Rattlesnakes and Kool-Aid

What's wrong with calling in the county sheriff when religious liberty becomes a dangerous thing? | Joel Belz

Snake: AP • Jones: AP • New York: Bebeto Matthews/AP

It was an early fall Sunday evening on Lookout Mountain, Ga., in the mid-1960s. Several of us should have been heading for the evening service at our local church. But a devious spirit of adventure had grabbed us. "Did you hear," one of our little group dared us, "about the snake handlers at that church over on Sand Mountain?"

Four or five of us stuffed ourselves into my '64 VW beetle for the 35-minute drive into remote, rural northeast Alabama to the Rock House Holiness Church where Brother John Wayne "Punkin" Brown was leading a week-long revival. Each night's service featured the hands-on passing around of four- and five-foot timber rattlers, and maybe a few stray copperheads.

Sure enough when we arrived, on tables across the church's front porch were a half dozen wire cages from which came an ominously dry buzz. Just inside were still more cages.