Lectures on Tap - "Religious Appalachia: Faith, Fangs, and Fire"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Religious Appalachia: Faith, Fangs, and Fire"

🎤 Speaker: Chase Viscuse

Join us for a gripping evening as Chase Viscuse takes us inside the world of serpent-handling churches in Appalachia—where believers take up venomous snakes, drink poison, and handle fire as acts of worship.

This talk explores how risk becomes sacred, how communities find meaning in danger, and what these practices reveal about faith, trust, and belief in action. From the outside, these rituals can seem extreme or puzzling; through vivid stories and grounded research, Chase will show how they emerge from deeply held convictions about God’s protection, obedience, and surrender.

Chase Viscuse is a graduate student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where he studies religious practices that appear dangerous or extreme. His research examines how faith shapes risk and devotion, using snake-handling communities as a lens into how people make meaning through danger and radical trust. He has spent time in these congregations, spoken with practitioners, and—much to his family’s concern—keeps attending services with venomous snakes.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.