Psychedelic Religion Expands in 2025
Psychedelic churches and spirituality grow with delay of FDA-approved MDMA & psilocybin and limits of Oregon and Colorado regulation
While scientific and political interest in psychedelics often takes center stage, spiritual use can be overlooked. That may change in 2025. Last year brought delays for the availability of FDA-approved psychedelics such as MDMA and psilocybin, and state legal proposals slowed or experienced setbacks.
Facing high regulatory costs, licensed psilocybin service centers in Oregon have experienced challenges, and some have closed. Colorado psilocybin centers open this year, but their outlook is uncertain given similarly high operating costs. Colorado also faces a $1 billion budget shortfall, which could impact the state’s regulated program.
In the meantime, people increasingly turn to spiritual or religious communities that utilize psychedelics. Colorado recently decriminalized growing, sharing, and consuming certain psychedelic plants and fungi, which allows churches to operate under state law (although their federal legal status is at best unclear, and at worst, clearly illegal).
Psychedelic spirituality is nothing new. Indigenous communities developed it (as well as psychedelic healing). However, lawmakers, researchers, and reporters usually focus on clinical trials and commercializing psychedelic medicines. There are exceptions.
Brian Muraresku’s 2020 New York Times bestseller The Immortality Key prominently featured religious use, exploring its history in Western civilization. Native American communities are working to preserve their longstanding spiritual traditions and natural resources. Some groups, such as the Sacred Garden Community, the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen, and the Church of Ambrosia, have openly discussed psychedelic sacraments for years.
In addition, psychedelic churches have seemingly become more common and visible. Both established and emerging groups maintain public websites and include large numbers of religious practitioners. The academic and practical study of psychedelic religion is also becoming popular.
In 2025, psychedelic researchers and academic programs focus on religious groups and the legal and ethical challenges they face. Last semester, with colleagues at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center, I co-founded the project on Psychedelic Use, Law, and Religious Experience (PULSE). Funded by a grant from the Mahindra Humanities Center, the project is part of the Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture. PULSE convenes legal and religious scholars and practitioners with diverse perspectives to discuss how law, policy, and ethics affect the religious and spiritual use of psychedelics.
This Valentine’s Day, PULSE will host a free afternoon conference on law and psychedelic religion at Harvard Law School. The public event will feature panels and discussions with law professors, attorneys, religious scholars, and religious practitioners, including PULSE affiliated researchers.
More details on registration and the lineup of speakers will follow shortly. In the meantime, please mark your calendars (the on-campus conference will run from approximately 1:30 - 5:00 PM Eastern on February 14).
The February PULSE event dovetails with the Psychedelic Intersections 2025 Conference hosted by the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School. Organized by CSWR staff, including PULSE-affiliated researchers Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, this year’s Psychedelic Intersections event focuses on Chaplaincy, Plant Medicine, and Aesthetics. PULSE will contribute a panel on law and psychedelic churches to the event’s impressive lineup.
More programming on psychedelic law and religion will follow in March, when the Jules-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law holds its annual conference. Psychedelics in Monotheistic Traditions: Sacramental Practice and Legal Recognition will run March 5-6. Organized by Professor Noah Feldman and rabbi, professor, and author Jay Michaelson (also a PULSE affiliated researcher), this event will address psychedelic use in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, and related topics.
Other academic institutions are focusing on psychedelic spirituality in 2025, including Emory’s Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics. This year, the increased visibility of psychedelic spirituality might catch the public’s attention, and appear more prominently on the radar of courts, lawmakers, and regulators.
*The views expressed on Psychedelic Week do not represent the views of Harvard University, POPLAR at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, Florida State University or its College of Law, or Yale University. Psychedelic Week is an independent project unaffiliated with these and other programs and institutions.
Mason Marks, MD, JD is the Florida Bar Health Law Section Professor at Florida State University. He is the senior fellow and project lead of the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, and a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Professor Marks teaches drug law, psychedelic law, constitutional law, and administrative law. His forthcoming book on psychedelic law and politics will be published by Yale University Press. He tweets at @MasonMarksMD and @PsychedelicWeek. Follow him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.