Peculiar and insular, they are hill people of Scotch-Irish descent: religious mystics who cast out demons, speak in tongues, drink strychnine, run blowtorches up their arms, and drape themselves with rattlesnakes. All-night video stores and tanning salons stand next to collapsed chicken farms and fundamentalist churches. The place is southern Appalachia - a country deep and unsettled, where the past and its culture collide with the economic and social realities of the present, leaving a residue of rootlessness, anxiety, and lawlessness. Salvation on Sand Mountain begins with a crime and a trial and then becomes an extraordinary exploration of a place, a people, and an author's descent into himself. "When Dennis Covington covered the trial of Glenn Summerford for The New York Times, a world far beyond the trial opened up to him. Glenn Summerford is convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison."
The trial, which becomes a sensation throughout southern Appalachia, echoes familiar themes from a troubled secular world - marital infidelity, spouse abuse, and alcoholism - but it also raises questions about faith, forgiveness, redemption, and, of course, snakes. At gunpoint, he forces her to stick her arm in a box of rattlesnakes. A snake-handling preacher by the name of Glendel Buford Summerford has just tried to murder his wife, Darlene, by snakebite. Salvation on Sand Mountain covers Covington’s involvement with the members of The Church of Jesus Signs Following."It is Scottsboro, Alabama, in the fall of 1991. This claim was effective because Covington’s use of pathos and ethos, his hard work as a journalist and the numerous months he spent involved in the snake handling church and getting to know the people who worship there. He proves this claim by providing observations of the members and the services at The Church of Jesus Signs Following, telling his personal experiences and showing how he made his discovery that “staying at the church would be suicide,” (Covington 236). In Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington claims that he is meant to be a part of the snake handling community but it is in his best interest to leave because it would only lead to hurt for his family, the church and ultimately himself.
The men and women who practice this religion look at the Bible in a literal sense and believe that God will protect them from snake bites and the consequences of drinking strychnine, a deadly poison (Handwerk 2). Theses churches usually only spring up in small towns with close knit communities.
Gibson Chelsea Gibson English 102-060 OctoNatalie Sypolt Salvation on Sand Mountain Analysis An Outsiders View on a Closed Religion Snake handling is a controversial and often illegal religious ritual that was founded in the 1990’s in the Appalachian region of the United States (Handwerk 1).
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