Cambridge University Press eBooks
July 31, 2024
Brad Stoddard
14 citations
Entheogenic religions, which use psychoactive drugs, are often studied in ways that support practitioners' claims of legitimacy. This Element instead offers a historical and critical analysis, examining how entheogenic communities in the United States are produced, the historical factors behind the rise of psychedelics, and how the law shapes these groups. It argues that these communities, like all imagined communities, are culturally conditioned, socially constructed, and historically contingent. Exploring these contingencies reveals the broader sociocultural, historical, and economic frameworks underlying the growing link between psychoactive substances and religion.
Religion Compass
November 1, 2023
Brad Stoddard
3 citations
Since the 1980s, scholarship on psychedelics and religion has grown, reflecting shifting political, legal, and sociocultural attitudes. This article traces the historiography of psychedelic religion from the 1980s to recent work, showing how the association of psychoactive substances with religiosity has evolved. The analysis highlights how psychedelic churches have expanded and how researchers and users routinely describe psychedelic experiences as religious, spiritual, or mystical. The study underscores the changing capital—political, legal, and sociocultural—attached to these substances and their religious uses.
Nova Religio The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions
August 1, 2024
Brad Stoddard
1 citation
Ayahuasca, a psychoactive tea from Amazonian plants, is growing in popularity globally as people seek it for recreational, medicinal, psychotherapeutic, or spiritual reasons. Many travelers journey to the Amazon to find what they consider an authentic shamanic experience, encountering a diverse ayahuasca ecosystem. Historical and archaeological evidence indicates this diversity existed before colonialism, but tourists themselves now contribute to ongoing changes in the practice.
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Brad Stoddard
Across the United States, people are increasingly using illegal psychedelics and cannabis—substances they call entheogens—in religious or spiritual ceremonies to commune with creators, ancestors, or the spirit world. While the U.S. government has granted some groups exemptions from drug prohibition, most practitioners operate without such exemptions, confining them to what scholars call the underground. This essay argues that the state is not absent from these underground communities; rather, it is the primary curator of them. The state's influence pervades these spaces, as demonstrated by examining the legal structures and case law affecting entheogenic churches, especially the role of attorneys who advise them.
Religion Compass
August 17, 2023
Brad Stoddard
The article examines the historiography of how psychoactive substances have been linked to religiosity in the United States from the 1800s through the 1980s. It contextualizes the current Psychedelic Renaissance, where psychedelic churches are growing and substances are often said to induce religious or mystical experiences. The author traces scholarly discussions across multiple fields that have addressed this association over two centuries, showing that the connection between drugs and religion is not new but has a long history of academic attention.