One has never stopped to think about the noise a rattlesnake makes.
It is like a giant tambourine . And at a very high volume, which rises above the sound made by the 22 people who are in the small building, which is, formally, a church, but which, for a Spaniard, does not go beyond being a simple warehouse to which they have put an altar and some benches.
And it's not that those 22 people are silent. Three play electric guitars, and one of them also sings. Another, hit the battery. And the parishioner - although that word is improper, because here everyone is to some extent a priest, a bishop, and, perhaps, a magician - follows the rhyme of music beating palms and hitting the ground with his feet with such force that the building reverberates, while shouting "Hallelujah!", "Come!", "Amen!" On the fourth bench on the left, a chubby boy follows the rhythm of the music. Behind him, on the wood, two long stuffed snakes lie, indifferent to the real ones, which make noise, which are tucked into three boxes to the right of the altar, less than five meters from the child .
The music is formidable . The band goes from blues to soul, and from country to bluegrass while praising God. Such are the religious offices in the Full Church of the Tabernacle of the Name of Jesus, just three miles from Middlesboro, in Kentucky, the town of 70,000 inhabitants built in a crater six kilometers in diameter that was created by a meteorite that crashed into Earth 300 million years ago , when our planet was so young that there were not even dinosaurs. And Middlesboro is also the birthplace of ragtime , piano music and sometimes banjo, which in Spain we associate with silent films and cabarés of the 20s. What better place to mix the mysteries of the cosmos and the worldliness of folklore ?
The Full Church of the Tabernacle of the Name of Jesus is a Pentecostal congregation whose parishioners take rattlesnakes in the middle of the ceremonies , manipulate and dance with them, while they eat poison, enter into trance, suffer convulsions , speak "in tongues" ( although no one has shown that they emit anything other than disjointed sounds), and they run their hands through flames of rags inflamed with gasoline. Experts estimate that there are about 125 temples in which these rituals are performed , although the best connoisseur of pentecostal snake handlers, Ralph Wilbur Hood, professor of Psychology of Religion at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga - who has acted as a mediator so that Chronicle can attend the ritual - he considers that the real figure is much higher. Some of these churches are within 200 kilometers of cities such as Washington, Atlanta or Nashville. But culturally they are another planet.
"Snake handling" was born around 1910, and is prohibited because it is considered animal abuse. But the authorities have never persecuted this religious current whose ceremonies are based exclusively on these 47 words of the Gospel of St. Mark : «And these wonders will accompany those who believe: they will throw the demons in my Name and speak new languages; they can take the snakes with their hands and, if they drink a deadly poison, it won't harm them; they will lay their hands on the sick and cure them ».
Although for many biblical exegetes that phrase is apocryphal and was added to the original text centuries after the writing of the Gospel, snake handlers have founded on it a ritual that seems typical of an African animist religion in the Bible Belt, or Belt of the US Bible It is enough to drive through Kentucky and Tennessee to realize the omnipresence of the Bible in the local culture even if it is only for the crosses, some of more than 20 meters high, placed in trios, imitating Calvary, and the posters with phrases like «Get along with God» or «Pray to end abortion». In Bell County, where Middlesboro is located, alcohol sales are only allowed in restaurants with a minimum capacity of 100 people.
This is the territory of evangelical Christians. And the pentecostal snake handlers take the liturgy of that group to the extreme. It's almost more a rock concert, a kind of collective communion. People are encouraged, preachers are released to speak. There is no structure. The four musicians play songs according to their inspiration. Preachers shout long speeches, running from side to side of the temple. In a start of irreverence, the journalist cannot prevent one of them from recalling, by his movements, the deceased Chiquito de la Calzada , although better dressed, in a comparison undoubtedly inappropriate, but that can perhaps serve the reader To get an idea of a ritual that in Spain is hard to imagine.
When three quarters of an hour of ceremony has passed, a big man who has driven for six hours from Alabama to attend the liturgy and who is under treatment for skin cancer gets up and begins to dance in a circle around the three boxes. Two contain copperheads - Eastern US vipers - and the third, rattlesnakes, also called crótalos. The man opens one of the boxes and takes out several snakes. He keeps them in his hands, while turning in circles. A parishioner suspends his ecstasy for a moment and deploys a blue string between the two benches closest to the altar, so that no one unduly approaches the snakes.
It is something that applies especially to children, since those under 18 - like women - are prohibited from touching reptiles . And it is not for lack of desire. The chubby boy who has stuffed snakes is the son of Cody Coots, the leader of the congregation, and looks at the man who plays with snakes with admiration.
. His great-grandfather founded the Full Church of the Tabernacle of the Name of The Kid carries the tradition in the blood Jesus. His grandfather, Jamie Coots, became a celebrity in the United States thanks to the reality show of the National Geographic television network Snake Salvation. In February 2014, a crótalo bit him in the right hand . Coots did not let them call emergency services and died two hours later at home. As Hood explains, at 77, he maintains an enviable vitality and a certain air of a movie teacher with his long white beard and tall, thin body, “snake handlers literally interpret the New Testament, which says that each one has their time to die, so for them it is no different to die from a snake bite or a heart attack.
The man who extends the rope has been kneeling with his back to the altar, crying. It moves with difficulty. He has an arm in a sling, and the belly that is exposed under his shirt shows the characteristic bruising of insulin injections in diabetics. A pacemaker was implanted a few weeks ago. As almost all of the congregation, pastors and faithful alike, are missing several teeth.
Other men open the other boxes. They rotate in circles, with semi-extended arms, holding the snakes normally by the back of the body. Nobody wants a snake to climb on him. Animals, about a meter long - rattles, larger and much fatter, smaller copperheads, perhaps because they are young specimens - try to keep their heads as far away from humans as possible. There is an obvious caution when dealing with offices. But there are no security measures. As Hood explains, "it's like Russian roulette." At any time, a snake can bite someone.
It is something that happens sometimes. After the ceremony, during a community lunch, Andrew Hamblin, one of the preachers, dressed in a blue jumpsuit, approaches Hood and tells him in a low voice the story of a person who suffered a fatal accident with snakes. "They were circling with the snakes, and he didn't see the other coming towards him and the snake bit him in the head," he concludes. "I'm so sorry," Hood replies. Hamblin explains that he tells only him, and that he hasn't told the newspapers. The day before, Hood explained to Chronicle that there are more deaths from bites than those declared .
Hamblin, who is 28 years old, became another star thanks to Snake Salvation and his skillful use of social networks. But this tall and strong man fell out of favor when, in a family feud in 2015, he shot his wife. "Thank you very much, but I prefer not to talk," he replies to Chronicle when a brief interview is proposed. Snake handlers have been turned into real freaks by the media, so their distrust of the press is considerable. Therefore, it is impossible for them to speak to Chronicle , and, also, to allow images to be taken in the Full Church of the Tabernacle of the Name of Jesus.
But in reality, they are all stars in ceremonies. And everyone takes a chance. A woman falls into a trance, shaking, next to the altar, which is little more than a bare table where there are only two bottles. One contains strychnine, a very potent poison , which is prohibited in Spain. From time to time, a faithful takes the bottle and sticks a quick drink of poison. The other bottle is Coca-Cola, and has a burning cloth inside.
The man who has traveled from Alabama and who was the first to take the snakes leaves them in his box, goes to the altar, grabs the bottle with his left hand and passes right over the flames again and again. It is a hand so inflamed that its size is twice the other, due to the bite, a week ago, of a snake . Virtually the entire congregation has experienced some bite. If there are no more deaths, it is for two reasons. One, because sometimes snakes bite but do not inject poison, or only inoculate an insufficient amount to kill a human being. "Most likely when you drive a snake, it doesn't bite you," explains Hood, who has been visiting these churches for more than four decades. The other reason is more complicated. In the church there are only 18 light bulbs, two ceiling fans, and two speakers. But the air conditioning equipment is surprisingly powerful . Outside the temple the temperature goes above 30 degrees. Inside, it does not reach 18. The snakes are numbed by the cold. Crótalos and copperheads of snake handlers die long before those who live wild. The reason, according to herpetologists, is that they don't take good care of them.
The ritual of snake management is very minor. But it seems destined to perpetuate itself. It is a central part of the cultural and family tradition of its members. The best example is the most enthusiastic member of the band: a woman in her late 40s, although, like most of those present, she appears several decades older, who plays a drum of considerable dimensions as a professional and, at the same time sing That woman is called Linda Coots. She was the one who signed, at the behest of her husband, Jamie, the document in which he refused medical help when he was bitten by the rattlesnake in 2014. And she was also present when another crótalo bit her son last year Cody in the neck, in a bloody and brutal incident that was collected entirely by television cameras and is available on YouTube.
Unlike his father, Cody asked to call emergency services. He was taken by helicopter to a hospital, where he was between life and death for several days. Today, he keeps the congregation, giving the guitar by the altar, although, in Hood's words, "his status has fallen, both for having turned to doctors and for having divorced and remarried ." Near him he is singing his wife, a young girl with polka dot dress and hair, like everyone else's, very long, because Pentecostals do not accept that women ever cut it.
Impossible to these tragedies, or perhaps reinforced by them, Linda Coots keeps the rhythm and tradition of human beings who handle snakes to reach the Kingdom of God. His formidable style blends with the noise of snakes to form the symphony of a ritual that no one would expect to occur in the United States of 2019.
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