Holy Ghost People
A Documentary by Peter Adair (1967)
Source: Internet Archive
Via Scratchings
Runtime: 53 mins
Format: MPEG4
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The film opens with a gliding camera elegantly surveying the squalor of the area around Scrabble Creek, West Virginia, setting the stage for and to some extent explaining the allure of, the Holiness movement. An offscreen narrator gives a brief and enticing pr�cis: �thousands of holiness churches scattered through the hills of Appalachia,� �literal bible interpretations,� �drinking poison, handling snakes, speaking in tongues.� The starkness of the setting, a rural area of obvious poverty, neither city nor town, provides a dramatic backdrop for the outr� activities of these edgeplayers, who seem at times to be drunk or drugged on their religion. The Holiness way is the polar opposite of those dull, dutiful Sundays in middle-class churches; it provides both an irresistible high and a respite from the limited lives of its believers. Adair is sensitive in rendering this difficult material, neither judging nor ridiculing nor trying to become a part of the scene. His only intrusion is in the opening narration; after that, he lets those directly involved tell their story.
The lure of these dangerous, sometimes lethal rituals becomes clear early on, in interviews with some of the participants. One young woman describes the pleasure of the trance she enters when possessed by the Holy Ghost. With a glassy stare says, �It seems like nothing in this world can bother me.� There�s rough poetry in their words. One man who joined the movement after a prison stretch says �I could feel the quickening power of the holy ghost . . . I would dance under the power, and the quickening power would get on me.�
Adair�s camera dispassionately records this �quickening power,� which takes over the members even during interviews outside the church service as a kind of ecstasy state. Inside the church they can give full play to their emotions, shrieking, flailing, crumpling to the floor, talking in tongues, drinking poison, and handling snakes as the ultimate test of their faith. Striking indeed are scenes of the group working itself into a frenzy, all the members bowed and praying loudly with eyes closed, until one, then another, then others leap out of the group gyrating, wailing, or grabbing one of the rattlesnakes or copperheads sitting in a box nearby.
It would be easy to dismiss these people and their primal ways as cranks and fanatics; it�s hard to imagine anyone these days believing enough in something to risk their lives for it. But Adair�s respectful, nonsensational approach precludes this. He lets the purity and raw power of this do-or-die religion speak for itself. And it�s far from the huckster-capitalist paradigm of Falwell and his ilk. The �holy ghost people� are unpretentious, and ask for little. Egalitarian in surprising ways, they have no minister, relying instead on anyone rising out of the crowd with an inspiration to lead the service. And the money is obviously secondary. At the end of the service, a mere $53.59 has been collected. And most welcome, some of the men greet each other as they do the women, with a kiss. — From: Bright Lights Film Journal
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