Native American Church Prayer Tradition

This entry records that the Native American Church, a pan-tribal religious movement formally organized in the early twentieth century though drawing on considerably older practice, centers its prayer and ceremony on the sacramental use of peyote, a psychoactive cactus considered sacred within the tradition, within all-night ceremonies led by a Road Man that combine prayer, song, drumming and specific ritual structure, without describing that liturgical content here.

The Native American Church combines elements drawn from various tribal traditions with, in many congregations, explicitly Christian elements, reflecting its historical development as a distinctly pan-tribal and syncretic response to the pressures Native communities faced in the reservation era, and its ceremonies and their associated prayers vary somewhat across different chapters and regional traditions of the church while sharing the core sacramental use of peyote as their defining common feature. Because peyote ceremony is understood within the tradition as requiring proper ceremonial leadership and context, and because the Native American Church, like other traditions in this atlas, has not published its specific liturgical content for general outside use, this entry limits itself to noting the tradition's existence, its general structure and its specific legal history rather than describing its ceremonies in operational detail.

The Native American Church has a specific and unusual legal history in the United States, since its sacramental use of peyote, otherwise a federally controlled substance, has required specific legal protection to continue, most significantly following the Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which found no automatic constitutional exemption for religious drug use, prompting Congress to pass amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1994 specifically protecting Native American Church peyote use as a recognized religious sacrament for enrolled members of federally recognized tribes. This legal history situates the Native American Church's prayer and ceremonial practice within an ongoing and specific legal framework unlike that surrounding any other tradition catalogued in this atlas, and it reflects the considerable legal and political effort Native American Church members and legal advocates have invested in securing recognition for their sacrament and its associated ceremony as legitimate religious practice rather than as illicit drug use.

The church continues as an actively practiced faith among members of many different tribal nations across the United States and Canada today, and its own governing bodies and chapters maintain authority over how its ceremonies and their associated prayer are conducted, taught and represented, consistent with the descriptive rather than instructive approach this entry takes.