Dennis Covington (1948–2024)

It all started with a trial. A man in southern Appalachia Alabama was accused of trying to kill his wife with a snake. It's an interesting way to attempt murder. Glenn Summerford put a gun to his wife's head and forced her to reach into a box containing a bunch of venomous snakes. She was bitten four times and survived to testify against her husband. After Dennis Covington covered the trial, published his piece, and tried to put the story out of his mind, a book editor came knocking. It show more didn't take much for him to convince Covington "this needs to be a full-length book" and Salvation on Sand Mountain was born. Covington immerses himself (and at times, his family) in the mysterious world of praying with dangerous snakes. What makes this journalism different is that Covington has ancestral history with preaching with snakes. As time with the congregation goes on and the more he observes their method of practicing their faith, Covington comes to care for the individual people, even Glenn Summerford. [Confessional: I sense Covington developing a crush on a member of the congregation as well.] Salvation on Sand Mountain culminates with Covington immersing himself completely by taking up a snake and preaching to the congregation he initially only wanted to write about. To think that it all began with a trial and a conviction. show less

Readers looking for an exposé or critique of snake-handling culture will be disappointed by Salvation on Sand Mountain, but that’s only because they are looking in the wrong place. This is a book about the people of a movement and their struggles, both personal and corporate. Yes, some of the stories are salacious, but just as many are heart-wrenching, or baffling, or rage-inducing. And all are worth reading.

Ultimately, Covington involves himself with the community so deeply that he show more crosses boundaries and finds himself pushed out. And that is for the best. He says, “I had found my people. But I had also discovered that I couldn’t be one of them after all.”

If you have to classify Salvation on Sand Mountain, think of it as a journalistic memoir, but if you can get beyond the label, you’ll find a wonderfully-written, emotionally compelling story populated with unforgettable characters and an unknowable system of beliefs.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog. show less

"What about Darlene?"
"When she was really living right, she drank it," he said.
When she was really living right, she drank poison. What a peculiar idea, the journalist in me thought. But who was I to judge?

The story begins when Dennis Covington, a freelance journalist, is asked to write an article about a trial taking place in nearby Scottsboro, Alabama, in which a preacher stands accused of trying to kill his wife with the venomous snakes he uses in his church services. Covington's coverage show more of this lurid story is the least interesting thing in Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, but it forms Covington's introduction to a little known and oft-mocked sect of Pentecostal Christianity.

Snake handling began, not as a practice of the people living in the Appalachians, but when they came out of the mountains to work in the mill towns on either side of the range. Confronted with an alien culture, they fell back on their faith, creating their own version of Christianity. The first episode of snake handling occurred in 1910 and while the churches that practice it range from the Florida panhandle up into Ohio, the number of worshippers is small. They also drink poison and handle fire, but the focus is on the snakes, the rattlesnakes and copperheads and even cobras that they collect, keeping them in sheds or even in aquariums set on the kitchen counter.

It might seem odd that this small, tightly knit community would open their doors to Covington, who is clear about his occupation and about his intention to write about them, often bringing photographers with him to church services. But they believe as strongly (and probably much more so) in their version of the truth as any other believer. They are willing to travel for hundreds of miles several times a week to attend services in small, tucked away churches in forgotten communities all along the edges of Appalachia. And Covington is respectful and interested in their beliefs. So interested that he becomes, for a time, one of them, like an anthropologist joining in the private ceremonies of a remote tribe.

Snake handling isn't a safe practice, and there are few who haven't been bit, many more than once. Some seek medical help, but most don't and most have relatives who were killed by snakes. The snakes themselves don't fare much better. Snake handling isn't gentle, and the snakes aren't designed to be roughly shaken and jostled. Few last longer than a few months.

She had a video, though, of herself and others holding their arms and legs in the flame of the kerosene-soaked wick. That's what she was doing one July night after she'd sworn she'd never handle rattlesnakes in July again. She'd been bit the previous two Julys. "I decided I'd just handle fire and drink strychnine that night," she said.

Good idea, I thought. It always pays to be on the safe side.

The problem arose as Gracie tried to handle the fire with her feet. She lost her balance and fell on top of three serpent boxes. "I crawled on my knees and got every one of them serpents out," she said. "My friends said, 'Gracie, you said you wasn't gonna handle serpents tonight,' and I said, 'I wouldn't if I hadn't gotten in the fire.'"

It all came to an end a few years after he met those members of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following. The rapid inclusion of an outsider into a group of only a few hundred people, many of whom were related, caused a certain amount of friction. The connection was broken, finally, when he was asked to speak at one service and stepped over a line by contradicting the previous sermon, by his mentor, who railed against women, saying, A woman's got to stay in her place! God made her helpmeet to man! It wasn't intended for her to have a life of her own! If God had wanted to give her a life of her own, he'd have made her first instead of Adam, and then where would we be!" Covington counters that by reminding him that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared first to a woman, who brought the news to the remaining disciples, making her the first evangelist. And, with that, his time with them came to its end.

At the height of it all...I had actually pictured myself preaching out of my car with a Bible, a trunkload of rattlesnakes, and a megaphone. I had wondered what it would be like to hand rattlesnakes to my wife and daughters. I had imagined getting bit and surviving. I had imagined getting bit and not surviving. I had thought about what my last words would be. It sounds funny now. It wasn't always funny at the time. show less

Dennis Covington was a reporter covering the juicy case of a backwoods Appalachian snake-handling preacher accused of the attempted murder of his wife. By poisonous snake. Yes, I said snake.

He came to the small community and began to learn about the preacher and his wife and the snake-handling congregation, where he eventually committed a reporter's greatest sin: he became personally involved with his subjects. He even moved to the area and joined the church as a full-fledged snake-handling show more member.

Neither expose nor apology, Salvation on Sand Mountain is a fascinating portrait both of an often derided spritual sect and of a normal, modern man who briefly finds spiritual renewal with them. Covington does eventually leave the church, but not for the reasons you might think.

If you ever heard of snake-handlers and were curious, this is the book to read: honest and non-judgemental, Covington allows readers to draw their own conclusions. show less