South Carolina is a go-to place for Christian preachers who need snakes for their church

Jim
Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism
Weird

South Carolina [is] one of the few states with virtually no restrictions on the sale of venomous serpents. South Carolina has, through the years, provided snakes that serpent-handling preachers use at Sunday services because the Palmetto State, unlike many jurisdictions, doesn’t limit the sale of venomous snakes, state officials in South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky say. Snake-handling preachers, or anyone else, can walk up to a table at a wildlife show in South Carolina and purchase a poison-fanged snake with no trouble, state officials say. S.C. investigators say they’ve seen it happen.

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Discussion

Profile picture for user Bert Perry
Bert Perry
Wed, 07/11/18 11:35 am

I’m on my way right now!

Seriously, not only is it a nasty “thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” practice, but I’ve read that the snakes are more or less kept starved and mistreated so they don’t have the physical strength to do what rattlers ordinarily do, i.e. bite at threats and deliver venom. So it’s a theological equivalent, more or less, of putting “Boy Scout water” (gasoline or kerosene) on the wood before lighting the fire so you can light it with 2 matches or less.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

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Ron Bean
Wed, 07/11/18 1:12 pm

Considering that I’m already here in SC, I need some help. Snakes I got but when it comes to deadly drink I need to know if that means Moxie or unsweetened tea.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan