I live in Tennessee, one of the few places where, if you know where to look, you can still find churches that have snakes under the floorboards. 

I got an email from a Dutch reader a few weeks ago (hi Kelvin), so if this needs explaining: beginning in the early 20th century, a number of Pentecostal churches in rural Appalachia started handling venomous snakes as part of their worship services. The snakes are often kept (alive), in a container under the floorboards on the chancel, so they can be pulled out mid service as the Spirit compels people. These worshipping communities draw inspiration from passages of scripture that include handling serpents (alongside healing the sick, speaking in tongues and drinking poison without dying) as acts of the early apostles through the Holy Spirit. 

I should clarify, immediately, that this is very rare and expressly illegal. Snake-handling tends to be secretive, but evidence suggests this practice has killed at least 100 people, including most of the pastors who popularized it. But it lingers on, in rural pockets of Appalachian towns across West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and my home state of Tennessee. I was driving into the foothills of the Appalachians a few weeks ago and I found myself thinking about the snakes.

In the theological construction of the snake-handlers, being able to handle the snakes without them biting you is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. It’s not explicitly your fault that you were bitten by a snake, but a truly faithful person wouldn’t have, and if they were, then it was just God’s will. I couldn’t help thinking: was it God’s will to have the snakes in the sanctuary in the first place? These aren’t snakes that snuck up on people in the mission field; someone brought them in on purpose, or at least knew they were there and kept them.

As I drove through winding East Tennessee roads, I thought of the way we as congregational, denominational, or seminary leaders send faithful, passionate people into churches and contexts that we know have snakes under the floorboards, and seem to be more interested in crossing fingers that no one gets bit than actually getting the snakes out. How we hope, and maybe sincerely believe, that if they have enough faith, if the Holy Spirit is with them, they will come away unscathed. Contexts that we know have burned people, burned us, people who are cruel, systems we know are oppressive, we simply re-staff, reassign, and shuffle people inside of, with our fingers crossed that maybe this time it will be fine. 

When I was in my 20’s, I experienced sexual harassment from a clergyperson who I worked with. I went to a woman on staff, also clergy, who was maybe 10 years older than me, and told her, with sweaty palms and shaking voice, what I had experienced. She told me that he had treated her that way too, that basically every woman on staff had a similar story to mine, that she knew people had complained, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. I joked, “A little heads up maybe next time?” And she shrugged and told me that she didn’t want to badmouth a colleague, “After all, he might have been different this time.”

Is faithful leadership asking people to rely on the Holy Spirit, hoping it will be fine for them, no matter how it felt to us, or is faithful leadership getting rid of the snakes? 

How many times have I known there was danger just below the surface and not said anything because maybe I was overreacting, maybe it was my fault, maybe if I had had more faith, more careful words, more patience, more grace, better boundaries, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten bit. Maybe it was just me, maybe it will be different this time; maybe they are faithful enough, maybe they won’t get bit. 

In the case of the snake-handling preachers, the courts have been pretty clear about this: the responsibility doesn’t fall on the snakes, or on the person who got bit, or even the God who didn’t protect them. It falls solely on the person who brought the snakes in, or who knew about them, and decided to keep them. When we work in a place that has danger lurking, from a person, a system, a belief, a pattern, that hurts people, I think God doesn’t call us to more faith, to hoping it will be different, I think God calls us to take the snakes out. To make God’s house one where people are safe, where people don’t have to put their lives on the line to prove they are allowed to be there. 

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just places I worked, maybe it’s just the ghosts of where I am from, maybe in the places where you live and serve there’s nothing that people need to be protected from. I hope that’s true.

But if it’s not, if you can hear the hiss under your feet even as you preach, lead, and wonder if this is really what Jesus wanted, know that you’re not the only one. That you’re not responsible for the choices leaders before you made or neglected to make, but you are responsible for what happens now. It’s time to take the snakes out of the dark, and carry them out into the light. It’s time to set them free, and stop pretending like you couldn’t do anything about them.