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Culture

Jeff Breau – Exploring Psychedelic Churches at Harvard Divinity School

May 27, 2025
Featuring: Jeff Breau

In this episode of Psychedelics Today, we welcome Jeff Breau from Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions. Together, we explore how psychedelics and religion are coming together in new and important ways.

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In this episode of Psychedelics Today, we welcome Jeff Breau from Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions. Together, we explore how psychedelics and religion are coming together in new and important ways.

Jeff shares his firsthand insights from researching modern psychedelic churches. He explains why harm reduction is so important in these spaces and highlights how music can shape therapeutic experiences.

We also discuss why collaboration between different fields—like science, religion, and mental health—is key to understanding the bigger picture. Jeff offers thoughtful critiques of popular research tools like the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), and outlines the promise of psychedelic chaplaincy as a growing field.

Whether you’re curious about the future of spiritual care or how religious communities are engaging with psychedelics, this episode offers plenty to think about.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:18 Music in Psychedelic Therapy

02:13 Cultural Context of Music in Therapy

06:08 Personal Journey into Psychedelics and Religion

08:40 Living at an Ashram and Spiritual Practices

15:52 Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ)

33:01 Psychedelic Churches and Legal Challenges

46:11 The Intersection of Law and Religion

46:34 Emergence of Psychedelic Churches

48:41 The Democratization of Mystical Experiences

49:49 Technologies of Revelation

51:10 Novel Rituals and Spiritual Practices

53:49 Humor and Irreverence in Religion

56:44 Reevaluating the Term ‘Cult’

01:10:11 Psychedelic Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care

01:18:44 Burning Man as a Model for Religiosity

01:22:43 The Rise of Iboga in American Christianity

01:25:56 Conclusion and Future Directions

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/people/jeffrey-breau

Jeff Breau

Jeffrey is Program Lead for the Center’s Psychedelics and Spirituality program and a social science researcher focusing on contemporary psychedelic churches and psychedelic chaplaincy. Jeffrey is currently conducting a multiyear ethnography of novel psychedelic churches in the United States. The study explores these communities’ ritual practices, theologies, social structures, and approaches to safety. Jeffrey also researches psychedelic chaplaincy. In that capacity he is a member of the ketamine chaplaincy advisory group at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, where he formerly completed an internship providing ketamine integration chaplaincy. Jeffrey is also a Project Affiliated Researcher of PULSE (Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience) at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. He received his MDiv. from Harvard Divinity School in 2024.

Jeffrey co-founded the annual Psychedelic Intersections conference and organizes, among other programs, two workshop series at CSWR: Psychedelics and Ethics; and Psychedelics and Future of Religion. He has published on intention-setting rituals in new psychedelic communities and on the Hindu origins of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. He is now working on a monograph, tentatively titled Altering the Sacred, about emerging psychedelic traditions.

For information about Jeffrey’s research visit the Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities and Psychedelic and Ketamine Chaplaincy pages. For more about the Center’s Psychedelics and Spirituality initiative, visit the Psychedelics and Spirituality page or the Psychedelic Intersections conference page.

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