Glossary

Peyote Church

An informal term for indigenous and syncretic religious traditions that use peyote as a sacred sacrament — the longest-established model of legally protected religious plant-sacrament use in the United States.

"Peyote church" is an informal umbrella term for Indigenous and syncretic religious traditions in the Americas that use peyote, a small cactus containing the alkaloid mescaline, as a sacred sacrament in ceremony. The most prominent and legally recognized of these is the Native American Church, whose intertribal peyote ceremonies draw on Indigenous practices that took organized form in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These traditions represent some of the earliest and most durable examples of legally protected religious sacrament use in North America. ECC is a distinct organization with its own ceremonial lineage and sacrament — ayahuasca, within the Shipibo curanderismo tradition — and has no affiliation with peyote churches or the Native American Church.