My Wild Night At Weed Church

While young people are turning away from religion, it doesn’t mean they’ve stopped seeking a spiritual (and literal) high. Jen Doll spends a night with some of the women who worship at the altar of weed

- Jen Doll

It’s Friday night and I’m at church getting stoned. Around me, congregants of all ages are pulling colourful pipes and carefully rolled joints from their bags and pockets, lighting up and inhaling slowly, with purpose, before passing their paraphernalia down the pew. Dudes in baseball caps mingle with young women in sundresses; retirees rub shoulders with hipsters; a guy in a “Hemp Hustler” T-shirt shimmies down the aisle. When the slender, well-dressed woman sitting next to me hands me a joint, I take a drag. The mood is exuberant, like a party’s getting ready to start.

Entering the rainbow-streaked sanctuary of the International Church of Cannabis – which looms large amid the neat, unassuming rows of houses in this sleepy, residential neighbourhood in Denver, Colorado – feels like having some kind of religious fever dream, or like visiting the Sistine Chapel on acid. Colour literally drips down the walls. Before the church opened its doors in April 2017, Spanish painter Okuda San Miguel spent six days bringing to life a wildly psychedelic vision involving massive creatures with beaks, wings and sparkling eyeballs.

Tonight, puffs of smoke float up into the kaleidoscopic ceiling overhead as church co-founder Steve Berke, 38, a former all-American tennis player, ascends to the podium in Converse sneakers. Behind him are two blue plush-velvet chairs shaped like hands in a peace sign. At cannabis church, there are no hymns, no Bible; there’s not even a pastor. (This evening, we’ll hear from two cannabis activists who host a web series called Pot Talk on WorldViral TV.)

The house religion is “Elevationism”, described on the church’s website as the belief (or “life stance”) that weed can accelerate and deepen a person’s individual spiritual journey, whatever that happens to be.