Following Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey’s recent comments suggesting that Islam may not be a religion, but rather “a nationality, way of life or cult, whatever you want to call it,” Mark Silk attempts “to determine where Ramsey’s coming from”:
Where he comes from is Blountsville, which is about as deep as you can get into Upper East Tennessee. That’s the hilly part of the state that has given the world NASCAR, thanks to the pressing need moonshiners had to outrace the revenooers. The local soft drink, brewed by Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, is Dr. Enuf, originally sold as a tonic for hangovers, which is definitely what you get if you make a habit of drinking what they’re running down from the hollers. The drink’s marketing slogan is “Enuf is Enough,” which, I can attest, is also true.
When it comes to cults, the most famous local variety features churches with names like the Church of God with Signs Following and the Church of Jesus with Signs Following and the Holiness Church of God in Jesus Name–all offshoots of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) that, based on Mark 16: 17-18, favor the handling of snakes and the drinking of poison as signs of election. They also follow a distinctive way of life that eschews alcohol, carbonated beverages, coffee, and tea; smoking; dancing; the use of cosmetics and jewelry; and recourse to medical doctors. Male co-religionists greet each other with a vigorous hug and the “holy kiss,” a mouth-to-mouth osculation.
Now, as a Methodist Sunday School teacher, Ramsey can be expected to take a dim view of this lineal descendant of Methodism whose most distinctive practices Tennessee sought to prohibit through legislation passed after World War II banning the displaying of snakes in such a way as to endanger others. Indeed, in 1975, when Ramsey was pursuing his undergraduate studies at East Tennessee State University, the Tennessee Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision prohibiting the handling of snakes and the consumption of poison in a case, State ex rel. Swann v. Pack, involving a church in Newport, 60 miles southwest of the ETSU campus. The case was brought because the local prosecutor feared that Cocke county was in imminent danger and likely to “become the snake handling capital of the world.”
To be sure, the number of snake-handling Christians number in the hundreds and the number of Muslims in the hundreds of millions, but I reckon there are comparable numbers of both groups in Tennessee. So Ramsey might be forgiven–well, not exactly forgiven, but, let’s say, understood for thinking of Muslims as comparable to the snake-handling folk in his own religious neck of the woods.
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