Psychedelic Integration and Spiritual Growth in a Christian Context

Abstract

Psychedelic drugs show promise in treating a wide range of mental health conditions. These drugs are beneficial in part because they disrupt prior ideas and patterns of behavior and because they increase neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. It is important therefore to consider the causal impact of the social context not just during but also following psychedelic experiences. Modern cultural or social contexts might thwart or discourage spiritual integration, but local integration support groups are shown to be helpful, especially for those seeking to reflect the meaning of spiritual or religious themes. These groups might be offered within Christianity, which can provide (1) a connection to a community or a social context at the local level together with (2) a set of theological beliefs as an interpretive context that supports spiritual growth in general and psychedelic spiritual integration in particular.

1. Introduction: Psychedelic Integration and the Question of Context

According to The MAPS Psychedelic Integration Workbook, “integration involves making sense of and incorporating the insights, emotions, and changes that may arise during a psychedelic journey into your everyday life. Integration is an essential aspect of the psychedelic experience because these substances can bring about intense and often challenging insights, emotions, and shifts in perspective” (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies n.d., p. 2). Psychedelic integration is not a one-time event. It is “an ongoing process, and we may continue to integrate just one profound psychedelic experience for years or even the rest of our lives”.

The Workbook suggests that integration can involve six distinct domains: mind, body, spirit, lifestyle, relationships and community, and nature. When it comes to the domain of spirit, the first thing the Workbook says is this: “Spirit can be tricky to discuss for those of us who are committed to the role of science in psychedelics.” Then it offers this brief affirmation: “Regardless of your specific beliefs (or lack thereof), we encourage you to consciously and intentionally explore how your experiences relate to the domain of Spirit during your periods of integration” (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies n.d., p. 15).

How, exactly, is a person supposed to do this? The Workbook does not say, and its restraint in discussing spiritual concerns is to be commended. Simply by identifying the domain of the spiritual and affirming its importance, the Workbook opens a space for others to try to describe it more fully. The goal of this paper is to suggest that Christianity offers resources that may help some people in their quest for spiritual integration of their psychedelic experiences

Section 2 begins with a review of the power of psychedelics to disrupt prior beliefs and patterns of behavior. We call attention to what we are learning about how psychedelics promote neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, arguing that during the period when these neurological processes continue for weeks and months after the drug session people are more attuned than usual to the effects of their social contexts. In Section 3, this theme is developed further as we make the case that social contexts have causal impacts on the fully realized significance of the psychedelic experience. We reference two analyses of ways in which social contexts can actively undermine some of the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapy for positive mental health outcomes. The section concludes by introducing the use of a local psychedelic spiritual integration group as a supportive social context.

In Section 4, the relationship between psychedelics and Christianity is explored specifically around the idea of a newly emerging movement that often called “psychedelic Christianity.” Two aspects of psychedelic Christianity are noted: the gift of community and the core Christian ideas that may nurture psychedelic spiritual growth. Section 5 explores four themes that Christianity offers to those who may want its support in the task of psychedelic spiritual integration.

First, however, it is important to remind readers that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin are powerful substances that are illegal nearly everywhere and are known to bring about challenging experiences. While they have been shown to have mental health benefits, it is also true that their use is linked to psychosis. A recent meta-analysis involving 131 publications “showed an incidence of psychedelic-induced psychosis at 0.002% in population studies.” In uncontrolled trials, the incidence was 0.2%. In randomized-controlled trials, the incidence was 0.6%, of which “13.1% later developed schizophrenia” (Sabé et al. 2025, p. 1223). Even when serious side effects do not occur, the use of psychedelics can be unsettling or disruptive in the ways that are described in the next section.

2. Disruption and Change

In the wake of psychedelic experiences, people often report a sense of disruption. Their confidence in their former ideas seems shaken or at least loosened. Their patterns of behavior might be changed. New insights begin to replace old thoughts. Psychedelic disruption of old beliefs and behaviors is a key to their therapeutic potential, but it can be an inherently risky time for people as they try to make sense of what is happening. They can be unusually suggestible and vulnerable to ideas that come from their context.

It is important to see just how deep into the core of personal identity the disruptiveness takes us. Core beliefs, metaphysical assumptions, and religious ideas are all challenged, together with basic behavioral patterns. It is equally important to recognize that disruptiveness is what makes psychedelic sessions so powerful. They can provide an opening for fresh perspectives. Disruption and effectiveness are linked, which means that disruption can be both beneficial and risky. Its beneficial side leads to growth and new insight. Its riskiness means that people might entertain unwarranted ideas or embrace actions or patterns of behavior that they regret later.

What makes psychedelics disruptive? Part of the answer seems to lie in the immediate or short-term drug/brain interactions, which act in complex ways in various brain functions that involve both our sense of self and “an altered sense of what the external world is like” (van Eyghen 2023, p. 289). But part of it also lies in the intermediate or longer-term drug/brain effects. Both play an important role here. In the short-term, psychedelic drugs go to work within minutes in the body and brain of the person taking them. Psilocybin, for example, is metabolized into psilocyn, which interacts immediately with neurotransmitter receptors and brain cell activity. Then the drugs start to desynchronize brain rhythms and patterns of communication within and between brain networks. Almost immediately, these neurological interactions are consciously experienced. Some people say their sense of ego is either less important or more connected to a broader reality than they previously imagined. Some say the grip of their prior ideas is loosened as consciousness seems free to explore new horizons (Carhart-Harris and Friston 2019). Many people describe the experience as spiritual or mystical (Griffiths et al. 2006). All this happens in the first few hours.

What happens next may be less dramatic, but it is just as disruptive as the short-term experience. While the immediate or short-term effects are still going on, psychedelics like psilocybin start to stimulate the growth of new neurons. This process of neurogenesis, when combined with increases in neuroplasticity, leads to longer-term psychedelic effects. We are just learning how psychedelics cause a significant increase in the production of new brain cells and in the processes of cell migration and reorganization. Psychedelics supercharge the processes of neurogenesis and open up a period of exceptional neuroplasticity during which there can be significant changes in beliefs and behaviors. These processes begin quickly, but their long-term neurological consequences require weeks or months to take shape (Reardon 2023).

Two key points should be noted here. First, the disruptive effects of psychedelics are critically important to their therapeutic value. Disruption is often the key to healing and transformation. Second, both the short-term and long-term effects of psychedelics contribute to the full scope of the disruptions and thus to the mental health benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Taken together, the short-term and long-term effects can reduce our sense of self, give us a sense of connectedness, relax our confidence in our prior ideas, and stimulate processes of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity that equip the brain to think in new ways. By itself, each part of this can be disruptive. When combined, they can give us a powerful sense that we are breaking with the old and imagining something new.

For the sake of psychedelic-assisted therapy, disruption is beneficial because it is the precondition for change and growth. The usual explanation for the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted therapy is “generally grounded in the idea that psychedelics can facilitate radical shifts, or transformations, in how one thinks and behaves” (Neitzke-Spruill et al. 2024, p. 33; italics in original). After their sessions, people report that their experiences lead to new insight or that they accelerate the mental health therapy process by expanding a sense of openness to change. Our “results indicate that psychedelic experiences can constitute transformative experiences,” one study reports. “Twenty participants reported experiences or insights that were seemingly inaccessible or impossible to attain if not for the psychoactive effects of psychedelics. All participants besides one reported some change in identity, values, beliefs, desires, and behavior—changes in behavior being the most common” (Neitzke-Spruill et al. 2024, p. 32).

Regardless of where or how people use psychedelics, these drugs can lead to personal transformations, small or large, that may go to the very core of personal identity and agency. “Personally transformative experiences produce substantial changes either to one’s core preferences or to how one experiences being oneself, or both.” That is because “they change the very agents who make decisions. Your core preferences, values, behaviors, as well as a host of other aspects of oneself, change” (Neitzke-Spruill et al. 2024, p. 33).

The key word here is change. It may refer to changes in behavior, changes in belief, or to both together. Consider, first, what we are learning about post-psychedelic changes in behavior or in life choices. A recent online survey asked people to report on their changes. It gave them a choice among ten domains for possible changes, things like goals, values, religion/spirituality, social activities, and occupation. Almost 83% of the respondents “reported a major life change in at least one domain influenced by their psychedelic use.” Topping the list of domains were goals (53.70%), values (53.53%), religion/spirituality (49.05%). “Major life changes were rated highly positively,” with changes in “religion/spirituality” ranking the highest in terms positive assessment (Aday et al. 2024, p. 2). Changes in beliefs are often reported as well. A recent online study claims that “the great majority of participants (87%) reported that the experience changed their fundamental conception of reality” (Timmermann et al. 2021, p. 1).

It must also be remembered that psychedelic experiences are widely varied from one person to the next and even from one session to another. Sometimes, psychedelic experiences can be deeply challenging emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. Other experiences can be relatively bland in their impact. But the possibility that psychedelics can lead to significant changes in behaviors or beliefs sets off the alarm bells for some experts, especially when they think about the future use of these substances in psychedelic-assisted therapy (Letheby 2021, p. 28). They agree that it might be a good thing if our old, self-defeating views are shaken loose in favor of new ideas that are liberating. But what if some of our old beliefs are rationally defensible while some of our psychedelic-inspired replacement ideas are just a bit flaky? The new ideas may help us heal, but are they intellectually defensible? These drugs relax the hold of old beliefs, but are the new psychedelic-inspired beliefs always credible or rational?

Our answer will depend on how we identify what is credible and rational. Some who embrace philosophical naturalism as the most rational perspective are worried that psychedelics can reduce our confidence in that position. According to Paweł Gładziejewski,

Many of the metaphysical conclusions that people draw from their psychedelic experiences seem to reach beyond, or be at odds with, what our common experience or our best science allows us to reasonably believe. How could a chemically induced altered state of consciousness possibly reveal metaphysical truths? Could a person be ever rationally entitled to her newfound metaphysical beliefs in light of her psychedelic experience? This seems unlikely on the face of it, especially from the point of view of philosophical naturalism. The dubious epistemic standing of psychedelic induced beliefs casts a shadow on the value of psychedelic therapy

(Gładziejewski 2023, p. 2).

Scholars working in the philosophy of psychedelics call this the “Comforting Delusion Objection” (Letheby 2021).

Pushing back against this concern, Jussi Jylkkä asks how anyone can claim “to decide when psychedelic-facilitated insights or beliefs are delusional or not.” Those who worry about delusions start with naturalism “as the ultimate judge.” According to Jylkkä, their argument comes down to this: “if naturalism is true, then some mystical-type aspects of psychedelic experiences (e.g., belief in God, cosmic consciousness, transcendent realities, etc.) are indeed delusional. However, why should we endorse naturalism in the first place?” (Jylkkä 2024, p. 3).

Our point here is not to pretend to know which philosophical theories are acceptable and which are delusional. Our point is that when people are surrounded by advocates of any one of these theories, they can be influenced to follow along. Social context does not strengthen the argument for a theory, but it increases the likelihood that people will find it believable.

The need to pay attention to the causal impact of the social environment is not exactly a new idea in psychedelic culture, but the old version is too limited and must be revised in light of new research in the neuroscience of psychedelics. Since the 1960s, the phrase “set and setting” has been used to refer to social and environmental factors. A recent article defines “set” as “the internal disposition of the individual,” while “setting” refers to “the external environment in which the therapeutic session occurs.” The authors continue: “Set includes the patient’s beliefs, attitudes, expectations, mood, personality traits, and psychological state (e.g., arousal, mindset) at the time of the session.” The word “setting,” on the other hand, includes the “physical surroundings (e.g., tent, nature, a hospital), support from therapists, and sensory stimuli such as music or lighting [that] are part of what is understood as the setting” (Walther and van Schie 2024, p. 414).

By itself, the idea of setting goes only halfway to describe the impact of social factors on the outcomes of the psychedelic experience. It calls attention to the social context that surrounds the drug session itself, but its coverage stops when the session ends and the person with the psychedelic experience goes home. As usually defined, setting does not include the social environment during the following weeks and months, a critically important time when psychedelics continue to change people by making their brains exceptionally active in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

In the months that following a psychedelic session, what are people experiencing, and what are their needs? Are they easily swayed by suggestions or vulnerable to manipulation? Some may be excited about a new-found sense of connectedness, self-worth, and purpose in life. Perhaps they are confused about what they believe, no longer confident in their old views but not entirely clear about where to take their new insights. Some may make rash decisions that they will someday regret, while others might reinvent themselves in profoundly positive ways.

To the extent that social factors play a role in shaping the outcome, achieving the best outcomes from psychedelic-assisted therapy requires close attention to the causal significance of social contexts beyond the setting. The psychedelic experience is not finished when the session ends. What happens next is critically important. The brain is rewiring old connections, and the mind is rethinking old ideas. This is prime time for integration. The drugs are still affecting the brain, but social factors are shaping the process. How can we come to a better understanding of the causal role of social factors during the weeks and months after psychedelic experiences?

3. The Social as Causal

Since the 1960s, people have asked about “bad trips,” now often called “challenging experiences” (Barrett et al. 2016). Perhaps it is time to ask a different question. Is it possible that some people may have a good psychedelic experience, only to find themselves going back into a “bad context” that challenges the benefits of their new insights? To what extent is our cultural setting actively hostile to the most desired outcomes from psychedelic experiences? Does culture work against integration in ways that limit the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted therapy?

Patric Plesa and Rotem Petranker, for example, claim rather boldly that the culture that surrounds us all in the modern West should be seen as our “neoliberal social matrix.” Its core assumptions, they argue, are “individuality, self-sufficiency, and materialism.” Even when we are not aware of it, our lives are shaped by this cultural matrix. Little wonder, they suggest, that far too many people today experience “feelings of alienation, and a lack of clarity regarding what matters in life.” Following a psychedelic experience, a person might discover “a newfound connectedness to oneself, one’s community, and one’s values, especially in the context of an increased sense of personal meaning.” The new perspective, however, conflicts directly with our surrounding matrix, which “is hostile to the very idea of meaningfulness” (Plesa and Petranker 2023, pp. 4–5). They agree that the traditional view about “set and setting” is too limited and should be expanded. It is inadequate because it “largely disregards the wider context of the therapy: even if one feels a greater sense of connection to their self, their community, or the world, they will still return to a neoliberal culture which enshrines individualization, responsibilization, competition, and self-governance” (Plesa and Petranker 2023, p. 6).

Another research team reaches a similar conclusion, although their argument is rooted in the Neo-Marxism of Herbert Marcuse and his development of the concept of alienation. They believe that some of our deepest problems, such as “anger, anxiety, sadness and loneliness,” come from our “wider socio-political structure which severs the relational threads of interconnection that are required to sustain human wellbeing” (Tempone-Wiltshire and Matthews 2023, p. 239). Both teams agree that a core problem in our culture is the way we isolate individuals from the natural world and from meaningful connections with community. Individuals are functionally disconnected from human contact, not just lonely psychologically but atomized ideologically. They are held to be solely responsible for their economic and social position and for their mental and physical health.

If our context leaves us feeling disconnected, psychedelics appear to do the opposite by creating a sense of connection. The connectional process starts in the brain itself, as the functional connectivity between various brain networks is literally ramped up during the psychedelic session (Tagliazucchi et al. 2016). In terms of felt experience, people often describe their drug sessions with words like connection, closeness, presence, and spiritual encounter (Watts et al. 2022).

In 1964, Huston Smith, an expert in world religions who participated in the historic “Marsh Chapel” experiment, pointed to the religious significance of the spiritual experience of connection. The experience can be profoundly meaningful and theologically significant, he believed, but he wondered whether psychedelic religious experiences lead to religious or spiritual lives. “Drugs appear able to induce religious experiences; it is less evident that they can produce religious lives” (Smith 1964, p. 528). In the decades since the 1960s, as scientists have learned much more about how psychedelic substances work in the human body and brain, Smith’s question has become more urgent than ever. For example, now we have strong evidence that psilocybin often leads to experiences that are highly rated for their meaningfulness and their spiritual value (Griffiths et al. 2006).

Even more recently, in fact, the pathway from the acute psychedelic spiritual experience to long term spiritual growth has been explored. In an analysis of 34 studies on psychedelic and spiritual experiences, reviewers concluded that in and of themselves, psychedelic experiences seem to have an intrinsic capacity to lead not just to spiritual experience but to spiritual lives as well. They write that taken together, these studies provide support for the claim that “psychedelics have the potential to facilitate perceptions of spiritual growth” (Schutt et al. 2024, p. 26372). Among other things, the reviewers found that “psychedelics are associated with distinctly spiritual benefits, including stronger perceived connections with the divine, a greater sense of meaning in one’s life, increased spiritual faith or engagement in [religious/spiritual] practices, enduring feelings of unity and self-transcendence, positive changes in worldview, increased connectedness with others, and reduced fear of death” (Schutt et al. 2024, p. 26385). Their summary continues: “Mystical experiences might also lead individuals to feel interconnected with a greater spiritual reality, fostering a sense of unity with the divine. Although the specific role that mystical experiences play is still unclear, such experiences do appear to contribute to the relationship between psychedelic use and spiritual growth” (Schutt et al. 2024, pp. 26385–86; emphasis added).

Considering this claim, the question before us is this: Will the full realization of the spiritual potential of psychedelic experiences be resisted and stifled by today’s contexts of materialism and individualism, or will it be nurtured into life-changing growth by contexts of support and spiritual encouragement? Keeping in mind the psychedelic-related processes of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity that were briefly reviewed above in Section 2, we can see how the importance of context comes more clearly into view as we expand our thinking beyond the short-term “set and setting” to take in set, setting, and the longer-term social context.

The challenge, however, is not just to expand our thinking about context but to expand real opportunities for real people. How can we imagine and create new contexts and settings to provide support for the hard work of psychedelic spiritual integration, contexts that invite people to explore their own process of growth in spiritual lives? One way is through local psychedelics integration groups, a strategy that has been tested experimentally and described in a recent article by Lisa Gezon. In a mid-size city in the southeastern United States, an integration group was formed in 2023 by invitation from a local therapist who works with ketamine-assisted therapy. Gezon describes how she joined the group from “its inception as an observer and conversational participant” (Gezon 2024, p. 3). During the study period, the group of roughly twenty people met weekly. The reason for observing the group was to learn more about how social factors play a causal role in psychedelic integration. Researchers should pay close attention to social factors, Gezon explains, while avoiding “an overly narrow conception of ‘setting.’” What we need is a focus on the “holistic context of peoples’ everyday lives even well outside the immediate physical site of use” (Gezon 2024, p. 2).

Gezon uses the term social efficacy “to capture the importance of social relationships to the efficacy of psychedelics” (Gezon 2024, p. 1). She offers this definition: “Social efficacy can be defined as a source of efficacy that includes not just the immediate social environment in which psychedelics are experienced and processed, but also the broad range of social relationships and political economic and historical contexts that frame their use” (Gezon 2024, p. 2).

The core claim in her article is that “community-based peer-led integration groups can play a vital role in the positive integration of psychedelic experiences” (Gezon 2024, p. 2). Support for this claim comes from comments made by group participants. “Overall, the participants in the integration group see their participation in the group as critical to the efficacy of their psychedelic experiences” (Gezon 2024, p. 7). Participants “affirmed the importance of the integration group in helping the participants articulate and share how psychedelics helped process both emotional and social challenges” (Gezon 2024, p. 1). People mentioned being grateful that the group helped them “find meaning in a challenging psychedelic experience,” or “feel more powerful and impactful,” or “feel accepted and connected, thereby intensifying the positive experiences they had had with psychedelics” (Gezon 2024, p. 5). Without a group like this, people who have had a meaningful psychedelic experience can only “return to their daily life, where the people around them may not recognize psychedelic use as acceptable or comprehensible.” Participants often said that their “integration group is the only place they can process these profound experiences or just be present with people who find the psychedelic healing and growth journey an ordinary part of life” (Gezon 2024, p. 7).

The group described by Gezon happened to meet in a local community center. While that might be preferable for some group members, a convenient or affordable public space is not always available. Local churches, however, are readily available and might be willing to offer a meeting space without any fee.

This brings us to the idea that psychedelic integration groups might meet in a room belonging to a local house of worship, such as a local Christian church. There are at least two different ways to think about such groups. Option One involves groups that happen to meet in churches as a matter of convenience, with almost no programmatic connection. Option Two, on the other hand, involves groups that are intentional about a Christian focus.

Option One groups can be compared to the thousands of recovery groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, that meet at no cost in spare rooms in houses of worship. The meetings are listed on the church administrative calendar, but no one other than the custodial staff is involved. Recovery groups protect participants with policies of confidentiality and anonymity. It is easy to imagine that psychedelic spirituality integration groups might be able to meet under similar terms in church rooms, with little or no programmatic connection to the congregation, with lay leaders or trained facilitators, and with pledges of confidentiality. What distinguishes Option One is that there is not much that is Christian about it.

Option Two, on the other hand, involves groups that try to connect the spiritual aspects of psychedelic integration to Christian themes and resources. These groups would acknowledge a direct connection with Christianity. With policies of confidentiality and anonymity in place, groups would be gathered in response to an invitation open anyone interested in exploring the spiritual dimensions of psychedelic experiences within the context of a Christian community and its understanding of spiritual growth.

Both options involve social support for psychedelic integration at the deepest levels of insight and meaning. No hard border can exist between Option One or Option Two groups, primarily because no one would control what individuals choose to share about their own spiritual interpretations. The main difference is that Option Two groups would draw intentionally on a set of ideas the come from Christian perspectives on spirituality and spiritual growth, bringing these ideas into dialogue as a way of inviting people today to explore the spiritual dimensions of their psychedelic experiences.

What are the Christian ideas and themes that might be helpful to psychedelic spiritual seekers? A full answer to that question is beyond the scope of this article. More narrowly, however, we might ask: What Christian ideas and themes are specifically responsive or prompted by recent developments in psychedelics research? A set of four themes is proposed below in Section 5. These themes have their roots in the wider relationship between psychedelics and Christianity, a complex relationship spanning at least a few decades if not more. This relationship is summarized in Section 4.

4. Psychedelics and Christianity: A Complicated Intersection

It has been shown that there is a connection between psychedelics and spiritual or “mystical-like” experiences (Griffiths et al. 2006). Because of that connection, some have wondered what role psychedelic substances may have played in the history of religions. Did religious consciousness first arise because of psychedelics? More specifically, did psychedelic substances give rise to any specific religious tradition, such as Christianity? This is an intriguing question for many people, not just Christians. Hints in sacred texts, mushroom images in early Christian art, and traces of material evidence from ancient pottery have all been cited to support the controversial idea that the first Christians used psychedelic substances (Muraresku 2020). Even without compelling evidence, it is reasonable to wonder how often during the past 2000 years, intentionally or not, devout Christians used psychedelic substances in ways that enhanced their spiritual experiences. What we do know is that during the 1960s, some people who identified as Christians spoke freely about their use of LSD or psilocybin (McCarthy and Priest 2024).

Over the past decade, a movement calling itself “psychedelic Christianity” has begun to take shape. “Psychedelic Christianity is as fresh as the tender shoots of spring,” writes Jack Call, a herald of the movement. “A psychedelic Christian is just a Christian who acknowledges that psychedelic experience is a way of learning how to be in the right relationship to God” (Call 2018, p. 27). He offers a simple but compelling definition: “Psychedelic Christianity is just the religion of people who have had profound psychedelic experiences and believe that Christianity is the best religious expression of what they have experienced” (Call 2018, p. 55).

No traditional Christian denomination, however, has recognized that psychedelics have spiritual significance or value, much less endorsed the idea of psychedelic Christianity. In fact, several traditional denominations have statements that condemn the use of psychedelics (Cole-Turner 2022, p. 13). On the other hand, many newly organized psychedelic or plant-sacrament “churches” have come into existence recently, although they tend to keep their distance from historic Christian institutions and beliefs (Lattin 2023). Jack Call asks whether a new psychedelic Christian denomination is needed. “Would it be a good idea” he writes, “to form a new denomination, called Psychedelic Christianity, to help each other move closer to the ultimate goal? I tend to doubt it” (Call 2018, p. 55).

While psychedelic Christianity may never be a denomination, it exists nonetheless as a theme in a growing body of scholarly publications that explore the relationship between psychedelics, mystical or spiritual experience, and Christianity. For example, Jaime Clark-Soles, an expert in New Testament studies, writes about “the Apostle Paul’s embodied mystical experience, with special attention to 2 Corinthians 12:1–10, as one example of biblical material that might intersect with or inform psychedelic mystical encounters that contemporary Christians might experience” (Clark-Soles 2024, p. 1).

Scholarship in psychedelic Christianity is attentive to psychedelic science. It has been argued, however, that mystical experience in scientific research is defined and measured based on ideas drawn from William James and W. T. Stace, which differ from a more classic Christian view in two important ways. First, their view highlights the intense experience rather than the more everyday mystical awareness that Christianity values. Second, especially in Stace, mysticism is defined chiefly as an experience of unity rather than as a relationship with the holy (Cole-Turner 2024). Christianity has its own rich mystical traditions from which to draw. Bryan McCarthy and Hunt Priest write in favor of the idea of psychedelic Christianity, noting that if “one of the primary intents of using psychedelics as entheogens is to have an encounter with the divine, somehow conceived, then Christianity has a wealth of existing spiritual practices, rituals, story, and communities of caring to support Christians in this work” (McCarthy and Priest 2024, p. 150).

McCarthy and Priest note, however, that the “conversation is only beginning within Christianity about how psychedelic healing and spiritual growth and development may or may not be integrated into Christian communities of faith and practice” (McCarthy and Priest 2024, p. 150). As a sign of growing interest, they point to the anticipated publication of the report of a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University and New York University involving psilocybin sessions with 24 religious professionals. After long delays, the report was published in 2025. It noted that participants in the study reported “changes that they considered positive in their religious practices (e.g., contemplation or prayer), attitudes about their religious vocation, appreciation of both their own and other religious traditions, spiritual awareness in everyday life, feeling more effective as a spiritual leader, having a deeper understanding of their religious tradition, being more certain about the positive role of religion in the world, increased appreciation for religious traditions other than their own, being more certain about the truth of certain metaphysical religious teachings, and taking more time for devotional life” (Griffiths et al. 2025, p. 15). While this report does not endorse the concept of “psychedelic Christianity,” it does provide support for the idea that Christian clergy, who made up roughly three-fourths of the 29 participants who completed the interim analysis stage of the study, responded positively when asked whether their psilocybin sessions enhanced their Christian faith and vocation (Griffiths et al. 2025, p. 13).

“I knew my experiences at Hopkins had forever changed my ministry,” writes Hunt Priest, a participant in the study. “I wasn’t sure how that would be lived out,” he says, until he recognized that there was no organization or “mechanism to bring the results of the research back to the Christian community.” This realization led him to launch an organization called “Ligare: A Christian Psychedelic Society.” Working mostly online, Ligare connects people for “education, community, and network building, resource sharing, and the work of preparing Christian leaders for a time [when] people will be looking for spiritual and religious communities in which to do the long-term work of healing and meaning making” (Cole-Turner 2025, p. ix).

Ligare is the institutional embodiment of psychedelic Christianity. Its members come from various Christian denominations and traditions, ranging from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Roman Catholics and Orthodox. It defines itself as “a Christian psychedelic society discerning how our faith and traditions may support the ethical and spiritually grounded use of psychedelics for the purpose of healing and renewal” (www.ligare.org. Accessed on 14 September 2025). How, indeed, can Christian faith and its resources support a “spiritually grounded use of psychedelics for the purpose of healing and renewal”?

Any attempt to answer this question must be prefaced by three critically important disclaimers. First, Christian support for spiritual interpretation of psychedelics is not a Christian recommendation for the use of psychedelics, not even for the express purpose of spiritual growth. Second, Christian support is offered but never imposed on anyone, certainly never in a way that seeks to exploit any conceptual or metaphysical vulnerabilities that may have arisen for people because of their psychedelic experiences (Cole-Turner 2025, pp. 68–72). In fact, churches should always be mindful that a psychedelic experience can undermine or disrupt prior Christian beliefs or rigid dogmas that may previously have been imposed, simply because psychedelics act by reducing “confidence in specific beliefs,” including prior religious ideas (Cole-Turner 2025, p. 116). Third, Christian support is not an invitation to spiritual bypassing, understood as “situations where an individual seeks to evade or ignore their psychological issues by immersing themselves completely in a spiritual worldview” (Lutkajtis and Evans 2023, p. 217). On the contrary, the purpose of Christian support for psychedelic spiritual integration is to encourage emotional and psychological honesty, insight, and courage.

Christian support for psychedelic spiritual integration comes in two ways. The first is through the gift of community. Participation in various forms of community is almost universal among human beings, but it is central to the Christian experience of shared love within the context of a worshipping community. Even though it is limited to working mostly online, it is not surprising that Ligare seeks to be a community: “At the heart of Ligare is the community we foster” (www.ligare.org. Accessed on 14 September 2025). It has also been suggested that the benefits of a Christian context might be realized in retreat settings (McCarthy and Priest 2024, p. 150). While this may be true to some extent, the problem with retreats is obvious: “Even if users attend retreats far from home, and even if their therapeutic uses of psychedelics include integration sessions in therapeutic contexts, users still return to their daily life, where the people around them may not recognize psychedelic use as acceptable or comprehensible” (Gezon 2024, p. 7).

When psychedelic-assisted therapy is offered in a clinical setting, it is important to support people as they explore the spiritual aspects of psychedelic integration through the work of chaplains, especially those who have training in psychedelics (Peacock et al. 2024). There are limits here, of course, having to do with costs and availability. Another promising suggestion regarding one-on-one or small group forms of community involves the use of specially trained spiritual directors. Responding directly to the personal needs of the one engaged in psychedelic spiritual integration, a spiritual director can support and encourage the work of spiritual growth. The Ligare organization has encouraged the use of spiritual directors and maintains a list of those whose training involves psychedelic integration (www.ligare.org. Accessed on 14 September 2025).

Here in this paper, however, we have argued that psychedelic spiritual integration groups may be a helpful method by which to offer the communal support benefits of Christianity, not as an alternative but in conjunction with other proposals such as congregational participation, online networking, retreats, chaplains, and spiritual direction. Regardless of it is available, the gift of community is just the first way in which Christianity provides support for psychedelic spiritual integration. The second way is by making available a set of theological themes and ideas. The social container of community provided by Christianity is vitally important, but so is the set of ideas by which it is defined. What makes the social context Christian? What specific theological themes and ideas are offered for consideration by those who choose to participate in Christianity as a social context for psychedelic spiritual integration?

In response to these questions, it is not surprising to see that Ligare is “dedicated to generating knowledge” about such things as “theological frameworks” (www.ligare.org. Accessed on 14 September 2025). What Christian ideas and themes can be offered to “who turn to the church as a spiritual home in which they can talk safely and honestly about their experiences with psychedelic drugs” (Cole-Turner 2025, p. 127)?

Anyone who considers taking up the offer to draw on Christian sources of spiritual insight should be fully aware of what the consequences of that decision might be. As we have seen, social contexts shape outcomes. Choosing to be supported by a Christian social context is choosing to be shaped by that context. As in so many things involving religion, the key presupposition is freedom of personal choice. A decision to accept or reject the support of any religious or non-religious context falls under the spirit of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is a decision with consequences, but its acceptance or rejection rests squarely with the person who makes it.

After all, people do have alternative spiritual contexts from which to choose. Some turn to Eastern philosophies and mystical traditions, such as Buddhism. Other look to the wisdom of traditional Indigenous communities. For others, the newly formed psychedelic churches provide support for spiritual integration within a theologically minimalist post-Christian context. Some may create their own mix of traditions and sources, while others embrace non-religious forms of spirituality that may be rooted in philosophical naturalism. Anyone making a fully informed decision about the best context will consider all these options, including the option to refuse them all.

For some who choose it, a turn to Christian ideas and practices might feel like a return to the faith of their childhood. For others, it may all seem entirely new. For many, Christianity will seem like a bundle of contradictions, a message of love that conflicts with an institutional culture of coercion and shame that has marked the life of Christian communities far too often. Only by being brutally honest about its failures over the ages and humble in its affirmation can Christianity hope to make its offer of spiritual support credible today.

5. Christian Perspectives on Pathways from Psychedelics to Spiritual Growth

What, then, are the themes and ideas that Christianity today can offer to psychedelic spiritual seekers? Our scope must be narrow here, even while we recognize that Christianity has much to say about mystical encounters, spiritual transformation, healing in body and mind, and the slow and arduous pathways from awakening to compassion and justice (Cole-Turner 2025). Space does not allow us to treat Christianity wholesale, or even Christianity in its mystical dimensions. Our focus here is limited even more to just the ways in which specific Christian themes arise in direct response to aspects of psychedelic experiences as these are described through recent scientific studies. Framing the challenge this way leads us to four proposals for discussion.

The first is that Christianity is well-positioned to respond to the disruptive nature of psychedelics, reviewed above in Section 2. When prior beliefs and behaviors are relaxed, new insight emerges. We saw earlier how psychedelics seem to loosen the grip of the old ideas about ourselves that may explain a wide range of mental disorders. When these old ideas are disrupted and new insight is discovered, psychedelic-assisted therapy becomes effective for many of these disorders. Psychedelics can also loosen the grip of harmful religious ideas that make us spiritually lifeless. They can disrupt old beliefs about a guilt-inducing God who is angry at worthless sinners.

Christianity is founded on a remarkably similar idea about the benefits of disruption and change. It is essentially a call to a disruptive encounter, a summons to let go of old beliefs and behaviors in order to move into a new way of thinking and living. Its message starts with a call to let go of old ideas. According to Mark 1:15, the first public message from Jesus is a call to “repent and believe the good news.”1 To our ears, this phrase sounds like a condemnation. That is because the word “repent” is a somewhat misleading translation of the Greek word, metanoia, which literally means change your mind. The invitation to change your mind and believe the good news is part of the Christian message from the beginning, long before it was used in the title of a best-selling book (Pollan 2019). Christianity invites people to let go of old ideas and believe good news. Psychedelic disruption can still be unsettling, sometimes profoundly so. What Christianity offers is reassurance that mind-changing, even when it is disorienting or challenging or painful, can have a good outcome. With the right encouragement, the process of transformative healing can be trusted to lead to new ways of thinking and living.

Second, Christianity supports us in our awakening to new levels of spiritual consciousness as something that is felt at the level of our deepest emotions. In addition to changing our beliefs and behaviors, a psychedelic spiritual experience can transform our basic feelings about being alive. It starts when it awakens a sense of connection to others and to the whole creation. It can lead to feelings of awe as waves of emotion that may be joyous or terrifying or both. A recent online study suggests that “for spiritually motivated respondents, entheogenic experiences were most commonly characterized by feelings of joy, peace, and love, by insight into oneself and one’s relations, and by improved connections with nature and with other people” (Johnstad 2020, p. 380). All these emotions are described in Christian scriptures and in traditional texts. The self as an isolated ego is emptied of its significance and its isolation, while at the same time the goodness or blessedness of each living thing is unconditionally affirmed, perhaps for the first time. At the same time, we become more conscious of the suffering that surrounds us.

What Christianity offers is the idea that people should be intentional about looking for these changes in their own emotional state. These feelings may get a nudge from psychedelics, but Christianity views them as nothing less than a working out of a sense of the divine presence within. This presence has its own distinct reality and power to change us in ways that the earliest Christians described as the emotional effect or fruit of the Spirit. In a favorite text, we read that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). When it comes to these feelings, Christianity cultivates an expectancy that feeds and defines our intentionality.

Third, Christianity reinforces and deepens the sense that our spiritual experiences are uniquely our own and that they are fully embodied. Regardless of whether they involve the use of psychedelics, each spiritual experience is unique. One reason for their uniqueness is that they are always embodied, even when people sometimes feel that their soul is floating free of their bodies. Christianity has always recognized that bodily practices can lead to spiritual experiences. Fasting, breathwork, prayer, worship, music, art, or the use of incense are just a few of the ways Christians encounter the spiritual in and through the body. All these are standard pathways to spirituality, and there is no compelling theological reason why psychedelic experiences are any different when it comes to spiritual authenticity.

Christianity invites us to look at our embodied psychedelic spiritual experiences as holy experiences. It teaches us that the divine Spirit is present at the deepest levels of our bodies. One of the earliest Christian texts says that “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you” (1 Corinthians 6:19). What might happen if people ponder the meaning of their psychedelic spiritual experiences while entertaining the suggestion that the divine Spirit is already in them? With this outlook, people might come to reflect on their psychedelic experience with gratitude that these substances are somehow bringing them to an awareness of the nearness of the divine, encountered not as mere abstraction that is distant and transcendent but also as a felt presence that is intimately and sometimes shockingly close, indwelling their bodies and making them more fully alive.

Fourth, often people report that during their psychedelic experience, they felt that they were in the presence of something holy and loving. Christianity validates that feeling, not just a passing feeling but as an ontological conviction. Christianity is based on the shared belief that love is real, that it really exists not just as one thing among others but as the reality upon everything else depends. It is the most real, the foundational reality, the ground of everything else. This is what is meant by the simple biblical claim that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Human experiences, psychedelic or otherwise, cannot provide information about God. They do not give us proof of God’s existence. The God of Christianity remains unprovable and indescribable. What Christianity does offer is a simple reassurance that if in a moment of spiritual awakening you feel that you are loved, really and unconditionally, and that love is the unexpected meaning behind all things, you are not alone in believing and living that love that has a name. At its core, what Christianity offers is support in believing love feels real because it is real.

6. Conclusions

This article has drawn on recent scientific work on psychedelics concerning the disruptive nature of psychedelic experiences, their effects on neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, their tendency to bring about changes in core beliefs and in basic life choices, and their capacity to bring about not just momentary spiritual experiences but growth in spiritual lives. In light of these insights, we have argued that standard thinking about the effects of the social surroundings, usually limited to ideas about the immediate “set and setting,” should be expanded to include set, setting, and the longer-term social context. We noted that people may find that their psychedelic experiences are not supported by their social context, but that their context might work against the full development of the spiritual value of their experiences.

With this in mind, we have argued that religious communities such as Christianity might play a helpful role by providing an optional, alternative context. Christianity can offer the gift of community, not just in the form of participation in a local worshiping community, but by offering meeting space for psychedelic spiritual integration groups. These groups may be organized around a non-specific definition of spirituality that includes various perspectives on what it means to be spiritual. Alternatively, these groups might focus intentionally on Christian perspectives and themes as source material for personal reflection during the process of psychedelic spiritual integration and interpretation.

The long history of Christianity offers many complex and rich ideas to support spiritual growth (Cole-Turner 2025, pp. 76–103). The focus here is limited to Christian themes that respond directly to what we are learning through scientific studies of psychedelics, specifically in response to those insights that are explored in Section 2 and Section 3 of this paper. Four themes were identified for consideration, suggesting that Christianity (1) offers support for the disruptive nature of psychedelic experiences; (2) focuses on the emotional responses these experiences; (3) affirms that psychedelics can bring a bodily awareness of divine presence; (4) supports the idea that the loving presence sometimes encountered in psychedelic experiences is ontologically real, known to Christians as a holy mystery or simply as “God”.

When we add these four points together, we can describe what Christianity can say in response to a psychedelic spiritual experience this way: your mind is changed and your outlook is transformed through the active presence of the divine Spirit in your embodied human experience and now you live transformed by love.