Good enough for me (Page 1 of 1)

Jimmy Morrow’s church service opened like an Appalachian blue grass show: There was a guitar, a tambourine, clapping hands and clomping feet; there was that sweet mountain voice, nasal and ringing in the small block-building church.

“I got a key to the kingdom,” sang Monte as she plucked the strings. And even though she was performing for a small crowd — seven, including Phil Colclough, Knoxville Zoo’s curator of herpetology, and me — she poured out each song with an energy and exuberance that could have brought a sold-out concert hall to a full-on foot-stomping raucous.

Jimmy Morrow, the preacher of Del Rio’s Edwina Church of God in Jesus Christ’s Name, paced the pulpit stage, slapping his tambourine, singing along, calling out “Almighty God!” The tiny congregation was active, humming along with the songs, feet bouncing and tramping the floors, hands smacking together and affirming the music with a frequent head-back shout of “Amen!”

Jimmy led a couple tunes himself: “Gimme that old time religion, that old time religion, gimme that old time religion, that’s good enough for me.”

Old time religion, indeed.

The snakes, though, were not in-house: It was February, and Jimmy believes in catch-and-release — his serpents go back to the wild for hibernation.

The Edwina Church of God in Jesus Christ’s Name holds fast to the words written in Mark 16: 17 – 18: And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name they cast out devils; they shall speak 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.

Earlier that morning, on the drive to Jimmy’s church, Phil relayed his first experience with witnessing the serpent handling: A cottonmouth, coiled in one of Jimmy’s snake boxes, struck aggressively at the Plexiglas lid, leaving globs of venom like pus, as Phil leaned over to examine it before the service started. 

“Cottonmouths are incredibly defensive snakes,” Phil said. And then later, while Jimmy spoke from the pulpit, Phil noticed the preacher beginning to glance at the snake box that contained the cottonmouth. When Jimmy walked to the box and unlatched the lid, Phil’s breathing went shallow. He traced in his mind his snakebite first aid, convinced that he was about to watch the serpent sink its venom-tipped fangs into Jimmy Morrow’s flesh. Phil went pale as the preacher reached into the box and pulled out the cottonmouth.

Jimmy held the snake in the air. He rubbed it against his face. He even sat down and stretched the snake in a straight line on the floor, took off his shoes and socks and then rubbed his bare feet over the cottonmouth’s back. After 15 minutes of handling, Jimmy simply scooped up the serpent and dropped it back into the box.

“I cannot biologically explain it,” said Phil.  “I’m not saying it’s miraculous, but I have no explanation for Jimmy not getting bitten.”

On the day I attended the service, the snakes were sleeping safely away in the mountains. After the music ended, two young men, one in pressed jeans and the other in a shirt and tie, came in late with a small girl and took a seat in the front pew. Jimmy asked if anyone wanted to speak. The man in jeans, goateed and with a clean shaven scalp, took the pulpit, held his hand in the air and closed his eyes: “Isn’t it great to know Jesus is with me everywhere I go?”

And then Jimmy commenced his sermon. “The further down in time we live, the more the Bible will be fulfilled,” he said. He ducked his head, gulped, closed his eyes and launched into a rhythm that felt like a continuation of the music. His voice was up-swinging, on an arc like a plotline, building and then falling down.  At the bottom of the rhythm, he’d raise his head and yell — “Whew!” — and then he’d take a deep breath and begin a whole new rise: “That Bible said, the word of God, in this day and time children, great signs 
and wonders …’’

And while Jimmy preached, the congregation remained lively, shouting approval and “Amen!” and “Tell it, brother Jimmy!” Jimmy’s wife, Pam, sat in the middle of the church with her palm in the air, her eyes closed and head bowed. She whispered continuously, and occasionally, I could make out the whistling S’s of “Jesus.”

Jimmy paced throughout his sermon — “That old John saw a red horse … ” — stuffing his hands into his pockets, pulling them back out, raising them above his head, resting them on the pulpit. “The army gathering in Jerusalem is Jesus’ word fulfilled,” he said.

And then, a half-hour later, he rolled his way down to a final dénouement. “This time we live in. Signs would follow them that believe in my name.” More song broke out, the tambourine jingling along with the clapping hands.

Throughout the entire service, I scribbled in my notebook, and Phil snapped pictures, the camera flash exploding, the shutter noise obtrusive. But no one took offense or even seemed to notice what we were doing. Phil has a well-established relationship with Jimmy and his flock — they’ve even visited him at 
the zoo — and because I was with Phil, they trusted me, too, which is rather shocking, considering how frequently their faith has been abused and laughed at in the press.

“Come back anytime,” Jimmy told me as we got in our car to leave. “Ever who wants to come is welcome.”

I assured him that I’d be back in the spring, when he had his snake boxes full again, and I left wondering how anyone could toss out scorn and ridicule at such a man, a man who hugs strangers upon greeting, a man who, with ecological responsibility, sets out his snakes in late fall to crawl away for their dens to coil in stiff defense of the coming cold ground.

* The views expressed in Commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Knoxville Voice.