There was a lot of nervous laughter in the room. Some of it was mine. I was leading a church discussion on religious practices in Appalachia. The topic of the night was snake handling. The multitudes had not shown up; I think it was because of the subject. Just the thought of snakes, much less the thought of handling them, gives most folks cold chills. A number of people in the room alluded to Wendy Bagwell’s old story of singing in a West Virginia church. Bagwell described how people had begun to take snakes out of baskets and boxes while...