Why the Church Fears the Mushroom

Religion's vendetta against critical thinking and freedom of spirituality

Mushrooms have a PR problem. Not the kind you toss in pasta, but the weird ones. The “magic” ones. The holy ones. Psilocybin. The little fungi that, if taken with the right mix of reverence and intention, can crack open your psyche like a walnut and drop you into what many describe as a spiritual encounter.

And that, apparently, is terrifying.

Especially if you're the kind of institution that’s spent a couple thousand years building a fortress around who gets to talk to “God”…and when…and how, and through which male intermediary.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the weird cultural tension between psychedelics and modern religion, especially Christianity. There’s this immediate defensiveness anytime psychedelics come up in a spiritual context. Eyes narrow. Voices drop. People mutter things like “sorcery” or “drug-induced delusion.” Or they just quote Leviticus and call it a day.

And yet, time and time again, people (religious or not) report that taking psilocybin feels like… well, a mystical experience. An actual one. The kind you read about in scripture or hear whispered about by desert monks and ecstatic saints. But without the incense, the guilt, or the dress code, the wine, or the guilt-induced donations.

So why is that so threatening?

Let’s talk about control.

Modern organized religion, especially in the West, is deeply entangled with it. Christianity didn’t just spread through faith and good vibes. It spread through empire. Through colonialism. Through an operating system that said: we know the truth, and everyone else is either wrong, deluded, or damned to live their lives in eternal Hell.

Psychedelics don’t play by those rules.

A mushroom doesn’t care if you’re baptized, confirmed, or even believe in “a God.” It doesn’t ask for a tithe. It doesn’t show up only on Sundays. It shows up when it’s ready. And when you are. And what it offers is not dogma or hierarchy, but experience. Direct, undeniable, often ineffable connection to something bigger than yourself.

Which is the exact thing religions claim to offer. But here’s the kicker: psychedelics don’t require a priest to get there. No bishop. No sanctioned sacrament. Just you, your nervous system, and a little fungal friend from the forest floor that has been guiding Civilizations for thousands of years.

That’s revolutionary. And revolutions are rarely welcomed by the status quo.

Now, to be fair, Christianity isn’t monolithic. There are mystical traditions within it: desert fathers and mothers, medieval mystics, contemplatives, poets. People who had their own psychedelic-esque experiences long before the first hippie ever said “far out, dude.” But most of them were either canonized or silenced, depending on how their visions aligned with the Church’s agenda.

But the broader institution? Historically? It hasn’t exactly encouraged people to go off into the woods, eat mushrooms, and have direct communion with the divine.

Because what happens when people start realizing they don’t need middlemen?

They start asking inconvenient questions. Like: why are women still shut out of leadership? Why does the Church own so much land? Why do centuries of theology seem to support colonialism and torture more than compassion?

People come back from psilocybin journeys with more than just kaleidoscopic memories. They come back asking how to live differently. More connected. Less dogmatic. More attuned to love, to nature, to each other. That’s not a vibe that’s super compatible with rigid institutions built on top-down authority.

To put it bluntly: psychedelics threaten the business model.

And so for centuries, mushrooms (and the cultures that held them sacred) were dismissed, demonized, or destroyed. In Mesoamerica, indigenous use of psilocybin was branded as “devil worship” by Catholic colonizers. The sacred was overwritten by the sanctioned.

The anti-drug movement of the 1970s and 1980s, especially under Nixon and later Reagan, was less about public health and more about cultural control—targeting the countercultural movements that threatened the status quo. Nixon’s own aide, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the war on drugs was a tool to disrupt anti-war leftists and Black communities, and psychedelics like LSD were central to the hippie movement's spiritual and political rebellion. By criminalizing these substances, the government wasn't just banning drugs—it was undermining a broader ethos of personal freedom, expanded consciousness, and alternative spirituality that defied traditional religious and capitalist norms. The crackdown wasn’t just on what people put in their bodies; it was on their right to explore their own minds.

But something’s shifting. Fast.

We’re in the middle of palpable change, and even the medical establishment is catching up. Psilocybin is being studied seriously for depression, anxiety, addiction, end-of-life fear. People are having experiences so profound they change careers, relationships, worldviews. And still, some in the religious world look on with suspicion. Like spiritual gatekeepers watching their monopoly erode.

The irony? These experiences aren’t leading people away from spirituality. They’re leading them toward it. Just not the kind that can be contained in a building or boxed into a creed or text book.

There’s a reckoning here. A quiet, fungal revolution unfolding underground, just like mycelium does. Connecting, nourishing, pushing up through cracks in the old stone structures.

I’m not saying psychedelics are the new church. Not at all. I’m not saying that they’re for everyone. They’re not a shortcut or a magic pill. But they do invite something many of us are starving for: real connection to something beyond our physical experience. Wonder. Mystery. The kind of humbling, expansive sense of being part of something sacred, energetic, alive and infinitely beyond our control.

To me, this sounds a lot like what religion was supposed to be about in the first place.

So yeah. Maybe the Church is right to be afraid of the mushroom. Not because it’s evil. But because it’s free.

And freedom, when it comes to spirituality, is the one thing empires have never been able to contain.