Religion: The Power of Prayer in Kentucky

> Women praying for Prohibition near polling places are blamed by wet leaders for the loss since September of seven Kentucky counties to the drys. (Bourbon-famed Kentucky now has 66 dry counties, 54 wet.) The wets demanded that the vote be thrown out because the praying pickets intimidated the voters. Assistant Attorney General Guy Herdman has ruled against the wets. Said he: “Unless you could establish that praying affected the result, it would not invalidate the election. No voter would be so weak as to admit that these prayers so frightened him as to intimidate him to vote dry. . . .”

> Many a U.S. religionist of the Pentacostal or “Holy Roller” variety believes that Christ’s statement to His disciples after the Resurrection (“In my name . . . they shall take up serpents”) means literally what it says. In 1940 Kentucky banned snakes in church services. Last week, in the first test case under this law, the State Court of Appeals upheld $50 fines on three men and two women for bringing rattlesnakes to church.