For a fellow traveler — Dennis Covington

Life. It takes some turns, for sure. When I was first starting my career, I worked for an organization that – as it did then – no longer exists, the United Methodist Church.

I stalked Dennis Covington, who recently passed away in Texas, outside of his then UAB office to get this interview. And by the time it ended, neither of us was completely the same.

I share it now as a way of remembering that moment, as he passes to the next.

What causes the Spirit to be rekindled in someone? How can we be open to the leadership of the Holy Spirit? For author Dennis Covington, it was a journey into life and faith of the famed “snake handlers” of Appalachia that opened the door to a greater understanding of his faith and of the power of the Spirit in his life. In Salvation on Sand Mountain, nominated for a National Book Club Award, Covington, who comes into contact with the handlers when he covers the trial of a preacher accused of attempting to murder his wife by sticking her hand in a box of snakes, pens a description of his growth in faith through his experiences.

On His Methodist and Religious Heritage

Q: Thank you for this opportunity, Dennis. Why don’t you tell us about your spiritual heritage?

A: Well, I grew up in the Methodist Church, at Lake Highlands United Methodist in East Lake (Birmingham). My parents met through the United Methodist Church in Woodlawn. They went to West Woodlawn. My father was one of twelve children, and I believe he was the only one that went to Sunday School He would walk, on his own . . . just walked to the church. I do not know where that came from or what the deal was. But he was very active. He was Sunday school superintendent and taught Sunday school for many years. . . I did leave the church, but I have always loved the Methodist church.

Q: Well, let’s get to that in a moment. What things do you remember about the Methodist Church when you were young? What sticks in your mind, today, 30 years later?

A: Oh, the extraordinary thing to me was the emphasis on youth in the Methodist Church. We had a real active youth group.

Q: Did you ever go to Sumatanga?

A: I went to Sumatanga. That emphasis on youth, you know, is unusual. Now, I am a Southern Baptist and my wife, Vicki, grew up Southern Baptist. She said she used to go to Methodist churches when she was a teenager just for that, to go to fireside, to do things together and folk dance at Suma1anga. I even knew Nina Reeves … It was healthy, good stuff, all done in a context of Christianity.

Q: How did you feel about the Holy Spirit when you were younger, part of the Methodist Church?

A: It wasn’t talked about a lot. But, occasionally at our church because we would get a new preacher, sometimes we would get a preacher who talked about it more than others. On those occasions, it was a little bit spooky, but also exciting. There were a couple of preachers we had, Jack Dillard from Arab and Alton Parris, who both had an evangelical style of preaching. You know, some people’s particular gift happens to be ministry, others are preachers. Those two guys were just incredible preachers. They could stir up the place and keep it going. Sometimes a Sunday evening service would go on forever.

Q: Well, then what caused you to leave the Methodist Church?

A: I think that I just had the usual falling away around college age. I went off to school to Virginia. I had started drinking when I was 15, but nobody knew that. And, I was, well, sucked into the worldly life like a lot of people are. I just stayed away for a long time. (Pause) It surprises me; I do occasionally run into people that didn’t go through that rebellion against organized religion. It’s always a surprise to me. I just wish that my own “wilderness experience·” where I had to find my spiritual foundation had been foreshortened. It was a very long, prolonged wandering around and very self-destructive.

Q: Did you1think that before you wrote Salvation on Sand Mountain?

A: Oh yeah, I knew what I had been through. I mean, I essentially feel like I had lost ten years of my life.

Q: This was all before you were remarried. Correct?

A: Yeah, before I sobered up in 1983. My wife (Vicki) and I had been trying to quit before that but couldn’t quite get a handle on it. I suppose I was trying to get away from something. But I really take the view that alcohol is an addiction with certain biochemical roots. It is a curious thing in that it is a physical affliction for which there is a spiritual cure. I do not know whether my spiritual life would have been reawakened the way it was if I had not come back from. such a distance. It is a terrible way of saying it, but it is as if the alcoholism was a blessing in disguise. Coming out of that was the thing that brought me back to the Father. He brought me back. Is this confusing?

Q: No, I understand what you are saying. People that have been “through the fire” appreciate the water afterward. The “baptism of fire” makes the “baptism. of water” more meaningful. What role do think spiritual heritage–or “cell memory” plays in the desire for spirituality? Is it almost a destiny or an inevitability?

A: In discovering my own people, I did not know that they were Scotch-Irish, hill-people. Ultimately, my people are the seed of Abraham. We are just going back, back to the Father. Why were my people driven across the ocean to settle the Appalachians? Why did they drift down to a place like Birmingham to work in the mills? Why did I not know it? I do not understand. it. But I am sure that this is not my home; we are pilgrims. It is important where we come from not only because we are going back there but because time is all one thing. We are there now; we just do not know it. Just as it is in Ecclesiastes, where it says that the past being the present being the future, and all of it is the same. I do not know how I could have thought Christianity was boring. The sheep will know the shepherd’s voice. It is built into us. When we are called, we will know it.

Q: Have you heard the voice of God before?

A: Yeah, I have. But it was nothing spectacular. I did hear a couple of things, and I could tell you the exact spot. What I heard most clearly and most recently was simply, “Feed my sheep.” I thought that meant that I was to preach. But I do not think that is the case now. For one thing, I have a very strong ego and a weak self-concept. I do not think I should preach. I do feel like I am following the Spirit by doing something small, like the opportunity that I have to drill water wells in underdeveloped countries. I think this is what God meant: go find some water. And everything for this has just started to fall into place. Vicki and I started praying and she told me that people would start coming into my life to help make this happen. And it has, and more. . .We are in the grip of a Holy enterprise. It has nothing to do snakes, but I would not be there today if it had not been for the snakes. For most Christians, the kind of thinking that I am doing now is what they have been doing their whole life.

The Holy Spirit and Salvation on Sand Mountain

Q: In the book, it seems you had very little control over when the Spirit came. Was that unnerving or were you in awe? Was there something about it that made you uncomfortable?

A: There were moments, not at the service, but just lying in my bed at night when I would “go out in the Spirit” and I would get scared. There were those times, but I actually do not think that there is any reason to be frightened at all.

Q: There ill a tension in the book between the Spirit and the manifestations of the Spirit. There are so many variations of the ways the Spirit manifests itself. What made the particular forms that were in the snake handling congregation so interesting to you and to them? What is different about the forms that you see in your church now or the forms you saw in the Methodist church?

A: I think that before I started handling, I mean before I started hanging around with the snake handlers, I did not recognize the movement of the Spirit. I didn’t know what it was that I was supposed to be feeling. Now, I feel, and I may be deluding myself because I don’t want to sound like I have some ultimate truth: all I have is the Word, the scripture. But now I know that if I ask for the Holy Spirit to come down for me to experience joy, it will happen. I will feel joy. I never would have known before that it was the Holy Spirit giving me that joy. I didn’t know what to ask for. Today, I will ask in prayer that God will send the Holy Spirit to give me what I need at that moment. Sometimes, it’s instruction, sometimes joy.

Q: The Holy Spirit can come and make any book more than a book. People need an avenue to encounter the Holy Spirit, whether it is this book or the Bible or the road to Damascus. God will find a way to send the Spirit. If that puts you into an uncomfortable position of being a spokesperson, then God will not hang you out to dry. He will give or has supplied you with whatever you need. It is a matter of faith.

A: It is great. This thing is real.

Q: There is a power in the Spirit that people yearn to tap into, and you were privileged to touch it. People want to know how to tap that energy. They want to take what you did, without handling snakes, and feel it also. If you can tell them that, how?

A: Well, you have to ask for it. When you ask for it, you will receive it. I do not think there is any question about it. God is so eager to give that gift to us. Personally, I believe that we are baptized by the Holy Spirit when we are saved, but we do not recognize it. It is our failure to understand that we have the Holy Spirit and can access it.

Q: Do you see this as a fault of your religious education?

A: My problem was that I did not read the Bible. I grew up in the church, but I did not read the New Testament until I started writing Salvation, and it was the only book I read.

Q: If you had been trained as a young person about the Holy Spirit, do you think you would be different? In what ways?

A: I come into contact with a number of young people who grew up in Pentecostal churches and what seems to me so fresh, unusual and attractive, to them was just the way they grew up. They felt under a certain amount of pressure to show the gifts of the Spirit.

Q: In my own experience, I have witnessed the same kinds of pressure on teenage Holiness children. They would go to revival meetings, receive the Holy Ghost, and drop out of society — other than their church. It made outsiders skeptical, yet curious. Again, you see the magnetism.

A: I have flirted with the idea of going to other kinds of churches. But I love my church. The Holy Spirit is there. It is separating the forms of Godliness. Charles McGlocklin says that seminaries teach the forms of Godliness arid not the Spirit. There is a way in which even that these certain approved ways of experiencing the Spirit of God become formalized. I do not know what to do about my own worship. I love my church, my preacher. So, I will be there. But occasionally, I want to go somewhere and put my hands up.

Q: So, how do you deal. with that? You are doing it. Do you sneak out on Sunday night…

A: No, no. We have not been very public about this, but Vicki and I have just come under contract to do a new book together. It is a way to be obedient to the Holy Spirit and to try to eliminate our sense of self. It is a way to experience the Holy Spirit without the fireworks.

About the Book

Q: What makes your experience so engaging. It’s not fiction; it may be partly. How do you account for the success of this book?

A: Well, I think people, particularly of my generation (Boomers and Busters) have a need to experience directly the power of God. It seems that mainstream churches have become so cautious of not wanting to offend anyone. They want to keep everyone at a nice comfort level. We’ve just lost the spontaneity… This book has put me into a position of being a spokesperson, in a way. In the exact way that Brother Carl (Parsons) told me it would. He said if I told the truth, it would be a means of spreading the gospel. At the time, I thought, “oh, yeah, sure.” But in retrospect, that is exactly what has happened. I go all over the country and people are asking me, in sometimes secular contexts, questions about spirituality and Christianity, and I do not feel adequate to the task of talking about it. I am not … my life is not a model.

Q: Well, from the first time I read the book, I have had to fight the desire to come to you for spiritual guidance. It has taken me this long to put any distance between me, you and the book. And it is still a little difficult. I feel like you wrote my life in this book. I did not go through this, but I grew up on Sand Mountain. And I lived with those people, and I moved to the city and made a life there. I see my own “cell memory” (those desires and predilections that are seemingly hereditary) in this book. There are things burned into my DNA that I know are there and could not be washed away with a 100 baptisms. I am Scotch-Irish and I have the personality to prove it. It has been a spiritual experience for me to go through the book. You do not always ask for the position that God gives you.

A: The only things I asked when I was writing the book, I prayed a lot that the Holy Spirit would be in it. It was. Which is not to say that the book is still not a human enterprise.

Q: Did you go into your experience with the snake handlers expecting to become so involved with them?

A: My idea was to do a piece of creative non-fiction which I was not a character. These people were to be my characters. I did not know that I was going to get so wrapped up in the experience.

Q: Any other surprises?

A: It has been real strange. The book has given people who are intellectually resistant an excuse to get in on the joy of Christianity. I get letters from all over the country from diverse backgrounds who are attracted to what went on in the book.

Q: What do you think they are attracted to: the story, your journey, the outlandishness or eccentricity of the faith?

A: Well, I think that most are interested in it because it is so odd.

Attraction and Repulsion

Q: You said that in the book that you wanted a preacher “who would reach into his pocket and pull out a comb (instead of a handkerchief).” Contemporary worship borders on spontaneity with its desire to be informal. It takes care of a need to be out of the ordinary, to be the other. In this vein, in the book, it seems time and time again, that there is something ultimately attractive and repelling in both the Spirit and in the people in which it manifests itself. It is magnetic. They “preach” at you and turnaround and invite you back. Why do you think it manifests itself in this way in a church of this type?

A: Well, because the church is finally a human institution. I think things would be a lot better if we all walked in the Spirit. I wish I could do it. But there is a mystery at the heart of Christianity. The main thing I came away from the book with is this feeling that what the Bible says is true. Jesus did live and was God made flesh. This is such a contradiction, such an anomaly, such an odd thing. It is mysterious. But as believers we are assured, we have access to the mystery. It is nothing to be frightened of or that will undo us. We can get in and be assured. I also came away perturbed by the fact that people are dying in these religious services.

Q: It seems that there is something ultimately destructive in what the snake handlers do. It sounds almost suicidal or other-worldly. Do you see a way to take what is good from it, and not take that which is ultimately destructive? Is it part of our nature?

A: Well, that is what I am wrestling with right now. It is exactly what my spiritual condition is right now. Is there a way … Where I am right now is going to seem very old fashioned. But it has taken me going through the experience with the snake handler to reach this spot, okay? Let me preface that; I think there is a way to experience the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in a simple service that is ordinary and undramatic.

Q: And this is the paradox, because it is not what you say in the book.

A: You’re right.

Q: What you describe is dramatic. We cannot be there, really, through the book, but we are privy to your dramatic description of what happened. Do you think that the handlers feel that their everyday service is dramatic, or does it sometimes become the norm for them also?

A: They come to get that excitement. They come for a blessing and get it. I guess that, for them, it is an ordinary worship service, but it is rather extraordinary to us. But I also realize that there is a self-indulgent quality (to religion). In my own experience with the handlers, I was getting high off the Holy Spirit, and I was feeling better than I had ever felt in my life. And yet, I was conscious of the fact that there is more than what Christ called us to do than to just feel good.

Q: Though it does not deserve this label, being a. religion of the emotion has been a historical criticism, if you will, of the Holiness or Pentecostal movement.

A: And the opposite has been said about mainline churches. There is almost an understanding that you are not supposed to feel good. In church, it almost like you are supposed to sit down, be quiet and shut up. Don’t raise your hands. Don’t speak out. Don’t be moved by the Spirit because you or others might be embarrassed,

Q: This is what I was alluding to in the beginning of the interview; there is always that sense that other people are somewhat repelled by other people being in the Spirit, but they have the desire themselves to be in the Spirit or for it to come (a. push/pull magnetism). Maybe we have not answered it. Why do people fear or are not receptive to the Holy Spirit?

A: Finally, it comes to the paradox that teaches us that in losing ourselves we find ourselves. I think people are afraid of losing themselves.

Q: Losing what?

A: Losing identity or self-identity.

Q: Do you think that may be metaphorically true also as a denomination or as a congregation?

A: Oh, I think it is true. People are surprisingly resistant to changing things, even minor details of the order of worship. I think it is tied up to a sense of who we are and a sense of the congregation being at one place a long time and wants to stay and have its own sense of identity.

 

After the Book

Q: What kind of impact did the book have on your wife? What happened to her?

A: She loved it. I would come home from a snake handling service in Scottsboro, and she said it was like the Holy Spirit came in with me. She would feel great. We have been on a gradual spiritual journey since we sobered up. But, for instance, before this book, we had never prayed together out loud, not in a million years.

Q: Do you pray as a family?

A: Yes. Vicki and I have prayer just about on a daily basis. We read the Bible and pray aloud together. It’s such a simple small thing. Yet, for us, even though we were Christians, we could not do it. It was too embarrassing even though we were married. That was a great gift we got. I mean, just talking to you I am getting high. I wish my life would be like this all the time.

Q: I understand. My biggest thrill is getting to sit with people and talk with them, to hear their stories and be lifted up and instructed by them. God does work in mysterious ways.

A: I do not know what will happen. But God has got things in store for all of us. I really must thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk today. I just told my class that I have been in a hard spiritual state recently. You know, it has been hard to get my head straight since the book became a success.

Q: Well, then tell me about your general spiritual state. Where are you today? Where do you feel that you are spiritually today?

A: My faith has been strengthened and broadened deeply by these experiences. I do not feel capable or not ready yet to do what I know I have to do. I just invite prayer because I feel like we are so close to giving it over and letting go and letting God take over. The world is seductive. It is a problem. The success of the book has been marvelous, but it has been tough. I am so aware that there will be obstructions along the way and that there are forces that I cannot control.