HARMONY, N.C. (RNS) — On a Friday afternoon at a woodsy retreat in the middle of North Carolina, Hunt Priest, an Episcopal clergyman from Savannah, Georgia, is talking to a small group under a white tent about “trying to bring together two communities that don’t talk to each other. We are here to stand in the gap and bring the gap closer.”
Priest wasn’t referring to America’s political divides or even sectarian splits. Priest was urging Christians to come together with the growing community of researchers that is exploring the spiritual uses of psychedelic drugs.
While those researchers say that psilocybin and other hallucinogenic plants can assist with meditation and experiencing the divine, Priest touts these substances for their reputed power to connect the mind and body with the soul as a means of healing. “If the church doesn’t heal, then what are we doing? We should shut the doors,” he said.
Priest’s workshop on psychedelia and spirituality took place on the first full day of the Wild Goose Festival, an annual gathering in Harmony, North Carolina, of progressive Christians, seekers and mystics who come to learn and discuss the latest ideas in American spirituality and society. While Christian nationalism predictably loomed large among attendees’ concerns at this year’s festival (July 11-14), no fewer than eight sessions in the four days focused on the possibilities for psychedelics as a serious tool for Christians.
Priest, who could have been dressed for the golf course and was somewhat of an outlier at the festival, where T-shirts reading “End Fossil Fuels” and “Bad Theology Kills” were the order of the day, nonetheless hit the common theme that hallucinogens help users get “out of their heads” and “into their hearts.”
“We spend way too much time up here,” Priest said, pointing to his head.
Joy Celeste Crawford, from left, Hunt Priest and Anthony Pleetanino present a session titled “Psychedelics and Spiritual Care” during the Wild Goose Festival, Friday, July 12, 2024, in Harmony, North Carolina. (RNS photo/Ellie Davis)
Priest founded Ligare, an organization aiming to bridge psychedelic science and Christian spaces, in 2021 after participating in a psilocybin study involving religious professionals run by Johns Hopkins University and New York University.
Ligare, which was a sponsor as well as a presenter at the festival, says on its website that it is dedicated to the “responsible legal use of psychedelic medicine within the context of the Christian contemplative tradition,” and evangelizes at gatherings such as Wild Goose. It offers spiritual direction during psychedelic trips and provides resources for churches.
The attention to psychedelics at Wild Goose reflects a growing consensus that psychedelics, once dismissed as deleterious, can be effective in treating disorders like PTSD, depression and addiction, and in spiritual journeys. Prominent figures like NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Prince Harry have spoken up about their positive experiences with psychedelics.
On Saturday morning, Priest and a Ligare spiritual director, Joy Celeste Crawford, gathered at a “conversation table” with Lucas Campbell, a 27-year-old trans man who lives nearby, and a dozen or so other Wild Goose attendees to talk about hallucinogens’ healing powers.
Campbell said psychedelic mushrooms allowed him to experience God as love for the first time. “I had this experience where I found how to love my family,” Campbell said. “Even if they weren’t accepting of me, I know that I am loved.”
As Campbell and others shared their healing stories, Beth Stamper, a Tarot reader, spoke up: “Where have y’all been all my life?” she laughed. “This gives me hope.”
Asked why psychedelics were such a popular topic at this year’s festival, Joy Crawford described the fascination with hallucinogens as a “cultural groundswell” that the church would do well to catch up with. She also pointed out that since “psychedelic experiences are so often deeply spiritual in nature, it’s even more important for the thoughtful, leading voice of the church to be ahead of the curve as the conversation gains momentum.”
United Methodist pastor Roger Wolsey, who gave another Friday talk in his denomination’s sponsored tent about his latest book, “Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices That Transform Lives,” believes that psychedelics are a way for mainstream faith traditions such as his to attract young people whose spirituality includes eclectic amalgams of yoga, dream work journals, tarot cards and even psychedelics.
“These conversations need to happen,” Wolsey said, as he told the two dozen people in the UMC tent that psychedelics need to be normalized in church life. “There needs to be a bridge between organized religion and the spiritual but not religious community.”
His book, he said, is a guide to such practices, demonstrating how techniques from centering prayer to ayahuasca can be transformative “fires” in human lives.
Kaleb Graves, a recent graduate of Duke Divinity School and now a minister and psychedelics educator in Carrboro, North Carolina, led workshops with fantastical-sounding titles, such as “Mysticism’s Shadow: Reckoning with Psychedelics’ Fascist Spiritual Potential” and “Enter Arkadia: Psychedelics, Dreams, and Reclaiming Arcane Christian Cosmology,” but he cautioned that while psychedelics may help people, they cannot do so without the church’s continued support.
Kaleb Graves, standing center, leads a workshop at Wild Goose Festival, Friday, July 12, 2024, in Harmony, North Carolina. (RNS photo/Ellie Davis)
“For some folks, they think if they can just do this one thing, their life will be different forever,” Graves told RNS, “and for some of them it is. But for the vast majority of people, the data shows, it has a horseshoe effect. It works really well for three to six months, but it’s not a magical bullet.
“What matters is your day-to-day life,” he continued, “the habits that you bring to the community that you have and the support network you build. That is what’s most impactful when you take psychedelics, is leaning into that.”
But Graves, wearing a bucket hat and a “Drop Acid, Not Bombs” T-shirt at a Saturday conversation table, told his listeners to stay open to the possibilities of the imagination and how it can free us from our mechanistic view of humanity. “There’s a lot about our brains we don’t know. You have to try things out. There is so much more to this world than a grinding machine and the resources fueling it.”