Venomous Snakes Rescued From Serpent-Handling Preacher
Cruelty to dangerous reptiles plus placing your own congregation in danger equals necessary intervention:
These snakes may have been holy, but they sure weren’t legal.
Tennessee’s Wildlife Resources Agency seized 53 venomous snakes on Thursday from a pastor who claims the deadly reptiles help him worship God.
Officials found the creatures stored inside broken aquarium tanks and plastic containers at Pastor Andrew Hamblin’s Tabernacle Church of God in LaFollete.
Some were old and sick. Others were young, as tiny as 4 inches and easily capable of slithering out of their containers and into the pews. Some snakes that the officials found were already dead.
“It’s a matter of public safety,” Matt Cameron, press officer for the TWRA’s Region 4, told The News. “We weren’t trying to interfere with their religious beliefs at all.”
There are several documented cases of pastors or congregants dying after refusing medical treatment for snake bites, the spokesperson said.
But for Hamblin and his followers, the idea of the state taking away their snakes is “unconstitutional.”
