Snake Handling

How can we get snake handling to be a widespread, or at least more mainstream part of Christianity? I know it's a long shot but it can't be impossible, can it?
 
Um, as a part of the religion, I don't think you can, remember part of the Bible makes snakes out to be evil, so people would'nt necessarily want to be handling what they perceived as evil.

Add to that that we have a natural evolutionarily ingrained dislike/fear of snakes.
 
Um, as a part of the religion, I don't think you can, remember part of the Bible makes snakes out to be evil, so people would'nt necessarily want to be handling what they perceived as evil.

Add to that that we have a natural evolutionarily ingrained dislike/fear of snakes.

The snake was a disguise, evil does not disguise itself as itself. Serpents are beutiful to behold and pleasant to the touch. No more malevolent than any mammal and their scaled hide is farmore eloquent than fur or flesh.

Spiders are the secular incarnation of evil in all of it deception, complexity, and cruelty.
 
Snake handling is common in Afro-Caribbean religions (Vodou, Lukumi/Santeria, etc.). Perhaps greater Afro-Caribbean influence in southern Protestantism? Cuba and/or *Dominican Republic as a State, perhaps?

Snake Handling could spread both as proof of faith ("the lord protects those who believe") and as a symbolic representation of confronting and defeating your inner original sin.
 

MrP

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