Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index

The Pseudonyms of God.

Brown, Robert McAfee. (1972).
Philadelphia: Westminster Press.


ISBN: 0-664-20930-0 hardcover

0-664-24948-5 paperback


Description: Hardcover, 234 pages.


Contents: Introduction, 22 essays divided into 3 parts, I. Adventures in Theological Self-Awareness, II. The Pseudonyms of God, III. Discovering God's Pseudonyms Today, epilogue.


Notes: This book is primarily about Brown's antiwar position on Vietnam. Brown's brief comments on LSD below are the only ones in this book and portray how many political activists mistakenly saw the drug culture as counter to their own political interests rather than as the personal, inwardly oriented arm to match the social, outwardly oriented arm. The general public, by in large, did see them as allied.


Excerpt(s): There is another side to student revolt that has received insufficient attention above, although it has gotten inordinate attention in the public press. This is the revolution in personal mores and ethical choices. The concern of the student not to conform to a middle-class image of what society expects him to be leads to the beards, the long hair, or the sandals-which, after all, are extraordinarily harmless ways of revolting. But in the search for self, and in revolt against the moral codes of the society they reject, some students go much farther. In the name of freedom, they experiment with drugs, particularly marijuana and LSD, and insist that their sexual activities are their own business and nobody else's.

There is a danger here. It is the danger, not to be scorned by those who express devotion to personhood, that people will be badly hurt. LSD can enslave and destroy as well as occasionally liberate. Promiscuous sex can do immense psychic harm, and the presumably casual liaison may have far-reaching and damaging effects beyond what can be anticipated at the time. There is, in other words, an unrecognized inconsistency in the attitude of many revolting students. They risk irreparable harm, not just to themselves but their friends, in areas of experimentation that are too dangerous to be treated lightly and cavalierly. Furthermore, the increasing preoccupation among a segment of the revolting students with drugs and sex can actually be an expression of a withdrawal from the problems and pressures of society by retreat into a private and presumably more easily managed world that turns out, in fact, to be very public and not so easily managed after all. (page 130)

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