Exercising one’s first amendment right to freedom of religion can be a tricky thing, especially when your form of worship consists of lighting up a joint in the name of God. Just ask Norman Hutchinson of Mexico, Maine. Hutchinson is a member of the Religion of Jesus Church, a Hawaiian-based faith that not only encourages “cannabis sacraments,” but mandates it.
Since joining the church, Hutchinson has served a 60-day stint in jail, and then another 120 days for violating his probation after being caught “worshiping.” He has filed a lawsuit against the State of Maine, the local police department, and the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency to prevent future arrests.
“I use marijuana to open the endorphins of the mind so I can spiritually receive God,” Hutchinson told the Portland Press Herald. He meets with fellow worshipers every Saturday for their “last supper.”
The Religion of Jesus Church, hokey as is sounds, is a bona fide religion and has been recognized as such by the State of Hawaii. The church was founded in 1969 by Rev. James Kimmel and incorporates elements of a number of religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Their main religious text is The Urantia Book, which they use along with the Bible and various other texts.
The church’s website lists 12 reasons why cannabis sacraments are vital to their worship. It amplifies the worship of God, helps cultivate personal experience with religion, increases spiritual elevation, brings man to God, increases the ability to feel the presence of God, helps conquer addiction to tobacco and alcohol. It also creates peace, helps evolve the soul, serves God as a means of healing, enhances spiritual receptivity, is an exercise in acquiring God-like attributes by sharing, and it is a good thought-stimulating neurohormone.
Valid enough reasons, don’t you think? The problem the church faces is convincing authorities of the validity of using cannabis for worship. Authorities have dismissed past arguments as a bit weedy.
Regarding Hutchinson’s lawsuit, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills said, “You can have a religion that says, 'I believe in getting drunk every morning at 10 a.m. and driving down the turnpike.’ But you know what? I think Maine law would prevent it."
While unlikely that state and federal law will allow Hutchinson and his fellow Religion of Jesus Church members to freely practice their worship, they are sure to continue to practice in private, out of the eyes of the law. After all, isn’t that how the original Christians were forced to worship?
Article comments
1 - Jillian
Smoking marijuana doesn't put anyone at risk, "getting drunk and driving down the turnpike" does. If there are no victims and no potential victims then where is the crime?
Blindly enforcing laws just because they're there isn't good enough.
We deserve a higher standard from our people in power, we deserve to expect them to use their intelligence, to question the laws that they enforce, and to speak out loudly when they find they're enforcing laws that serve no benefit to society at all.
We don't pay for automatons to simply go through the motions like their predecessors did before them. We pay for people to think, question, and speak up!
2 - Brunelleschi
Awesome topic.
I guess it's OK for kooks in the south to worship with rattlesnakes, but not OK for potheads to smoke their way to god with a plant that god created for us to smoke.
3 - Bud Indica
Commenter Jillian has it absolutely right, of course. "If there are no victims and no potential victims then where is the crime?" Like all tyrannical Prohibitionists (Puritan or Taliban), that Maine Attorney General fails to differentiate between the proper province of criminal law -- transgression of one person upon another -- and the enforcement of religious taboos regarding personal choices (what one can smoke, read, think, or beat off to) that have nothing to do with interpersonal transgression, unless you contruct convoluted and self-justifying socialist arguments like "we have the right to control whether you can drink booze because the Public pays for your liver transplant" or "Because pot is illegal, those who buy pot support organized crime."
Damn Puritanism and all the other forms of tyrannical Socialism, and especially damn Prohibitionism!