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A West Virginia pastor pays the price for his faith Pastor Randy “Mack” Wolford, a defender of a serpent-handling faith known as Signs Following, died after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a worship service.
Pastor Randy "Mack" Wolford, second from right in green shirt, handles a rattlesnake after it bit him on the thigh at a worship service at West Virginia's Panther Wildlife Management Area. Surrounding him, from left, are Jamie Lloyd, of Sidney, Ohio; Wolford's mother, Vicie Haywood; and Donald Dover, of North Carolina.
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Lauren Pond for The Washington Post
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Donald Dover, left, of North Carolina and Jamie Lloyd, right, of Sidney, Ohio, carry Randy "Mack" Wolford, 44, to a sport-utility vehicle about 40 minutes after Wolford was bitten while handling a rattlesnake during the May 27 worship service at Panther Wildlife Management Area in southern West Virginia. Mack was then taken to his mother-in-law's home, about an hour away, near Bluefield, W.Va.
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Donald Dover, left, of North Carolina and Jamie Lloyd of Sidney, Ohio, right, support Pastor Randy "Mack" Wolford after taking him to an outhouse at the Panther Wildlife Management Area. Wolford, a practitioner and defender of the faith tradition of serpent-handling, was bitten by a rattlesnake during the Sunday worship service. He later died from the effects of the bite.
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Vicie Haywood, mother of Pastor Randy "Mack" Wolford, strokes her son's feet as the pastor lies on the couch at his mother-in-law's home near Bluefield, W.Va. Wolford was bitten by a rattlesnake during a Sunday worship service. He was pronounced dead early the next morning at the Bluefield Regional Medical Center.
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Lauren Pond for The Washington Post
Pastor Randy "Mack" Wolford handles a rattlesnake during a service at the Church of the Lord Jesus in Jolo, W.Va. Each Labor Day weekend, the church has hosted a well-documented “homecoming” for snake handlers who believe that the Bible mandates that true Christians "take up serpents and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover." Wolford says: "Anybody can do it that believes it."
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Pastor Pete Woods, second from left, and others lay hands on Jimmy Stanley, 72, during a service in Stanley's home in McDowell County, W.Va., in March. The region saw a boom in the 1950s to 1970s but fell on hard times in the 1980s. Over the years, four-fifths of the county’s population left. Those remaining are the retired, the unemployed, the drugged-out and the sick.
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Woods and others lay hands on Marvin Rowe, 53, during a religious service in a McDowell County home in March. Woods pastors at the nondenominational Jesus Church in Bartley, W.Va.
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Woods returns to his house one afternoon in May. About 30 people go to his church on a good day, although, years ago, 130 attended. His own children have left. "They were raised in church, but none go," he says.
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Woods, center, digs a grave for the Rev. John Henry Jewell, who had died of black lung the previous day. Woods says he spends part of his time digging graves for the poor.
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Reading the Bible, Chuck Conner, 64, is one of the few attendees at the first service of homecoming weekend at the Church of the Lord Jesus in Jolo. The Pentecostal church was founded in 1956 by Bob and Barbara Elkins. One woman remembers the church being so full people would stand outside. But then one of Barbara Elkins’s children died of a snakebite in 1961 at age 23. These days, Pastor Harvey Payne says, the congregation has 10 members.
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Photos of snake handling at previous services decorate the walls of the church. Snake handling began in an East Tennessee church in 1909.
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In Jolo, David Payne, left, Lyndon Salyers and Pastor Harvey Payne, right, honor those who were prominent figures in the snake-handling tradition. At one point it had several thousand practitioners, says the Rev. Bill Leonard, a professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. Several states have banned it, including Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. But not West Virginia.
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Wolford, center, and others homecoming attendees lay their hands on a man during service at the Church of the Lord Jesus.
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William Payne, 68, during a service at the Church of the Lord Jesus.
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Nancy, left, and Ruth Kennedy dance during a service in Jolo. In addition to dancing and handling snakes, several people light a wick atop a soda bottle and hold the flame to their hands as an expression of faith.
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A highly venomous timber rattlesnake rests in a box in the Jolo church. About 80 to 100 deaths have been attributed to snake handling since its origins, and nearly every snake handler has been bitten, says the Rev. Bill Leonard, the religion professor from Wake Forest University. There’s a lot of pain when you’re bitten, says Wolford, whose father died at age 39 of a rattlesnake bite. "For the first couple of weeks, you swell up and break out in hives."
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EPA
Rufus "Buddy" Jewell holds timber rattlesnake as he prays during homecoming in Jolo.
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