Should Utah Religious Liberty Law Protect Creeds with ‘Shrooms’?

​As Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas reports, Utah’s year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act is facing its first serious test. A new, purportedly faith-based group, Singularism, uses psilocybin-infused tea to guide practitioners on altered-state voyages. The records of those journeys are then enshrined as canon, effectively serving as scripture for the group.

Taking a rather dim view of this approach to enlightenment, Provo officials launched a raid and seized the group’s mushrooms – and, for some reason, their scriptures. Singularism, they argue, is in it for the money, and distributing illegal drugs is, well, illegal, under the state’s Controlled Substances Act. The regulation of food and drugs is, for better and for worse, a recognized governmental authority. Later, and in a move that they have perhaps already come to regret, officials moved the case to the federal bench. District Court Judge Jill Parrish granted the defendants a temporary injunction, ordering the return of their scriptures. Judge Parrish declared:

“[I]t is ironic then that not long after enacting its RFRA to provide special protections for religious exercise, that the State of Utah should so vigorously deploy its resources, particularly the coercive power of its criminal-justice system, to harass and shut down a new religion it finds offensive practically without any evidence that the religion’s practices have imposed any harms on its own practitioners or anyone else.”

It is important to remember, however, that is a temporary injunction. It remains to be seen how the competing interests of law enforcement and religious freedom will play out in this case.

At the federal level, the case evokes the landmark Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993, which in the years since has become the bedrock of modern religious liberty. To date, 29 states have agreed with the federal government by creating their own equivalent statutes. Utah is the latest.

Faith is faith, argues Singularism founder Bridger Jensen. Judge Parrish seems to agree, ruling that the law must protect “unfamiliar religions equally with familiar ones, both in design and in practice.” Entheogens, or drugs that are used to induce transformational – quite readily spiritual – experiences are nothing new, and now more than ever psilocybin is gaining traction as a serious vehicle for healing, especially for victims of PTSD.

Bridger Jensen for his part appears to be no fly-by-night guru, con artist, or drug dealer. A product of Provo, Jensen formerly worked as a mental health therapist. He also took the decidedly non-dodgy approach of locating Singularism in an office park adjacent to Utah Valley Hospital, then invited public officials to tour the facility (none did).

“A drug-distribution enterprise that’s cloaked in religion,” is how Harvard professor Josh McDaniel summarizes Provo’s perspective on the case. But McDaniel and others point out that the power of the federal RFRA since its passage has been the protection of exactly these kinds of obscure religious practices, especially seemingly exotic ones that cut against the grain of traditional mores.

Knowing this, the framers of the Constitution made the free exercise of religious practice central to our identity as Americans by enshrining it as “first among equals” of the five liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. Nothing precedes it in the entire Bill of Rights.
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Are some drugs illegal for a reason? Yes. Is Singularism strange? You bet. Is it for everybody? Most certainly not. Does it have a right to exist and even flourish in a free society? We shall see.

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