The Serpent and the Spirit: Glenn Summerford's Story by Thomas Burton (review)

Thomas Burton. The Serpent and the Spirit: Glenn Summerford's Story Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. 262 pages. Paper $19.95. It's a tragedy Shakespeare might have written. Except for the time frame—1991 as compared to 1602—the elements in this modern drama are as Shakespearian as a story can get-attempted murder, secret liaisons, adultery, violence, and betrayal. Throw rattlesnakes and copperheads into the mix of characters, and you have a cast as threatening and poisonous as those in Hamlet. The setting? It's not Denmark, but Scottsboro, Alabama, where Glen Summerford, a serpent-handling preacher, is accused of attempted murder by forcing his wife's hand into a box of poisonous snakes because of her confessed infidelity. Summerford is tried, found guilty, and, owing to a history of prior convictions, sentenced to 99 years in prison. With his first book on snake handlers, Serpent-Handling Believers (The University of Tennessee Press, 1993), author Thomas Burton gained the trust of his subjects by presenting an historical and unbiased portrayal of the sect that bases its religion on Mark 16: "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly 79 thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." For the socially and economically disenfranchised, serpent handling presents an exciting way of life, a strong sense of community through the church, and a spiritually satisfying power. In the isolated Appalachian communities where serpent handling is practiced, unemployment and illiteracy abound. Coal miningbegan in Kentucky in 1889, but although management made a tidy profit, the miners themselves worked long hours under dangerous conditions and still made wages below poverty levels. The industry declined in the 1930s after being rocked by deadly labor battles when the United Mine Workers tried to unionize the workers, and although mining experienced a resurgence during the energy crisis of the 1970s, it dropped off again when conditions improved. Today in Appalachia, with miningjobs available to only a fraction of the population, there is little left for untrained and uneducated men to do other than join the military, while many who remain have become disabled through physical injuries or black lung disease. In 1995, payments made to recipients in Cocke County, Tennessee, for retirement and disability insurance, unemployment, income maintenance and veterans' aid came to more than one hundred and twenty-three million dollars. And, most striking among those statistics is that of all the combined payments, more than seventeen million went to unemployment insurance benefits. President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in 1964 started out with a bang but soon racheted down to a whimper because most of the money allocated by the Appalachian Regional Commission went for roads and buildings rather than for education and job training. In the intervening years poor and untrained Appalachians have remained stuck in a hopeless cycle. And for many who have no other place to turn, the church offers solace and the promise of ivory palaces and streets of gold. Glenn Summerford, who had lived a violent and hardscrabble life, accepted that promise and its restrictions when his son Marty was three years old. He was born again, forgave his enemies, went to church every single night, and became a serpent-handling preacher. Although Tom Burton's initial visits to serpent-handling churches began as far back as 1972, he had never been in Summerford's Scottsboro church during the research for his first book. Then, in 1999, he became interested in researching the story of Glenn Summerford's incarceration. Since both the Summerford story and the serpenthandling community had been exploited and sensationalized by the media and the public, Burton decided not to interject his own opinions 80 but to frame the story in the form of an oral history composed of monologues by those who knew both Glenn and Darlene. Until then, the alleged victim, Darlene Summerford, Glenn's wife of sixteen years and mother of his son Marty, had been the righteous central character of the tragedy in newspaper stories, broadcast and television news and local...