In God on Psychedelics, Don Lattin observes and reflects on two concurrent phenomena—the decline in institutional religiosity and the rising interest in psychedelics drugs, commonly called the Psychedelic Renaissance (PR), where Americans are increasingly exploring the therapeutic, medicinal, and religiospiritual (aka entheogenic) aspects of psychedelics. The veteran journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle’s religion beat engages these two trends to ask the following questions: “How does the psychedelic revival fit into the larger story of American religion” (x), why do few people in the PR connect entheogenic experiences to their own religious traditions, and what can “mainstream churches and synagogues” (xi) and “entheogenic explorers” (xi) learn from each other?
To address these questions, Lattin explores historical precedent for and contemporary manifestations of entheogenic activism over seven overlapping chapters. The historical analysis begins with William James, the first scholar to argue comprehensively for an association of religion and psychoactive substances....
University of California Press