HANDLING SNAKES IN CHURCH IS A GOD GIVEN RIGHT

                         ASSERTING A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO SNAKES  

The NYT reports today that the state of Tennessee is taking poisonous snakes off of fundamentalist preacher's church property.  The Rev. Andrew Hamblin, pastor of The Tabernacle Church of God in LaFollette said the snakes were removed on the grounds that he was violating the state's wildlife laws.

Rev. Hamblin handles the dangerous reptiles during church services to show the power of the Holy Ghost.  "This ain't just no fight for snake handling, it's a fight for religious freedom," said the Tabernacle preacher as he plead not guilty to charges brought against him in court.

I personally side with the good minister.  Obviously, the state is using obscure provisions of its wildlife statutes to stop him from fondling the timber rattlers and cottonmouths they took away from the church.  The state has little faith in Holy Ghost power to protect the pastor from snake bite death.  But any state in our Christian Nation has no right to interfere in the free exercise of religion according to the first amendment of our constitution.  The state of Tennessee has no right, under the U.S. Constitution to have any thoughts, one way or another, about Holy Ghost power.

If snake handling creates widows and orphans, as it did in the case of a fundamentalist preacher in West Virginia last year bitten by a copperhead, it is none of the state's business. (This preacher probably was not protected from death by the Holy Ghost probably  because he had secret gay sympathies, opposed conversion therapy,  or didn't believe the earth was 6,000 years old).

 The state of Tennessee should put the reptiles back in the Tabernacle Church of God's "Snake Room," as Rev. Hamblin and his congregants call it.   And, by the way, although the pastor has not been charged under the statute, Tennessee has a law, passed in 1947, which bans snake handling.

The charges against Andrew Hamblin should be dropped and that '47 law, in obvious violation of the first amendment repealed.   What goes on in our Houses of God is note of the state's business.