Serpents, Songs, and Meeting a Modern Southern Saint

“You ever hear of the Alabama Astronaut, preacher?”

The question came from the voice of a friend. We’d been having one of those conversations where the dogs get loose and chase every rabbit sprinting down your tongue.

An hour on the phone with some folks can feel like you’ll see Jesus return before they finally say goodbye. With others, it flies by. Chuck, the man I know, falls into the latter group.

In the time it takes to dry a load of laundry, Chuck and I brain-dumped on each other. We got waist-deep in words about family and the idiosyncrasies of the South. We dug into the two subjects my grandfather always told me to avoid if I wanted to keep friends: politics and religion.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, our attention turned to what we’d been listening to lately. As we swapped notes on music and podcasts, Chuck asked if I knew about Abe Partridge. I admitted I didn’t.

So Chuck did what good people have done since the time of Moses—he pointed me toward another good one.

The Canvas

Chuck painted a picture of someone who’d walked through some existential terrain. He told me about a man raised in the Deep South who felt called to be an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher. A man who went off to Bible college, got kicked out of a few, then took a church far from home in the wilderness of the Bluegrass State.

Things turned rough and the people there did what many Christians have a reputation for—they ate their own.

In time, this man found an outlet for all that pain and disappointment. He started painting. He wrote song lyrics, then learned to play them on guitar.

Institutional religion did a number on him. So he and his wife walked away from what they knew.

They wandered in exile for a while, until he joined the United States Air Force. Even while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, he kept painting and writing songs.

Slowly, this man leaned into his identity as an artist and began performing. More and more people saw his paintings and encouraged him to host an art show—so he did.

This man was Abe Partridge.

“Then he started this podcast,” Chuck said. “It’s about the music he heard at serpent-handling churches.”

My eyebrows rose on the other end of the line. Chuck had struck a chord with me.

Back in my seminary days, I became fascinated by the serpent-handling Holiness movement after a professor told me about a preacher from Georgia named Carl Porter.

Some called Porter the “Billy Graham of snake-handling.” In 1997, Wake Forest University invited him to speak with students and faculty in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

He didn’t come alone. He brought a couple of boxes of poisonous timber rattlers.

A sizable and curious crowd gathered to see him and the snakes resting in boxes on the stage. Students from Campus Crusade showed up and tried to debate him on his interpretation of scripture.

At first, Porter pressed his back against the stage, a bit timid. But as the exchange continued, he began moving forward and the audience slowly inched back.

The debate got lively. They went in circles around the extended ending of Mark Chapter 16 and why Apostle Paul doesn’t count snake-handling, drinking poison, or casting out demons as gifts of the Spirit.

Without missing a beat, Porter declared, “Well, that’s Paul and I tend to be led by the words in Mark because there it’s Jesus doing the talking.”

The room went silent. Porter’s point was made.

Legend says that the next day, the dean of the new divinity school gets a call from Porter. He said the Spirit moved him in his Marriott hotel room, so he pulled out the serpents and praised God right there in his king bed suite.

I’m sure the Marriott staff didn’t have a clue what was going on behind those closed doors.

Like me, Abe had his run-in with serpent handlers. Back in Kentucky, while doing some door-to-door evangelizing, he met a feller named Jamie Coots. Coots, a pastor himself, preached over at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name church.

That brief meeting left a lasting impression on Abe. Later, when he saw the news that a snake bite had killed Coots, he thought back to their conversation and how kind Coots had been that day.

He couldn’t shake their encounter. Fast forward to the COVID-19 Pandemic—Abe was working his way through Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain when he spotted Coots’ name in the book. He took it as a sign.

Abe decided to visit Coots’ church and ended up meeting his son, Cody. While there, Abe heard music unlike anything he’d ever encountered.

He jotted down some lyrics and tried to search for them online. Nothing turned up. That moment launched him on a path to uncover a lost sound of sacred music that had never made its way into a hymnal.

He began regularly visiting several Holiness churches—listening, watching and soaking it all in. At first, the people, burned too often by outsiders, kept their distance. But over time, they welcomed Abe into their communities.

He and fellow songwriter Ferrill Gibbs turned the journey into a podcast called Alabama Astronaut—named after one of Abe’s songs.

I know all this because right after I got off the phone with Chuck, I listened to the entire first season in two days.

On the third day, I emailed Abe the Carl Porter story along with some information about a courtroom scene iconoclast Baptist Will D. Campbell had witnessed—one involving two serpent-handling preachers in East Tennessee.

Abe replied the next day and we began a touch-and-go correspondence in late 2023.

Meeting Abe

In July of 2025, we finally met at one of his shows.

I want to tell you what I saw—and why, if you get the chance, you should see Abe too.

Strolling up to the venue, I catch sight of Abe.

He’s standing outside, talking with a woman. I hear him giving aw-shucks thank-yous to her compliments. He fits the description of a troubled artist—troubling only because of how good he is at what he does.

There, outlined in the doorway, Abe looks like he’s lived in such a place his whole life—halfway in and halfway out.

He folds his arms over a faded Hank Williams t-shirt. His jeans are cuffed at the bottom, his boots scuffed from pacing floors over all manner of things.

Moving closer, I glance up to check out what I’m sure is a trademark to everyone but him—his hair. Tight on the sides, coil upon coil of curls resting on top, each one fighting to go its own way.

I break Emily Post etiquette and throw out my hand. “Hey, just wanted to say hi. I’m Justin Cox.”

I plan to mention our connection, but from the look on his face, I can tell he’s already made it. “You’re the Baptist preacher, right?” He smiles, shakes my hand and we’re off.

We keep jawing until he abruptly pauses and looks toward the door.

“Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet. He’s a preacher, too.”

Inside, I meet Sean. His church sits further east, not far from where I received my first call as a youth minister.

He and his wife also run a music venue in the same town. Abe had played there a few months earlier.

The three of us huddle together until others arrive, patting Abe on the back and thanking him for what he’s doing with his music.

I grab a seat and a drink at the bar, which offers a pristine view of the small stage—where two make a company and three a crowd. A couple from my congregation show up, and we settle in.

Before the show starts, Abe comes back over. We start swapping serpent-handling stories.

His tone shifts slightly, and I watch passion stretch across his face. He fires up like an easy-start lawn mower. He talks, drops names, and references books.

It doesn’t take long to realize that Abe Partridge knows serpent-handlers and their music the way Margaret Mead knew the people of Oceania—an unrivaled anthropologist on his chosen subject.

Someone touches his shoulder and pulls him back to the moment. He excuses himself and walks through the crowd toward his new pulpit.

I don’t think Abe considers himself a preacher anymore. If I had a bit more courage—or knew him better—I’d push back on that. I think he’s spreading the good news now better than he ever did in his hellfire-and-brimstone heyday.

His voice calls those congregating to attention. It’s as distinct as a fingerprint. To hear Abe speak is to know you’ll never mistake him for anyone else.

He may have deconstructed his faith. He may have left parts of his past behind. But he still carries a southwest Alabama accent everywhere he goes.

He starts to sing. Almost automatically, I cock my head to the side, wondering what makes a man sound like that.

It’s more than a twang. More than a dialect. More than rolling lyrics.

It’s the unabashed, unapologetic genuineness behind them that pulls you in and holds you there.

Abe’s a damn fine songwriter and storyteller—and that’s exactly what good music, no matter the genre, should be.

His lyrics dance back and forth from the sacred to the profane:

Right soon thereafter
I discovered my local pastor
And he made perfect sense,
Just never went too deep.

I was at church for the word
At least for the potlucks and the girls
And through my youth
I went here at least three times a week.

Then I went to Bible school
Started preaching when I got through
Till I grew up and left it all behind.

Now I pray in silence to myself
And these songs are what are left
I try to stay creative with an open mind.

The audience laughs at the right parts. They hoot and holler. A few “amens” ring out. Heads nod when the mood turns serious.

What unfolds feels more like a dialogue than a performance. Not a man singing to strangers, but a back-and-forth between someone who knows them—and is known in return.

The Gospel According to Abe

These strangers know Abe. And by God, Abe knows them.

He knows me.

Between songs, Abe shares stories. Every one of them laced with self-deprecating wit.

At one point, he starts talking about being a painter.

“Most of y’all might not know I’m a painter. Some folks like my paintings. Most people don’t. But, uh, some people do. Turns out in 2025, you don’t have to make art that makes everybody happy. All you gotta do is make art that makes some people happy and then drive around the country and find them.”

The place erupts in applause.

Later, he invites the other half of the tour on stage—a young man named Jack Barksdale from Texas. Jack’s 18 and already has more talent than I ever will at anything. I want to hate him, but I can’t.

He and Abe harmonize the way Willie and Waylon did. I’ll sit here waiting patiently for the day, a decade from now, when I’ll get to say, “I saw Jack way back when.”

As Abe’s set winds down, he thanks everyone for coming out. He explains that tonight’s show ran a little different—him opening, Jack closing.

He shares that he’s had a family emergency. A cousin passed unexpectedly. He’ll need to hit the road soon to make the nine-and-a-half-hour drive back to Alabama.

He plays the last tune, and people rise to thank him for what he gave them that night.

At the merch table, I grab the album he and Jack made for the tour. I’ll spin it almost nonstop for the next 48 hours.

Abe spots me and walks over to say thanks.

He’s got something else he wants to show me—a guitar strap. Made from the skin of a snake that Jamie Coots once lifted over his head a time or two.

I’m too shy to touch the holy relic—this shroud of Turin. I mouth words, but they fall short of how thankful I feel.

I tell him I’ve got to head out too. Got babies at home who need their daddy to help put them to bed. He nods, understanding.

“By the way,” I say, “You’ve probably heard this a lot from people in my line of work, but I want you to know—I’m sorry about your cousin. Me and mine will be praying for you and yours. People like me say that kind of stuff all the time, but I want you to know I mean it.”

It’s dark. Shadows and light chop up the space around us. We can’t read each other’s faces, but I hope he believes me.

We shake hands one last time and part ways—each of us making our way back home.

At church on Sunday, during the benediction, I tell a group of Baptists to pray for a feller I know named Abe. I say he and his family could use some love right now. They’d lost someone dear.

Many who walk out the door assure me they will.

They’re the kind of people who are worth a damn.

I believe Abe Partridge is one, too.

Y’all go try and see him if you can.

You’re not going to see a show. You’re going to bear witness.