I am an author, activist, anthropologist, and ethnomycologist. After receiving my doctorate from Cornell University, I served as Founding Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University in Miami from 1972–2014, where I've taught a course on "Psychedelics and Culture" since 1975. This course laid the interdisciplinary foundation for The Psychedelic Gospels, which proposes a controversial theory about the role of psychedelics in the history of Christianity. (See www.psychedelicgospels.com)

In 2006, after reading about Rosslyn Chapel in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I visited this unique “bible in stone," located just close to Edinburgh, Scotland, and made a surprising discovery. There sculpted on the forehead of Rosslyn’s most prominent green was a psychoactive mushroom—which had remained hidden in plain sight for half a millennium. This was the catalyst for Julie and my decision to undertake an anthropological journey, visiting churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and the Middle East, in search of iconic evidence of the presence of entheogens (God-generating-within plants) in Christian art.

While our findings are startling, it is not our intention to question people's faith in Christianity, but to uncover a mystery that we believe applies to many religions. We do not deny the importance of religious sacraments, but suggest that they should encompass all of God’s creations, including psychoactive plants which provide an ancient pathway to the divine. In the concluding chapter, “Psychedelic Renaissance,” we explore the "new science of psychedelics" and advocate the responsible exploration of entheogens for religious and spiritual purposes as a fundamental right under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.