Through some friends on Goodreads, I found out about Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington, written over a decade ago. Covington was a journalist who covered the trial of a snake-handling preacher who was accused, and later convicted, of the attempted murder of his wife by forcing her to endure the bites of the rattlesnakes that he kept. Covington became fascinated with this sub-culture, and decides to write a book about them. I don't know if he intended a more scholarly, journalistic, or at least distanced work when he began, but the book is as much or about his own spiritual transformation as a result of his experiences with the snake-handlers as it is about the handlers themselves.
I was interested to read this book because Sand Mountain is very important to the Sacred Harp singing tradition, and I wondered if there was any connection. I combed the book for any Sacred Harp references, but beyond the lyrics to one hymn (and though many hymns in Protestant hymnals have the same words as those in the Sacred Harp, they're hardly Sacred Harp tunes), there were none. Nonetheless, I think this book has a lot to offer Sacred Harp singers, as it provides another window into the culture that has preserved the living tradition of shapenote singing. This is especially true for those of us who come from the West and North, as well as those of us who grew up without a faith tradition or have drifted from that tradition.
Here's where you should stop reading me and go read Covington, because I'm about to give away a lot of the story.
In the process of learning about the snake handling tradition, Covington discovers that this form of worship only occurs in specific places-- those on the edges of the old ways and the new. People in the backwoods don't practice it, those near cities do. It is also an evangelical practice: practictioners are doing it as a witness against what they perceive as the moral decay around them, and as a means of winning converts. At first, I was sort of surprised that snake-handling and Sacred Harp didn't have more of a connection. They both seemed like primitive practices that would go together. But Covington points out that this practice did not appear until around 1910. As Covington writes in the prologue:
Snake handling, for instance, didn't originate back in the hills somewhere. It started when people came down from the hills to discover they were surrounded by a hostile and spiritually dead culture. All along their border with the modern world-- in places like Newport, Tennessee, and Sand Mountain, Alabama-- they recoiled. They threw up defenses. When their own resources failed, they called down the Holy Ghost. They put their hands through fire. They drank poison. They took up serpents.
Sacred Harp singing ins't meant to be evangelical in the way snake handling, poison drinking, and touching fire are. Electric guitars, drums, and tambourines as the musical accompaniment start to make more sense when you realize this.
Covington gets drawn into this world and manner of worship, first by singing and playing the tambourine, then testifying and eventually handling snakes himself. When handling his first snake, he experiences religious ecstasy: he completely loses all sense of himself in the experience. His depiction of his experience was the lynchpin of the book for me. My feelings changed from fascination and revulsion to some form of empathy. And here is where I can make a connection to the experience of singing Sacred Harp. It is music that is close to the core, and offers a similar opportunity to lose oneself. Interestingly, the structure of Sacred Harp singings pretty much precludes falling out, speaking in tongues, and so forth. I'd say, though, that it takes you right to the edge of trance without actually tipping you into it. From time to time, a Southern singer will remind the rest of us of the fact that for some, Sacred Harp singing is truly worship. I think it's worship in this sense of surrendering oneself: ego, hipness, coolness, and all.
The Quaker writer John Punshon explains the damaging effect that "liberal cool" had on his spiritual life. It was hard to lay down his ego and truly surrender to the Divine. I certainly have heard messages in Meeting for Worship that are smug, alond the lines of "aren't we so clever and wise to be Liberals and atheists, we haven't fallen for this God Delusion." I'm always disturbed by this. I do not agree with the politics of the religious right, by any means. I do think that many (but not all) of their stances are a perversion of the Gospel. But I hate the superiority that creeps into some of us, how we're better or smarter somehow for not having faith.
Covington and his family get more and more deeply involved with this church. At the end, Covington's wife is publically attacked at a worship service for not conforming to proper ways for women. Covington is allowed to preach, and preaches on the theme of Mary Magdalene being the first person to see Jesus resurrected. He asserts that it is a woman's place to work and to preach, and he's shot down for it. This event makes him realize that it's time to come down off the mountain and go back to his life. As much as he has come to appreciate this world, he finally realizes that it isn't his. There may be a message in this for those of us who come to Sacred Harp from outside the tradition. We are, and will always be, guests.
Covington maintains a consistently compassionate and honest viewpoint throughout this memoir. Given that his time with the snake handlers ends painfully and abruptly, it is to his credit that he does so. It would be easy to condemn these people, to cast them as crazy, deluded, or stupid, yet Covington does not. He respects their faith, even though he finally realizes that he cannot be one of them.
