A landmark experiment in the history of the psychology of religion was the 1962 “Marsh Chapel Experiment,” also known as the “Good Friday Experiment,” and popularized in the press at the time as “The Miracle in Marsh Chapel.”
Twenty Christian seminarians participated in a double-blind study of psilocybin, designed by Walter N. Pahnke, a psychiatrist and ordained minister completing his doctoral work in the History and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard. While Howard Thurman preached on the Last Words of Christ in Marsh Chapel at Boston University, the clinical study took place in a basement sanctuary, directly below the pulpit, while the audio feed of the Good Friday worship service was broadcast into the space.
Pahnke wrote that the experiment investigated “in a systematic and scientific way the similarities and differences between experiences described by mystics and those facilitated by psychedelic drugs.” The results of the study, intentionally conducted in “a religious context”...
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Kime, K.G. (2018). The Good Friday Experiment (Aka Marsh Chapel Experiment). In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200209-1
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