Cannabis and religion


Different religions have varying stances on the use of cannabis, historically and presently. In ancient history some religions used cannabis as an entheogen, particularly in the Indian subcontinent where the tradition continues on a more limited basis.
In the modern era Rastafari use cannabis as a sacred herb. Meanwhile, religions with prohibitions against intoxicants, such as Islam, Buddhism, Bahai, Latter-day Saints, and others have opposed the use of cannabis by members, or in some cases opposed the liberalization of cannabis laws. Other groups, such as some Protestant and Jewish factions, have supported the use of medicinal cannabis.

Bahá'í

In the Bahá'í Faith, use of alcohol and other drugs for intoxication, as opposed to medical prescription, is prohibited, see Bahá'í laws. But Bahá'í practice is such laws should be applied with "tact and wisdom". The use of tobacco is an individual decision, it is yet strongly frowned on but not explicitly forbidden. Bahá'í authorities have spoken against intoxicant drugs since the earliest stages of the religion, with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writing:

Buddhism

In Buddhism, the Fifth Precept is frequently interpreted to mean "refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to heedlessness", although in some direct translations, the Fifth Precept refers specifically to alcohol. Cannabis and some other psychoactive plants are specifically prescribed in the Mahākāla Tantra for medicinal purposes.

Christianity

Catholicism

Prior to assuming his position as leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis had spoken against recreational cannabis. He stated in 2013 in Buenos Aires: "A reduction in the spread and influence of drug addiction will not be achieved by a liberalization of drug use." The catechism of the Catholic Church states that "The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense."

Orthodoxy

The Georgian Orthodox Church has resisted legalization of cannabis in Georgia.

Protestantism

The Arkansas Baptist State Convention voted to discourage medical marijuana in 2016. In 2016, the executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention, Tommy Green, also said that congregations should be encouraged to vote against the Florida Amendment 2 which expanded legalization of medical marijuana in Florida. The National Evangelical Association of Belize opposed the 2017 decriminalization of cannabis in Belize.
The Assemblies of God USA, as well as other Pentecostal and holiness churches, have historically advocated abstinence from all alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics. Supporters of this view generally cite biblical passages enjoining respect for one's body as well as forbidding intoxication.
Other Protestant churches have endorsed the legality of medical marijuana, including the Presbyterian Church, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, and the Episcopal Church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is general prohibition against intoxicating substances. In August 1915, the LDS Church banned the use of cannabis by its members. In 2016, the church's First Presidency urged members to oppose legalization of recreational cannabis use. The LDS Church says it has "raised no objection to SB 89".

Hinduism

During the Hindu festival of Holi, people consume bhang which contains cannabis flowers. According to one description, when the amrita was produced from the churning of the ocean by the devas and the asuras as described in the Samudra manthan, Shiva created cannabis from his own body to purify the elixir. Another account suggests that the cannabis plant sprang up when a drop of the elixir dropped on the ground. Thus, cannabis is used by sages due to association with elixir and Shiva.
eaters from India c. 1790. Bhang is an edible preparation of cannabis native to the Indian subcontinent. It has been used in food and drink as early as 1000 BCE by Hindus in ancient India.
In Hinduism, wise drinking of bhang, according to religious rites, is believed to cleanse sins, unite one with Shiva and avoid the miseries of hell in the future life. It is also believed to have medicinal benefits. In contrast, foolish drinking of bhang without rites is considered a sin.
In Vaishnava sect of Hinduism, which even comprises modern organisations like ISKCON, consumption of marijuana and any form of intoxicant is strictly prohibited.

Islam

The Quran does not directly forbid cannabis. There is a controversy among Muslim scholars about cannabis as some deemed it to be similar to khamr and therefore believed it to be haraam. Other scholars, especially in Shia Islam consider cannabis to be halal.
Those scholars who consider cannabis forbidden refer to a hadith by the prophet Mohammed regarding alcoholic drinks, which states: "If much intoxicates, then even a little is haraam." However, early Muslim jurists differentiated cannabis from alcohol, and despite restrictions on alcohol, cannabis use was prevalent in the Islamic world until the 18th century. Today, cannabis is still consumed in many parts of the Islamic world, even sometimes in a religious context particularly within the Sufi mystic movement. In 1378 Soudoun Sheikouni, the Emir of the Joneima in Arabia, prohibited cannabis, considered one of the world's first-attested cannabis bans.
The Sufi tradition attributes the discovery of cannabis to Jafar Sharazi, a Sufi leader in the 12th century. Other Sufis attribute its origin to the apocryphal Khidr.
Some modern Islamic leaders state that medical cannabis, but not recreational, is permissible in Islam. Imam Mohammad Elahi in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, declared: "Obviously, smoking marijuana for fun is wrong... It should be permissible only if that is the only option in a medical condition prescribed by medical experts."

Judaism

Though the argument has not been accepted by mainstream scholars, some writers have theorized that cannabis may have been used ritually in early Judaism, though these claims "have been widely dismissed as erroneous". Sula Benet claimed that the plant kaneh bosm קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם mentioned five times in the Hebrew Bible, and used in the holy anointing oil of the Book of Exodus, was in fact cannabis, although lexicons of Hebrew and dictionaries of plants of the Bible such as by Michael Zohary, Hans Arne Jensen and James A. Duke and others identify the plant in question as either Acorus calamus or Cymbopogon citratus. In 2020 a study at Tel Arad, a 2700-year-old shrine then at the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Judah, found that burnt offerings on one altar contained multiple cannabinoid compounds, suggesting the ritual use of cannabis within ancient Judaism.
In the modern era, Orthodox rabbi Moshe Feinstein stated in 1973 that cannabis was not permitted under Jewish law, due to its harmful effects. However Orthodox rabbis Efraim Zalmanovich and Chaim Kanievsky stated that medical, but not recreational, cannabis is kosher.

Rastafari

It is not known when Rastafari first claimed cannabis to be sacred, but it is clear that by the late 1940s Rastafari was associated with cannabis smoking at the Pinnacle community of Leonard Howell. Rastafari see cannabis as a sacramental and deeply beneficial plant that is the Tree of Life mentioned in the Bible and quote, "... the herb is the healing of the nations." The use of cannabis, and particularly of long-stemmed water-pipes called chalices, is an integral part of what Rastafari call "reasoning sessions" where members join together to discuss life according to the Rasta perspective. They see the use of cannabis as bringing them closer to God, allowing the user to penetrate the truth of things more clearly.
While it is not necessary to use cannabis to be a Rastafari, many use it regularly as a part of their faith, and pipes of cannabis are dedicated to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I before being smoked. According to the Watchman Fellowship "The herb is the key to new understanding of the self, the universe, and God. It is the vehicle to cosmic consciousness" and is believed to burn the corruption out of the human heart. Rubbing the ashes into the skin from smoked cannabis is also considered a healthy practice.
Part of the Rastafari movement, elders of the 20th-century religious movement known as the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, consider cannabis to be the "eucharist", claiming it as an oral tradition from Ethiopia dating back to the time of Christ.

Scientology

opposes the use of cannabis, and made "Truth About Marijuana" the focus of their 2016 World Health Day presentation.

Sikhism

In Sikhism, the First Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak, stated that using any mind altering substance is a distraction to keeping the mind clean of the name of God. According to the Sikh Rehat Maryada, "A Sikh must not take hemp, opium, liquor, tobacco, in short any intoxicant. His only routine intake should be food and water".
However, there exists a tradition of Sikhs using edible cannabis, often in the form of the beverage bhang, particularly among the Sikh community known as Nihang.

Taoism

Beginning around the 4th century, Taoist texts mentioned using cannabis in censers. Needham cited the Taoist encyclopedia Wushang Biyao 無上秘要 that cannabis was added into ritual incense-burners, and suggested the ancient Taoists experimented systematically with "hallucinogenic smokes". The Yuanshi shangzhen zhongxian ji 元始上真眾仙記, which is attributed to Ge Hong, says:
Lady Wei Huacun 魏華存 and Xu Mi 許謐 founded the Taoist Shangqing School. The Shangqing scriptures were supposedly dictated to Yang Xi 楊羲 in nightly revelations from immortals, and Needham proposed Yang was "aided almost certainly by cannabis". The Mingyi bielu 名醫別錄, written by the Taoist pharmacologist Tao Hongjing, who also wrote the first commentaries to the Shangqing canon, says, "Hemp-seeds are very little used in medicine, but the magician-technicians say that if one consumes them with ginseng it will give one preternatural knowledge of events in the future." A 6th-century AD Taoist medical work, the Wuzangjing 五臟經 says, "If you wish to command demonic apparitions to present themselves you should constantly eat the inflorescences of the hemp plant."
Joseph Needham connected myths about Magu, "the Hemp Damsel", with early Daoist religious usages of cannabis, pointing out that Magu was goddess of Shandong's sacred Mount Tai, where cannabis "was supposed to be gathered on the seventh day of the seventh month, a day of seance banquets in the Taoist communities."

Other cannabis-using religious movements

Other religions have been founded in the past century that treat cannabis as a sacrament. They include the Santo Daime church, the THC Ministry, Cantheism, the Cannabis Assembly, the Church of Cognitive Therapy, Temple 420, Green Faith Ministries, the Church of Cognizance, the Church of the Universe, the Free Marijuana Church of Honolulu, the First Cannabis Church of Florida World Wide, the Free Life Ministry Church of Canthe, the Church of Higher Consciousness, and the federally tax-exempt inFormer Ministry Collective of Palms Springs, CA. The Temple of the True Inner Light believes that cannabis is one of the parts of God's body, along with the classical psychedelics: mescaline, psilocybin, LSD, and DMT. The First Church of Cannabis Inc. officially gained legal recognition in Indiana in 2015 following the passage of that state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Nonprofit religious organization Elevation Ministries opened its Denver headquarters, known as the International Church of Cannabis, on April 20, 2017.
Some modern spiritual figures like Ram Dass openly acknowledge that the use of cannabis has allowed them to gain a more spiritual perspective and use the herb frequently for both its medicinal and mind-altering properties.
In Mexico, followers of the growing cult of Santa Muerte regularly use marijuana smoke in purification ceremonies, with marijuana often taking the place of incense used in mainstream Catholic rituals.