Was Jesus Christ talking about magic mushrooms when he told his disciples to eat the “bread of God” at the Last Supper? That’s one theory explored by The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity, a new book by Santa Barbara residents Jerry and Julie Brown that blends travelogue, art history, and the anthropology of mind-altering substances to explore alternative understandings of early Christianity.
“We do not and did not set out to challenge any of the beautiful beliefs of Christianity,” said Jerry, who taught anthropology, including a very popular class about hallucinogens, at Florida International University from 1973 to 2013. “We have no smoking-gun evidence of this, but there is a plausible argument that, if you interpret these enigmatic statements in the Bible, one could draw the hypothesis that they are about a sacred plant.”
The couple’s path to this book began while celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in Scotland in 2006, when they were inspired by The Da Vinci Code to check out the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel. “There, in the most sacred part of the chapel, I found a psychedelic mushroom sculpted upside-down,” said Jerry. “This made my head spin.” He knew how much hallucinogens played into other religions, from the Hindu Vedas to ancient Greece to Mesoamerica, and wondered whether that could be true for Christianity.