Пастор Роб Зинн опубликовал провокационную книгу о связи психоделиков и христианства

ROCHESTER — Pastor Rob Zahn, lead pastor of Zumbro Lutheran Church in Rochester, has written a provocative new book, “LSD to Galilee: Incarnation in Psychedelic Subculture,” that recalls the biblical phrase, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears to hear.” For if we had such spiritual perception, he argues, we would be less inclined to relegate the “sacred” and the “profane” into neat little boxes. We would be awakened to the possibilities that the transcendent and the divine can inhabit the least likely places — even the drug culture. Why is it that many mainline churches have suffered decades of membership decline? If God exists, why do so many people feel so spiritually at sea, so bereft, so disconnected from a higher power? ADVERTISEMENT In 1966, Time magazine’s front cover asked, “Is God Dead?” In the midst of that sharp religious decline arose the Jesus Movement and contemporary Christian music, a spiritual wildfire sparked by psychedelics. This marriage between 1960s psychedelic subculture and the roots of modern Christianity wasn’t some one-off. Faith and psychedelics had crossed paths before, and were grounded in the very soil of Western Civilization, Zahn writes. From ancient church walls painted with mushroom-bearing saints to the “provocative possibility that the earliest Christian sacrament carried more than just bread and wine,” the signs have been there for those who see. “LSD to Galilee” is also a personal story. The book would not have been written without his father, a man Zahn barely knew, who was an international drug smuggler along what was called the historic Hippie Trail. The following interview has been edited for space. Why did you decide to become a pastor? That’s a great story. I did not grow up in the church. I went to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, for a music degree. I took some religion classes and really got interested in religion, probably more from the academic, theological side. Then I went to get a degree in Children, Youth and Family at Wartburg Seminary, but I had no intention ever of becoming a pastor. I wasn’t trained to do anything other than work in the church. So I decided to be a youth director, youth minister, and that’s what sent us to Las Vegas for nearly 10 years. And so, in 2009, I really felt compelled, called some would say, to become a pastor. So I went back to school, got my master of divinity and became a pastor? In your book, you describe LSD and other psychedelics as a sacrament, a kind of pathway to transcendence in the right context. In the book, you say, “psychedelics, from the very birth into our consciousness, were never just drugs; they were sacraments, they were portals.” Why do you think so? I would say that in that quote I’m more reporting and saying in a provocative way to get us to think what is sacramental and where might we as a people actually encounter the divine. From a Christian perspective, sacraments are very specific, but historically, it’s a little more broad. When I’m talking about these being sacraments, I’m really using it almost in a non-Christian way, and a much more human way. Historically, through some of the evidence I presented, humans have created rituals, experienced rituals, experienced the divine in multiple ways and one of the ways seems to be through the use of the plants, these compounds, these medicines. I do believe that humans have experienced these psychedelics sacramentally historically. That’s what I believe is true. Whether it’s a Christian sacrament or something is something everyone’s going to have to discern for themselves. ADVERTISEMENT In your book, you use as a framing device the 1966 Time magazine cover that asks, “Is God Dead?” Do you feel like we are in a similar place today, spiritually speaking? I do. And I think that’s reflected in participation in faith communities. I do think people are just as interested and willing to lean into the sacred or the divine as they ever have been. I think, much like the 1960s, that whatever the institutions of the church are now are not meeting the desire or need for many. You emphasize in your book that you are not promoting psychedelics, but you explore how this chemical compound, “released into the blood of a culture, stirred questions about God and consciousness.” Sounds like good stuff. Why shouldn't I go out and try some? I’m not advocating for nor condemning. I will say this: There was a larger publisher who was interested in this book and they wanted me to basically denounce psychedelics. And I said, I actually don’t feel qualified for that. I’m not making a claim about psychedelics other than reporting a theological possibility, that somehow in this culture where psychedelics happen to be present, it seemed like there was something moving when it came to God and the divine that did affect the church. You talk about Timothy Leary, a 1960s counterculture figure who called LSD a “legitimate path to authentic religious experience.” Are you a Timothy Leary figure? No. I am not. That’s a great question, but no. What I am saying is that whether you are a church person or not a church person, a person of faith or not a person of faith, to be aware that the divine could very well be incarnate anywhere. If all of creation comes from God, meaning there is one Creator that created everything, maybe we should keep our eyes open to the possibility that the fingerprints of God are anywhere in that creation — even in those weird places that are prohibitive in society. Given your critique that the church can be rigid and inflexible and doesn’t always answer the needs of people who are hungering for greater spiritually in their lives, why did you become a pastor? ADVERTISEMENT I ask myself that question — I mean that jokingly but also a bit revealingly — I feel called to it. I feel called to the work. I also do feel called to challenge the church in certain ways. And this maybe is one of them. To be part of the church that reminds us that we don’t always have it figured out. We don’t have all the answers. Part of my contribution is to ask those kinds of questions. The role of music in that 1960s subculture is also part of your story, and how it came to shape contemporary Christian music. There was a time when music in the church was hymnody only. And part of the story is how music of that psychedelic subculture era found its way into the church. I’m musically trained. I do love hymnody. I am more spiritually drawn to rock ‘n’ roll. And if somebody didn’t have their eyes up and experiment, then we wouldn’t have that as an option today. It’s part of the story, but it’s also a safe way of saying the same thing. This isn’t about psychedelics. It is about keeping our eyes open, and rock ‘n’ roll is one of those things.