Re: A puzzle for you

singhals wrote:
<snip> But, IIRC, they're more in the snake-handler cult category.

The only snake handler I knew was a lad a year or so younger than I who, between lessons, would disappear into the bush and return with an occasional mamba or cobra, to the general consternation of the teaching staff.

Never having heard of a religious cult involving such handlers I was surprised to find so much on Google; I particularly liked: "Snake handling was an outgrowth of the Azusa Street revival. In 1910, after reading in Mark 16:18 "they shall take up serpents… and it shall not hurt them," former bootlegger George Went Hensley, aka "Little George," took a rattlesnake box into the pulpit. He reached in and lifted out the venomous viper, showing his faith to take God at his Word. He then challenged his congregation to do the same. News spread throughout the hills of Grasshopper Valley in south eastern Tennessee. Before long, others joined in the handling of rattlers. The practice continued for ten years until one of the faithful died of a snakebite. Hensley moved to Harlan, Kentucky."

They seem to have inhabited much the same country as the anti-evolution cults, these however still persist, (didn't one State last year pass a law forbidding the teaching of natural selection and evolution in schools?) - perhaps the snake handlers have died out.

Yours Aye Andrew Sellon

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