Table of Contents

List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface 1. "They Shall Take up Serpents" 2. The History of Pentecostalism Absent the Serpent 3. The Media and the Man: George Went Hensley 4. Serpent Handling Endorsed by the Church of God 5. The Serpent: Sign and Symbol 6. Trance States: Tongues Speaking and the Anointing 7. Extemporaneous Sermons in the Serpent-Handling Tradition 8. The Experience of Handling Serpents 9. The Experience of the Anointing 10. Near-Death Experience from Serpent Bites in Religious Settings 11. Music among Serpent-Handling Churches 12. Serpent Handling and the Law: History and Empirical Studies Epilogue Appendix Interpretation Notes References Acknowledgments Index Figure Captions Plate Captions

About the Author

Ralph W. Hood, Jr. is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. 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.