salvation on sand mountain by dennis covington

A piece of American exotica sadly mishandled. Detours from the main tale add little interest: Covington's fruitless search into his past to understand his fascination with snake handling, for example, leads him to discover that Covingtons were arrested for snake handling in the 1950s he finds this significant even after he learns that those Covingtons were not related to him at all.

Covington's story is a mixture of sociology, history, and autobiography, but the parts never coalesce. After about two years, he realized-or remembered-that the people he was worshiping with were backward, petty, bigoted, and somewhat suicidal, and he decided to return to his more conventional Southern Baptist church in Birmingham. He testified before the congregation, traveled the meeting circuit, and even handled snakes. A recovered alcoholic and one-time war correspondent, he was attracted by the hypnotic effect the signs following service had on him and by the danger of handling four-foot rattlesnakes and deadly copperheads. Covington became caught up in the religion.

After WW II the signs following cult came to insular places like Sand Mountain, Ala., where traditional life had been unsettled by the rapidly changing times. He wanted to observe firsthand the phenomenon known as ``signs following.'' The practice is based on the literal interpretation of Jesus' prophecy: ``And these signs shall follow them that believe.they shall speak with new tongues they shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.'' In order to fulfill the prophecy, believers worship with poisonous snakes, drink strychnine, and speak in tongues. Reporting for the New York Times on the case of Glenn Summerford, a snake-handling preacher who attempted to kill his wife with snakes, Covington (Lizard, 1991) attended a ``homecoming'' meeting at the Church of Jesus with Signs Following, Summerford's converted gas station church. O元494751W Page_number_confidence 85.29 Pages 274 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.15 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20211012100122 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 460 Scandate 20211009102851 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9780201622928 Tts_version 4.A meandering journalistic testimony of the author's experience with a strange southern Christian sect. Urn:lcp:salvationonsandm0000covi:lcpdf:3b38fdcb-2c3d-4984-83fd-8a5e6fe45234 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier salvationonsandm0000covi Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3xt8964n Invoice 1652 Isbn 0201622920 Lccn 94040335 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-beta-20210815 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9069 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200061 Openlibrary_edition Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 07:15:52 Boxid IA40258019 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

Salvation on sand mountain by dennis covington