Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 1, 2023
t's a well-known fact that the attendance numbers at houses of worship are in decline. For the first time in 2021, the percentage of attendees dipped below 50%, from a high of 73% in 1937, when Gallup first started keeping score1. Pews are going empty. Ministers are wringing their hands. And yet nobody mentions the obvious solution to the problem, one that's been staring theists in the face for at least the last 50 years, were they not blinded by the light of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
It's time for churches (and dare I say mosques and synagogues as well) to start using Ecstasy (and/or similar entheogens) in their religious rituals.
In this way, church-going would become a sensual sort of full-body experience and not just a mental exercise for the tired brain of overthinking homo sapiens. Instead, the churchgoer would experience the oft-cited truths of the gospels, namely, that God is love.
Quanah Parker of the Native American Church best summed up the problem with the status quo as follows:
"The White Man goes into church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus."2
This statement should be read as a wake-up call for the hand-wringing preachers mentioned above, but unfortunately said preachers are carrying on with business as normal, apparently convinced by their drug-war indoctrination that to do otherwise would be heresy, if not against the church itself then against the reigning orthodoxies of our time.
For the Drug Warrior has taught us to associate the super-safe drug called Ecstasy with irresponsible youths, notwithstanding the fact that those "irresponsible youths" took part in the most peaceful multi-ethnic get-togethers in world history during the rave phenomena of late 20th-century Britain. You remember how that ended, right? The politicians demonized ecstasy, cracked down on the same, and the dance floor soon devolved into liquor-fueled violence3. This shows the insane priorities of the Drug War: they do not want even peace and safety if it means okaying the use of substances that help the mind think sanely about the world.
And ecstasy is far from the only entheogen whose ritual use could increase church attendance. Alexander Shulgin has synthesized literally hundreds of substances whose use safely conduces to emotional harmony and love for one's fellows.
In fighting for these new experiential religions, which I call Church 2.0, we would be doing our bit to end the hateful Drug War by insisting to the brainwashed world that drugs are not evil in and of themselves, but that they can have beneficial uses as well. This fact would have been obvious to our 18th-century forebears, but it needs to be vigorously defended in an age in which agenda-driven and bribe-taking politicians are determined to quash our right to freedom of thought and consciousness.
By creating these new religions, we will be calling the Drug Warrior's bluff: saying, in effect: "Go on, tell me that I can't practice my religion, so that the world can see the full anti-democratic ignorance of the Drug War ideology that you represent."
Not that the DEA will back down without taking every challenge to the Supreme Court if necessary. Even as I write, the DEA is denying the legitimacy of a Florida religion which seeks to use ayahuasca in its religious rituals. This is such an obvious attack on religious thinking -- one in which a government organization is second-guessing the calls of a religious group -- that one scarcely knows where to begin in protesting it.
This is why the DEA needs to be abolished, not argued with. And then its leaders should be tried for crimes against humanity, in light of the billions who have gone without godsend medicines since that organization started criminalizing and lying about drugs in its politics-based scheduling system in 1973.
Religion
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
MDMA legalization has suffered a setback by the FDA. The FDA: these are the people that think Electro Shock Therapy cannot be used often enough! What sick priorities.
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
First America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own pain by rendering opium illegal. Then the psychiatric field treats the resultant epidemic of depression by damaging the patient's brain, i.e., by treating depressed patients with shock therapy.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby
incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war. Otherwise, many people don't make the connection.
The drug war basically is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Using Ecstasy in Church: Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens, published on February 1, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
t's a well-known fact that the attendance numbers at houses of worship are in decline. For the first time in 2021, the percentage of attendees dipped below 50%, from a high of 73% in 1937, when Gallup first started keeping score1. Pews are going empty. Ministers are wringing their hands. And yet nobody mentions the obvious solution to the problem, one that's been staring theists in the face for at least the last 50 years, were they not blinded by the light of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
You have been reading an article entitled, Using Ecstasy in Church: Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens, published on February 1, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)