Them That Believe

by Hood, Ralph W., Jr.; Williamson, W. Paul

• ISBN13: 9780520255876
• ISBN10: 0520255879
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Although outlawed in many states, serpent handling remains an active religious practice--and one that is far more stereotyped than understood. Ralph W. Hood, Jr. and W. Paul Williamson have spent fifteen years touring serpent-handling churches in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia, conducting scores of interviews with serpent handlers, and witnessing hundreds of serpent-handling services. In this illuminating book they present the most in-depth, comprehensive study of serpent handling to date.Them That Believenot only explores facets of this religious practice--including handling, preaching, and the near-death experiences of individuals who were bitten but survived--but also provides a rich analysis of this phenomenon from historical, social, religious, and psychological perspectives.

Author Biography

Ralph W. Hood Jr. is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a past editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He is editor of the Handbook of Religious Experience and Measures of Religiosity (with Peter C. Hill), and he is coauthor, with Peter C. Hill and Bernie Spilka, of The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (4th edition) W. Paul Williamson is Associate Professor of Psychology at Henderson State University. Hood and Williamson are coauthors, with Peter C. Hill, of The Psychology of Religious Fundamentalism

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
"They Shall Take up Serpents"	p. 1
The History of Pentecostalism Absent the Serpent	p. 13
The Media and the Man: George Went Hensley	p. 37
Serpent Handling Endorsed by the Church of God	p. 52
The Serpent: Sign and Symbol	p. 79
Trance States: Tongues Speaking and the Anointing	p. 102
Extemporaneous Sermons in the Serpent-Handling Tradition	p. 117
The Experience of Handling Serpents	p. 132
The Experience of the Anointing	p. 157
Near-Death Experience from Serpent Bites in Religious Settings	p. 170
Music among Serpent-Handling Churches	p. 185
Serpent Handling and the Law: History and Empirical Studies	p. 208
Epilogue	p. 227
Deaths by Serpent Bite	p. 239
Deaths by Poison	p. 246
The Phenomenological Interview and Hermeneutic Techniques of Interpretation	p. 247
Notes	p. 257
References	p. 267
Acknowledgments	p. 285
Index	p. 289
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