absolute conviction, and their readiness to die for their beliefs is impressive. A real insight into this unusual aspect of American religion, this book is recommended for academic and public libraries.--C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, IN Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Memoirs of families in Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky who handle poisonous snakes as part of their Christian faith are collected by journalist Brown, who has spent 15 years learning and writing about them, and fiction writer McDonald, his wife. She was able to learn more about the place of women in the movement than he had. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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