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You can't grow up in the South in the Thirties, as I did, without being profoundly influenced
by religion in one way or another. My influence.because I write a lot about it. I don't write about
religion, per se, but I write about the effect that it has on people. Few things push people
to more extremes than religion, and as we can see today, few things are being used to
push people to extremes more than religion. Yes, I was in the Methodist Church, and I
dutifully had to go to church on Sunday, and I didn't like it. I did not like it. My friend,
Pearce McHenry and I used to shoot dice in the back pew. I just didn't like it at all.
I didn't like the smell of the flowers. I didn't like the calm kind of way it went about
everything. I sure didn't like the passing around of the thing and all of the money.
I just didn't like it. It was too calm and quiet. One night I was walking by.this was
in this little town, Madison, Tennesse and the church was rented out to evangelists,
and I heard something that I'd never heard before. And, I went and looked in the church.
Here was an entirely different scene. Here, were people in extremists. There was a man
on the floor beating the floor, and crying out. And the singing. Suddenly they would
break into these songs, and I thought, "What's this? What's happened to this awful place
that I didn't like?" I just sat in the back and was mesmerized. That was a profound experience.
The play of mine that is done the most is called Holy Ghosts, and it's about Pentecostal
snake handlers and some people who get involved with them. The play has in it my profound
respect for those people. I do not respect all of their values or all of that, but I
do very much respect the emotionalism. Because religion is an emotional business. People
who try to cover it over and make it something else, I think, cause a lot of trouble. It's
better to let it go, and, of course if you believe that your faith is strong enough that
you can pick up a diamondback rattlesnake and look at him in the eye, and he can't hurt
you, then you've got to respect that.