Posted on 08/30/2025 10:24:49 PM PDT by Morgana
The Rev. Hunt Priest, founder of the ‘Christian Psychedelic Society’ Ligare, was deposed from the Episcopal Church’s ministry by Bishop Frank Logue of Georgia earlier this week, concluding a 13-month Title IV disciplinary process.
The action followed a complaint by the Rev. Joe Welker, a Presbyterian pastor and former Ligare intern, who accused Priest of endorsing illegal psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, and leveraging his priestly authority to promote Ligare’s mission, which the diocese deemed outside sacramental ministry.
In 2015, Priest was reading the progressive Christian magazine The Christian Century when he came across an advertisement for a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins, reading: “Seeking Clergy to Take Part in a Research Study of Psilocybin and Sacred Experience.”
He participated in the study, which he described as a “profound” and “very Christian” experience that alleviated his severe anxiety and shaped his advocacy for integrating psychedelic healing into pastoral care. According to The Living Church, Priest resigned as rector of St. Peter’s Church in Savannah in 2021 to found Ligare, 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.”
Ligare is also an “open network of people who believe that Christianity and other existing religious traditions offer paths for preparing for, experiencing, finding meaning, and integrating mystical experiences, including those occasioned by sacred plants and compounds.”
Despite insisting that his organization did not provide psychedelic experiences but instead focused on educating clergy about medical research to support congregants undergoing treatment, akin to other medical pastoral care, the diocese launched an investigation.
Welker, who described himself as a former “believer in the psychedelic gospel,” raised concerns about Ligare’s ethics, alleging deceptive practices and insufficient focus on risks, including reports of sexual abuse in psychedelic trials. He ended his internship early, citing recklessness, and later initiated the Title IV complaint after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Priest’s lawyers regarding his critical Substack posts.
The diocese’s investigation, conducted by an outside lawyer and reviewed by a four-person reference panel, cited church canons on “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” and “conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.”
The panel concluded that Priest’s public statements promoted the safety of psychedelics, a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law, rather than their legal use, and that his work at Ligare did not align with traditional priestly duties.
Bishop Logue offered Priest the option to resign from Ligare and return to parish work or surrender his ordination. Priest chose to resign his priesthood, viewing Ligare as an extension of his ministry, a perspective the diocese’s reference panel rejected.
I have noticed God has been cleaning out the churches.
See Hunt Priest's site: https://www.ligare.org/about
$150 a year to join their "society." A review of some of the "team" shows the "Christian" side of these folks' views are wrapped with "somatic writing" and "ancestral wisdom" and "psychedelic healing" BUT what stands out is the word "progressive."
Leftists, getting high on --- psilocybin.
Episcopal shaman.
How the most powerful and exciting message in the history of the world—our rescue from eternal damnation—can be turned into something moribund is a mystery as tragic as it is baffling.
St. Patmos...
Did this priest advocate therapeutic or theological doses?
Altering your brain chemistry isn’t the path to encountering the divine.
CC
Paging: John Allegro.
There is a lot of research on the therapeutic effects or psylisibn at top medical centers. Like ketamine therapy and ECT they are being looked at as an answer for severe depression.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I had an Episcopal priest tell me that he wasn’t sure he believed in God once.
The accuser appears to have previously worked in the “Los Angeles Entertainment Industry”. If this is the guy, PC(USA), of course, with a Harvard degree:
“Rev. Joe Welker was called to serve East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church in August 2023 and ordained in the PC(USA) in October 2023. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA) and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv). Before pastoral ministry, Joe spent many years in the Los Angeles entertainment industry, later studying the intersection of religion and psychedelic research at Harvard. “
Are you so sure? Psylocibin shows strong signs of being very helpful for PTSD and depression. And Timothy Leary’s experiments with LSD found that people typically had profound religious experiences which deepened their Christian faith, which may have been the result of cleaning away all of the modern ways our emotional processing his hampered by modern life. LSD and psylocibin have been chiefly characterized by the results of the worst abuse, but are you so certain that they can’t at least help lower some of the obstacles in some of the same ways that feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless do?
I ask because I’ve taken anti-depressants which have been very helpful but for many they either must be a life-long medical treatment; and treatments like LSD, ketamine and psylocibin promise to offer to PTSD folks what anti-depressants offered to me.
I remember the 1960s when such “priests” were urging their students to use LSD before studding the Bible.
He’d still be an Episcopal priest, if only he’d stuck to Sodomy.
I dont even have to guess you've never done mushrooms or LSD,
Lighten up, you are clueless, open your mi d or stop talking out your butt, because you are living in a very closed minded world.
Even Jesus drank wine.
I dont support recreational use of drugs, I support the relief of ptsd, pain, and anxiety thru the use of such natural methods. And if someone has the blinders taken off to see God's creation with wonder and discovery, and it changes their life away from despair, that cant be bad.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But the fact that you resorted to insults to express it tells me a lot about you.
CC
Its telling the the truth to a closed minded bigot with zero real world experience on the subject.
You will not find God or mental health in a mushroom that poisons the mind.
I have. You are majorly wrong.
For your reasoning to work, you must establish that a therapeutic amount of psylocibin “poisons the mind.” Otherwise, you come off sounding like a 15th-century witch-burner.
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