Chris Wolford delivers the word of God with a fire that could come from hell itself. He’s a spinning, stamping, hollering ball of energy, held together by a belt and a pair of breeches and the rockabilly thump of the band behind him. He jumps from the floor to the pew; from the pew to the floor; and back again. As he gathers momentum, he appears to grow in size until he’s a sweaty mass towering over his congregation, captivating them with his rock star charisma and sending them into a frenzy.

It’s at this point that he slides a flat wooden box onto the stage and opens a hatch in the top. Reaching inside, he pulls out a rattlesnake, then a copperhead snake and flourishes them with the casualness of a fisherman handling his catch.

Wolford rocks and sways to the music before passing the coiling creatures on to others. One man holds a snake aloft and shouts religious affirmations; another fortifies himself with a shot of rat poison (to no ill effect that I witness) before parading around the altar. Some of the women, meanwhile, including Wolford’s mother, have lit bottles of petrol and are holding the flames directly under their chins.

When the service began in this small weatherboard church in a remote part of West Virginia, the atmosphere was one of pious restraint. Now, it’s unbridled euphoria as each member of the church yields to their emotions in an attempt to reach spiritual transcendence.

For some it’s achieved by closing their eyes and spinning in circles. For others it’s playing with fire to prove their protection by God. And for the very few, like Wolford, it’s courting death with an extreme act of faith that once common in the Appalachian mountains where it began now only exists legally in his church – and that is serpent handling.