About

Jonathan Hansen, MDiv

At fifteen, I met God through the most unorthodox of means — an encounter I have spent thirty years reckoning with, and which I tell honestly, the hard parts included, in Born Again on LSD. That night set me on a path that led, by a long and winding road, into the heart of the Church.

I was raised a conservative Baptist in the Midwest, and came to a living faith of my own through the crisis and grace of that experience. The years that followed took me deep into the Scriptures and eventually into formal theological study: a Bachelor of Divinity through the University of Wales at Spurgeon’s College, London, and a Master of Divinity at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Along the way I served in chaplaincy at Imperial College London and the Royal Colleges of Art and Music, taught Bible in Chicago, and was ordained a priest, serving a parish in Des Moines, Iowa.

The Psychedelic Christian is the fruit of both halves of that story. I believe — with the ancient Church, and now with a growing body of modern research — that God can and does meet people in profound, direct experience; and I believe such encounters call for what the tradition has always brought to them: discernment, preparation, community, and care. My calling, as I have come to understand it, is to be a psychedelic missioner to the Church — helping Christians think theologically, pray honestly, and act lawfully and wisely at this strange and holy crossroads.

Here you can read my writings, hear my story in my own voice, study the scholarship, and pray the prayers. And if something in your own story resonates — you are not the only one. Write to me.