Tuesday Brunch: Jacked Jesus

The return of Muscular Christianity and other stories from around the web

• This is our weekly round-up of interesting stories on psychedelics and spirituality from around the net. The intro is free then the rest is for paid subscribers.

• Next Sunday we have our monthly online peer support group for post-psychedelic difficulties at 6pm UK time. Message me if you’d like to come.

• Come to our online seminar on managing risk in psychedelics and extreme sports, December 3, featuring Jamie Wheal, Dr Lindsay Bira and Rob Coffey. Paid subscribers get a free ticket - DM me or find the discount code after the paywall.

• Check out this bizarre trailer for a new film called The Carpenter, about an MMA fighter in Galilee who gets trained by…Jesus!

• It made me think about the rise of a new ‘Muscular Christianity’, aimed particularly at young men through sports like MMA, boxing and wrestling

• In the UK, there’s now a ‘wrestling church’ offering ‘smackdowns and baptisms’.

• Meanwhile, the internet is being flooded with AI memes of Ripped Jesus:

• Previously, American Christianity skewed female - in 2016, 64% of U.S. women said they prayed daily, versus 47% of U.S. men, according to Pew Research.

• But in Gen Z it’s different - young women are more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than young men. And the young Christian men appear to be drawn to a hyper-masculine, superhero-esque, muscle-bulging, MAGA-voting, goes-on-Joe-Rogan, only-eats-meat, Man’s-Man Jesus. Take that Divine Feminine!

• What’s Jordan Peterson’s new book called? Well…of course!

• It reminds me of previous moments of Muscular Christianity - the 1860s in Britain (a moment of peak imperialism) or the Teddy Roosevelt era of the 1900s in the United States (a moment of peak US imperialism). It’s interesting that this moment of Muscular Christianity should arise in a moment of American isolationism / pacificism (unless Ripped Jesus is up for a trade war with China).

• Perhaps the emergence of Jacked Jesus points to the reaction of young men to a culture that has sometimes pathologized masculinity but not given them much in the way of meaning in return. Now they’re falling for Musk-on-Mars, Big Daddy Trump and Jacked Jesus.

After the paywall, a new journal paper on the value of community-led psychedelic integration, a call to arms to research psychedelic adverse experiences, and a paper looks at data suggesting psychedelics could increase the risk of schizophrenia. Plus, a case study of a facilitator  (allegedly) removing an entity from one client only to put it into another!