There are places where faith isn’t just something you feel, it’s something that can actually kill you.
The Snake-Handling Preachers in the Appalachian mountains is one of those places.
In the city of War, West Virginia, the quiet isn’t peaceful; it’s exhausted.
This is McDowell County, long known as one of the poorest counties in America, a place hollowed out by the collapse of coal and left to navigate a drug epidemic that moved in faster than help ever did. Most of the storefronts are boarded up or empty, their signs faded and dilapidated. It’s a food desert, a forgotten stretch of Appalachia where survival feels deliberate and time moves slowly, if at all.
This is the backdrop of The House of the Lord Jesus, home of the Snake-Handling Preachers.
Main street in War, West Virginia
picture from “Snake Handling in Christianity,” Wikipedia
Snake handling in West Virginia traces back to the early 20th century, rooted in a strict reading of Mark 16:17–18, where believers are promised protection if they take up serpents in Jesus’ name. These churches emerged in isolated Appalachian communities shaped by poverty, coal mining, and a deep suspicion of outside authority - religious or otherwise.
Over time, the practice became criminalized, sensationalized, and reduced to headlines about death and danger. But inside these churches, the story sounds different. Handling snakes isn’t a performance or a dare; it’s understood as submission: placing one’s body fully in God’s hands and accepting whatever follows as His will.
Much of my time was spent with Chris Wolford, one of the last serpent-handling pastors in West Virginia. Wolford has spent decades preaching this theology, burying friends and family members who died in services, surviving bites himself, and continuing on with a conviction that has only hardened with time. He doesn’t speak like a provocateur or a cult leader. He speaks like a man who believes - completely, calmly, and without irony. Sitting across from him, it became clear that the danger of this tradition isn’t lost on him; it’s central to it.
Faith, in his world, only matters if it costs something real.
picture by Cody L. photo
For me, this project wasn’t about proving anyone right or wrong. It was all about seeing it for myself, and staying long enough for caricatures to fall apart.
Snake handling forced me to sit with a form of Christianity that refuses metaphor, refuses modern safety nets, and refuses to be made palatable. It asks a question most of us spend our lives avoiding: how much are we actually willing to risk for what we say we believe? For Chris and his congregation, it’s life itself.
Is that wrong? I don’t know.
Is that extreme? I’m not sure.
All I know, I met a small community nestled in the Appalachian mountains that refuses to have bleach-cleaned Christianity forced upon them. And whether that kind of faith is admirable or terrifying, I left knowing it was real.
And in my opinion, that matters more.
picture by Cody L. photo