‘Salvation on Sand Mountain’ author speaks at WSCC

Published 6:21 pm Friday, April 17, 2009

By Trent Moore

Staff Writer

HANCEVILLE — Award-winning author Dennis Covington spoke to a group of more than 100 people Thursday at Wallace State, as part of the college’s Arts Week program.

Covington, a Birmingham native, is best known for his 1994 non-fiction piece “Salvation on Sand Mountain,” for which he won the Boston Book Review’s Nonfiction Prize.

The book chronicles Covington’s experiences while investigating and attending “snake handling” churches in and around Alabama.

Some southern churches took up the act of snake handling in the past decade, which is based mostly on the Mark 16: 17-18 verses in the Bible, which notes, in part, “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”

Covington thrust himself into the environment and lifestyle of churches that practice snake handling while preparing to write “Salvation on Sand Mountain.”

“I’m just a writer who had a story to tell,” he said. “It was the book I was meant to write.”

Covington did a reading from the prologue of “Salvation on Sand Mountain,” and also read an excerpt from a new afterword he is writing for the book’s 15th anniversary edition.

Looking back on the time he spent researching the book, Covington said he has mixed emotions about the experience.

“I loved those snake handling sermons,” he said. “I began to think of them as genuine Christian mystics … It really was a spiritual journey.”

Covington said the national reaction to the book has been accepting, with most generally curious about the topic of snake handling.

“The book has caused a lot of discussion and excitement across the country,” he said. “But, I think the majority of it really was genuine.”

Covington also expressed his appreciation and respect for a southern culture that has survived the Civil War and the rise and fall of the steel industry, specifically in Birmingham.

“We didn’t stop being a separate country when Burger King came to Meridian,” Covington said. “The south hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it’s become even more southern in a last ditch effort to save itself.”

Wallace State student LaRee Womack said she enjoyed Covington’s lecture, and left with more information on a topic she hadn’t truly considered before.

“I came as part of an English assignment,” she said. “That was interesting, to learn about the snake handling and that people actually do that.”

Throughout his professional career, Covington has written for The New York Times, and taught at UAB, the College of Wooster and Texas Tech University. He is also the author of numerous books, including “Lizard,” for which he won the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel and the Alabama Library Association’s Alabama Author Award.

Arts Week at Wallace State is set to continue today, with a big band dance at 7 p.m. in the banquet hall. Members of the WSCC Jazz Band and Singers will perform and admission will consist of a $15 donation.

A Juried Visual Art Exhibition and Awards Presentation is scheduled for Saturday at 11 a.m. in the Bailey Center lobby.



‰ Trent Moore can be reached by e-mail at trentm@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 225.