Far be it from us to denigrate the religious practices of others. We have a deal with you here at The Flying Pie. You leave us alone, we leave you alone. Sometimes, however, curious articles appear in our daily newspaper and we feel compelled to comment. Like this one here about poor old Pastor Jamie Coots, who died from a rattlesnake bite while holding services at church.
Now, we know as well as the next person that some religious practices are a little off the beaten track. A few of these groups even find it necessary to involve animals, as if the poor critters don’t have enough problems with lunatic hunters and fiendish university testing labs. Kaparot, for instance, is a traditional Jewish religious ritual that takes place around the time of the High Holidays. Classically, it is performed by grasping a live chicken by the shoulder blades and moving around one’s head three times. This is supposed to transfer a person’s sins to the chicken, which seems like a cheap trick to us. When we were kids, we had to confess our sins to the grumpy Father O’Clancy, who would then assign us fifty Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys. Ever take the time to say fifty Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys? You’d be looking for that chicken, I can tell you that. Anyway, that is the good news for the chicken. The bad news is that the chicken is then slaughtered and given to the poor, who don’t seem to mind ingesting a delicious though sin-crammed fowl.
Bad as all that may be, if you were ever to step into an animal post office you would quickly notice the Public Enemy Number One posters all contained photos of Santeria Orishas (priests). When it comes to animals, these guys don’t fool around. Not only are they happy to glom onto a sacrificial chicken—and what is it with the chickens, already?—they will just as quickly latch onto a goat or a sheep or what have you. Any old port in a bloodletting. In this country, the courts will occasionally become involved in all this mayhem and the practitioners of the barbarism will rush in to assure the judges the sacrifices are “all a part of our religion.” I guess it is all right to do just about anything if it is “part of our religion.” You could pull the fire alarm at the Nudist Convention or leave camel excrement in the ladies room at the nunnery or concoct a snappy light show for the next congress of the American Foundation for the Blind, it’s all good, “part of our religion.”
Well, I think the animals are getting a little testy about all this foolishness. In the unfortunate case of Pastor Coots, major domo of the famous Full Gospel Tabernacle In Jesus Name, the third-generation snake-handler was bitten during a service on February 15 and died later at his home after refusing medical help. Now, it’s one thing to mess with a helpless little chicken or a puny goat or a cutiepie sheep, but another thing entirely to fool with surly fanged asps, filled with fiery poisons. Oh, the snake might be perfectly fine some days when he is occupied with spiritual matters or sated and content with his diet of albino mice. But then there is always that day when he gets up on the wrong side of the pit, grouchy, looking at an empty coffee-pot, ready for trouble. And here comes silly old Pastor Jamie into the fray, smiling, all full of Jesus and righteousness, rousting the ill-disposed reptile from his cranky reverie. “I think I’ll cold-cock this dumb bastard,” decides the snake….and WHAMMO!….down goes Pastor Jamie. People should know better. That protection of Jesus stuff just goes so far. The snake doesn’t know from Jesus.
There have always been snake-handlers, of course, just like there have always been nitwits. The dubious profession gained momentum in the early 1900s when a Pentecostal Minister—who else?-- named George Hensley was traipsing about the South, selling his brand of religion. One day, Hensley recounted a recent experience on a mountaintop (it’s always on a mountaintop), when a serpent slithered up beside him to say howdy. Hensley allegedly handled the little fella with impunity and when he came down from the mountain he proclaimed the truth of following “all five of the signs of Mark,” whatever the hell they are. Naturally, he immediately drew a legion of followers who were amazed at his sorcery. (Show them a light and they’ll follow it anywhere.) Not long after, Hensley, alas, ran across a snake who had been cleaned out in a poker game the previous evening. “No time for assholes!” hissed the snake, which promptly bit Hensley and delivered him, hopefully, to his maker. Do we notice a trend developing here?
A man named Andrew Hamblin, pastor of the nearby Tabernacle Church of God was with Pastor Jamie Coots when he died. “I held him in my arms when he took his last breath,” Pastor Andrew mournfully related. The latter tells us that Pastor Jamie was “destined” to die on February 15, “if not by a snake, then a stroke or some sort of accident. God’s appointed time of death trumps everything.” Well, yeah, Pastor Andrew, but you’ve gotta admit it’s a hell of a coincidence….
Paul Williamson, a professor of psychology at Henderson State University, said believers in snake-handling describe a feeling “like a high, but a greater high than any drug or alcohol. It’s a feeling of joy, peace, extreme happiness.” (We think it’s the adrenaline.) He said that many handlers believe that when God anoints them, they will be protected, but they still recognize there is danger. For instance, if the spirit leaves them and they don’t put down the snake quickly enough, they could be bitten. Necessity being the mother of invention, it occurs to us there may be a big market here for a wrist alarm which will noisily indicate when the spirit is beginning to leave you.
Pastor Jamie, however, had handled snakes for many years and had been bitten several times, always relying on prayer to bring him through. It occurs to us that this prayer stuff offers a limited rather than a lifetime guarantee. But then, on the other hand, it did sorta last a lifetime, right? Ralph Hood, a professor at UT-Chattanooga, knew Coots well and attended his standing-room-only funeral service last week. At the gathering, several mourners were seen handling snakes. Hood, who should know better being a professor and all, said “At the service, what everybody recognized and accepted is that Pastor Jamie died obedient to God and that his salvation is assured.” Maybe yes, maybe no. Not too far down the road at Florida A&M, the reptiles are gathering for a celebration of their own. If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear them in the distance:
“RATTLERS GOT THAT RAMMER-JAMMER, OOH-AAH!!”
Kentucky Pastor Jamie Coots With Friend
My Religion Is Nuttier Than Your Religion
Through the centuries, “Religion” has provided The Great Excuse for human beings to engage in whatever perversities warm the cockles of their sooty little hearts….without threat of internment or worse. If it turns out that there actually IS a God, we feel pretty sure He or She is not mailing out the blueprints for these activities and the perpetrators of such crimes will face monstrous penalties in the Court of Last Resort. A sad list of “Religious” shenanigans:
1. Bombs Away. Worshippers at a Muslim shrine in the Indian state of Maharashtra like a celebration, just like the next guy. They like this one so much they’ve been carrying it on for over 500 years. After all the fans have arrived at their seats and the cheerleaders have concluded their antics, a couple of bozos, usually the parents, climb to the top of a 50-foot tower and….well….TOSS an infant to the ground below. Alertly waiting down there are several (hopefully) staunch bed-sheet holders, trying to keep the linens taut. This continues on until they run out of babies. The practitioners believe that the practice of this ritual blesses their offspring with good health, courage and life-long strength. Except, you know, for the ones who bounce.
2. Hooking Up. Garudan Thookkam is a ritual art form performed in Kali temples in southern India. People dress up as Garuda, a Hindu divinity, and execute a little dance to warm up the audience. After that, the backs of several devoted Hindus are pierced by very sharp hooks. They are summarily lifted off the ground onto a scaffold using ropes, sometimes with babies in their hands (these Indian babies just can’t catch a break). All this is an offering to appease the Goddess. Gee whiz. In Hawaii, all they do is leave flowers at the edge of the volcano.
3. Bad News For Crematorium Owners. Sky Burial is a funerary practice in Tibet. Most Tibetans follow Buddhist traditions, which dictate that the human body is merely a vessel and at the end of its usefulness should be discarded. Corpses are incised in certain locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing them to the elements and any enterprising animals which happen upon the scene, mostly predatory birds. This practice is actually against the law in Tibet but can sometimes be performed at the request of the deceased’s family. “Hmmn, let’s see—a nice $5000 funeral for good old Uncle Arthur or the cheaper alternative—which will it be?”
4. You Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well. Voodoo worshippers, as we all know, believe it is extra important to honor and care for all of the spirits, which can become weak over time and dependent on humans for nourishment. Rituals and sacrifices are used to rejuvenate them, particularly animal sacrifices, in which the lifeforce of the victim supposedly transfers to the spirit. All this makes the Gods, called “Loa,” ebullient.
During the ceremony, worshippers can be “mounted” (possessed) by a Loa, which will take complete control of the individual, offering advice, presenting cures and delivering prophesies to the gathered assembly. This can be quite a violent occurrence, since the participant might flail about or convulse and fall to the ground while still advising. You know about this. This is what happens on the Rush Limbaugh Show every day.
5. Tickle Me With A Feather. It’s not that we’re picking on the Indians, they just keep showing up with wacky ideas. In this one, we consider the Digambaras, to whom outward appearance is an index of properly understanding their doctrine. Therefore, a “true” Monk must be completely naked, which seems okay, but then he must abandon all possessions, even his IPad, and no longer subject himself to the social considerations of Pride and Shame. He must drink water from a gourd and beg for his food. He can eat only once a day, even when the ice-cream truck visits. In accordance with the Digambara practice of nonviolence, the monks must also use a feather duster to clear their paths of insects to avoid trampling them. Because women are not allowed to be naked ascetics, they supposedly cannot reach the level of detachment necessary to become truly liberated, another terrible blight on the fabric of equality. A blight which these women seem incredibly willing to tolerate for some unknown reason.
6. Who’s Got The Wesson Oil? A clandestine group in the Seattle area, which hopefully does not include Marty Jourard, practices Pagan rituals to appease the spirits of fertility and fruitfulness through sex rites which were practiced in the ancient Middle East over 1,500 years ago.
The spirits cannot enjoy orgasmic sensation within their own non-corporeal bodies but they can feel the ecstasy of human pleasure through these rites. The practitioners have homosexual and heterosexual sex at the same time and in the same room, with the goal of achieving climax all together so that society retains the spirit relationship and is blessed. The spirits can also be appeased through masturbation with no intercourse.
What’s so strange about that? Sounds like Saturday night at the Phi Delt house to us.
Those Merry Digambaras
A Final Heads-Up
Your Uncle Bill is not pleased at the dearth of contributions to his 200th column fund. You remember. The measly paragraph or two we asked for, citing your favorite blog(s). There are two reasons for this request, at least. The first and most important is that it gives Bill a week off. The second, almost as important, is that it presents readers an idea of what other people have enjoyed in past Pies, so that new folks might scroll back with enlightenment rather than randomness. Many have joined us a year ago, six months ago, yesterday, and ask which columns to read. I usually cite the most read half-dozen or so, adding the vacation columns and anything which might seem in their particular area of interest. But everybody is different. We want to hear your selections. And you’d better hurry up, time’s-a-wastin’. You’ve got to Get ‘Er Done by March 23rd. Do not delay, act today. There may be penalties for noncompliance.
That’s all, folks….
