The date and time: October 29, 7 p.m.

The place: Pyramid Ale House, Walnut Creek

The subject: Is There a God Pill?

The speaker: The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California

Our Bishop in a Bar? What is the world coming to? Theologically and historically speaking it makes perfect sense: Go where the people are, and in this case, where the 18 to 35 year olds are. In the Faith On Tap series, this evening’s talk with Bishop Marc was the second in a series titled “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.” The goal of this series is to attract the 18 to 35 year old group that is generally missing in most congregations.

When Bishop Marc arrived, by his appearance, one would never have known he was a bishop let alone a member of the clergy. No miter, no crosier, no collar, and absolutely no hint of the color purple – he appeared to be like any other person stopping by a local restaurant to meet with friends and I believe he made quite a few new friends in the Diablo Room of the Pyramid Ale House that night

In attendance were about 35 young adults. I only counted about 6 who were members from St. Paul’s while the others where either friends of those 6 or friends of friends. In any case, the word about this series is getting out to the community

Bishop Marc began with a question to the group – “Why is Christianity legal and psychotropic drugs illegal?” It was interesting to watch the groups as they discussed this question. As I observed the various conversations, there was no dominant speaker and everyone seemed to be thoroughly engaged in the discussion.

Bishop Marc made it perfectly clear at the beginning of his talk that he was limiting it to psychotropic drugs such as LSD. He talked about the three levels of mysticism: nature, finding the barriers between self and nature absolved, at one with all there is; a sense of deeper meaning – “I have a purpose”; and a vision of unity with God, a union between the subject and the divine being dissolved boundaries. He talked about the Vedas, the oldest religious documents from India and the reference to Soma. It was believed that consumption of Soma bestowed divine qualities on human beings via hallucinogenic experience. Bishop Marc compared this to the hallucinogenic experimentation with LSD and other similar drugs in the 1960s with Aldus Huxley, Timothy O’Leary, Huston Smith and the work done at Harvard and MIT. Did altered consciousness as a result of the hallucinogenic experimentation open the door to a religious experience?  Bishop Marc posed the questions: What are the religious implications of this type of experience and what does that have to do with our faith?

Bishop Marc stated further that a religious experience is different from a religious life; that a religious life involves moral commitments. Another discussion question was, “Is a religious experience necessary for a religious person?” As this question was raised, Bishop Marc talked about Mother Theresa whose recent published writings revealed that she had a crisis of faith for most of her life yet she was able through her many good works to influence millions. During the discussion, Bishop Marc talked about a trip that he took with his wife Sheila and another couple to the Holy Land. They visited a convent of contemplative nuns. Sheila Andrus described a personal religious experience to one of these nuns and Sheila wondered what this experience meant? The nun said to her that it was not what the experience meant at the moment but what effect does it have on your life

If the church has no way of dealing with the “experience” then it will be forgotten. No one can judge another person’s religious experience. The experience is only valid for the person it happened to and at this time, there is no structure to carry this forward in the church. And that may be one of the reasons why the church has not done a good job of helping young adults

The discussion moved to imagination. What keeps us from opening the doors of perception and how do we open young lives to other possibilities? Why is our culture so imaginatively impoverished? Why don’t we have the lives of the imagination our English teachers hoped we would have? Why is imagination okay for children but not for adults?

The evening began at 7 p.m. and continued past 9 p.m. How engaging this evening’s program was could be easily measured by the fact that the reporter and photographer from the Contra Costa Times stayed for the entire evening. It was a wonderful evening with our bishop as a teacher and getting to know him a little better as a person and I know he left his “Marc” on a few lives including mine that night.