It's bizarre to think that a lot of people literally shape their entire lives on an ancient book of unverified authorship that is mostly myth and ignorance. Damn tragic.
I think Jamie Coots just made the next Darwin Awards list, in a big way. And I also think the members of his church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, KY, will go right on with their habits. After all, it was obviously God's will that Jamie died.
Jamie Coots, a well-known snake-handling preacher from Murfreesboro, TN, dies from snakebite.
bestep@herald-leader.com
A well-known snake-handling preacher in Middlesboro, KY died after being bitten during a church service Saturday evening, according to police.
Jamie Coots was bitten on his right hand by a snake, according to a news release.
An ambulance crew and firefighters tried to talk Coots into going to the hospital, but he refused treatment, police said.
That is common among members of snake-handling churches, who believe in faith healing.
Coots, a third-generation snake handler, pastored a small church in Middlesboro.
He had been prominent among the small, close-knit circle of snake-handling churches in Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, East Tennessee and Alabama for years, but he gained wider notice last year though a television program called “Snake Salvation” on the National Geographic Channel, which profiled Coots and his beliefs.
Paramedics were called to Coots’ church about 8:30 p.m. Saturday to check on a report someone had been bitten by a snake.
By the time they arrived, Coots had gone to his home nearby. The ambulance crew and firefighters went to his home, according to a news release from Middlesboro police.
The emergency responders told Coots about the danger of not going to the hospital, but he refused to go, police said.
The emergency crews left the house at 9:10 p.m. Authorities received a call less than an hour later indicating Coots had died, according to police. Coots was pronounced dead at his home.
Coots had suffered serious bites before. He told the Herald-Leader that he nearly died in the early 1990s when a large rattlesnake bit him on the left arm, and in 1998, a rattlesnake he was handling suddenly struck the middle finger of his right hand.
Coots refused treatment for the excruciating bites in both cases.
"It's a victory to God's people that the Lord seen fit to bring me through it,” he said the day after the bite in 1998.
His right arm swelled to the shoulder, turned purple-red and was puckered with blisters. The end of his middle finger eventually died and fell off.
Coots’ church was the site of a previous fatal snake bite in August 1995. Melinda Brown, 28, of Parrotsville, Tenn., died after she was bitten on the arm by a large rattlesnake.
After her death, police considered charging Coots with violating Kentucky's law against handling snakes in church, but a judge said Coots should not be prosecuted for practicing his faith.
Brown's husband, John Wayne "Punkin" Brown, 34, later died after being bitten by a rattlesnake in church in Alabama.
Kentucky outlawed handing poisonous snakes in religious services in 1940, but serious attempts to enforce the law ended decades ago because of reluctance by authorities to prosecute people for their religious beliefs.
Snake handlers, who follow a literal interpretation of the King James Bible, base their belief on Mark 16: 17-18, which reads: "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
Snake handlers believe they are following a Biblical command in picking up snakes.
Most mainstream Protestant churches take a different view. Snake-handling churches are in a tiny minority.
Many members of snake-handling churches do not handle the snakes, and the ritual does not occur at every service.
Church members say outsiders place too much emphasis on snake handling, pointing out that the other signs mentioned in the Bible, such as laying hands on the sick, are just as important.
''We're just normal people living day to day like everybody else, most of us living hand to mouth, but what we believe, we believe, and we practice it,’ Coots said in 1998.
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