Following the publication of Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus,

The majority of leaders in the American church embraced these academic trends. These were the mainliners, and they were in the majority. The only other choice in American Christianity was fundamentalism, and this was the backwoods, snake-handling, poison-drinking, Bible-thumping version of fundamentalism.

This is the informed opinion of Tony Jones as preserved for us in The New Christians, page 12.

Savor the ignorance.

I am picturing in my mind a small room in Philadelphia. I'm thinking somewhere on Chestnut Street, not a ten-minute stroll from City Hall. The year is 1929. In that room are four men: J. Gresham Machen, Oswald T. Allis, Cornelius van Til and Robert Dick Wilson. They are passing a snake amongst themselves, and each man sips consecutively from a common chalice containing a beautiful green liquid. They exchange anecdotes about gastric lavage and discuss possible locations for a new seminary.

Allis suggested some property along the Schuykill which was suitable for mass baptisms, but Wilson favored a tract of land north of downtown and closer to the Baker Bowl in honor of Billy Sunday who had been traded by the Pittsburgh Alleghenys for two players and a thousand dollars 39 years earlier. Van Til argued less persuasively that a school located some distance west of town (near Upper Darby) would help encourage the struggling bus ministry. Machen was trying to tie the snake in a Clove Hitch knot and wasn't much following the arguments other than to take strenuous exception to the mention of any kind of Darby, Upper or otherwise.

Edmund P. Clowney (as I'm sure Tony well knows but fails to mention in his estimable volume) was the first president of Westminster, the seminary funded largely from the proceeds of their gratifyingly lucrative tent-meetings. His messages are still available on the internet today. Look him up. Unless my mind is playing tricks on me, I recall during my childhood hearing Clowney himself preach a sermon entitled, Snake-handling, Persuasive Bible-thumping and a Few Thoughts on Infant Baptism.

I don't know if that particular sermon has made it into the archives of the worldwide web, but I recall feeling strangely moved to consider a missionary call to Africa where the snakes were large and plentiful and where one could extend an altar call from the roof of a Land Rover.