The Healing Church INRI

A tiny Rhode Island Catholic apostolate that argues cannabis is the holy anointing oil of the Bible, and that using it is a sacramental duty.

The Healing Church INRI, formally known as The Healing Church in Rhode Island, is a small American religious group based in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, that identifies cannabis as a sacred herb central to Christian faith and practice. The group operates as a self-described Catholic apostolate, though it holds no affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church, and has attracted sustained national and local media attention through a series of public cannabis ceremonies, federal lawsuits, multiple arrests of its leaders, and the leaders’ subsequent bids for political office in Rhode Island. The “INRI” in the group’s name is a reference to the Latin inscription “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum” (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews), which, according to the Gospel of John, was affixed to the cross at the Crucifixion, and is a central symbol in Catholic iconography. The church also uses “INRI” as an abbreviation for its home state of Rhode Island.

The church was founded and is led by Anne Armstrong, who holds the title of Deaconess, and Alan Gordon, who serves as the church’s Canon. Armstrong and Gordon are a couple and have co-led the group since its founding around 2014 or 2015. The congregation is small, comprising approximately a dozen core members, and conducts weekly rituals, most notably at the site of the Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island, a federal park site that the group regards as symbolically significant because Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island colony, was a historic advocate for religious liberty in America.

The central theological claim of the Healing Church is that cannabis is the same substance referred to in Exodus 30:23 as “kaneh bosm,” a Hebrew term translated variously as “sweet calamus” or “fragrant cane,” and that this herb was the key ingredient in the holy anointing oil prescribed by God to Moses. Armstrong and Gordon have outlined this argument in a 37-page document they authored called A Bible Full of Cannabis, which is available on the church’s website and is peppered with images of what the authors argue are cannabis leaf depictions in historic religious art and stained glass windows. The document argues that figures including Jesus, the Apostle James, medieval mystic Saint Hildegard of Bingen, and Pope John XXI all used cannabis-infused anointing oil in faith healings, and that the church is restoring what it considers to be a suppressed biblical practice. Armstrong and Gordon also authored a companion document titled Catholic Cannabis, which elaborates the same argument from a specifically Catholic doctrinal perspective. The church further claims that the “Tree of Life” referenced across multiple religious traditions is the cannabis plant itself, and that the flowering tops of the cannabis plant are sacred and must never be commercialized.

The Healing Church conducts its outdoor ceremonies in a structured, ritualistic fashion. Members gather at the Roger Williams National Memorial on a weekly basis, typically at 4:20 p.m., and perform a seven-lap circuit around the park while carrying religious icons and a cannabis plant. Participants anoint themselves with cannabis-infused oils, smoke the herb as what they describe as a “burnt offering,” and sound shofars as part of the service. The church also holds that prayer amplifies the medicinal effects of cannabis by leveraging what it identifies as the role of the endocannabinoid receptor system in mediating the placebo effect, arguing that belief, cannabis, and prayer together constitute a uniquely powerful combination for physical and spiritual healing.

The group first attracted significant media coverage in May 2015, when church members attempted to hold a cannabis ceremony at the Roger Williams National Memorial fountain in Providence. The church had applied to federal authorities for permission to conduct the ceremony on the federal property, but a federal judge denied its request for a restraining order against park police, ruling that while a prayer service could be held on federal land, the introduction of cannabis onto the property was prohibited under federal law. Gordon publicly accused the U.S. Attorney’s office of employing what he called “dirty tricks,” including raising last-minute concerns that the smell of burning cannabis near a scheduled WaterFire event could attract children to the area, a concern the church argued had never been raised during months of the application process. The ceremony proceeded with the cannabis portion relocated approximately thirty feet off federal property, onto a public sidewalk surrounding the memorial. About ten uniformed park police officers observed the ceremony from the parking area, at times videotaping participants. One member reported that bhang, a liquid cannabis preparation, was consumed during the portion of the service held on federal property in order to technically comply with the no-smoking rule. The group received $100 citations for illegal drug use, which Armstrong and Gordon subsequently challenged in court as a form of religious discrimination. That case was dismissed in December 2015.

In July 2016, Rhode Island State Police arrested both Armstrong and Gordon at their home on Pond Road in West Greenwich, charging them with felony possession of cannabis and intent to manufacture and deliver. Officers seized 12 pounds of useable cannabis, 59 marijuana plants, 10 pounds of hash oil, and packaging materials. The arrest occurred just days after the pair had filed a federal lawsuit contending that Rhode Island’s enforcement of state anti-cannabis laws against religious users violated the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Armstrong was arrested while being pulled over on her way to watch her young son perform in a violin recital. Armstrong and Gordon were held for approximately two weeks before being released on bail, with conditions that allowed police to conduct searches of their property. Armstrong told reporters outside the courthouse that she was “required, as a clergy member and deaconess of the Healing Church, to grow cannabis to make sacramental holy anointing oil and to make wafers for distribution,” and framed the charges as retaliation for their civil lawsuits. Both chose to represent themselves in the legal proceedings that followed. The 2016 charges were subsequently dismissed.

In April 2016, prior to their July arrest, Armstrong and Gordon traveled to Washington, D.C., where they participated in a White House protest at which hundreds of attendees openly consumed cannabis, invoking First Amendment protections for what the church framed as sacramental use.

Armstrong and Gordon also became politically active through the Compassion Party, a Rhode Island political party organized around cannabis legalization and related causes. In the 2018 Rhode Island state elections, Armstrong ran as the Compassion Party’s candidate for governor, while Gordon ran as its candidate for attorney general. On October 4, 2018, just weeks before the election, Rhode Island State Police arrested both again on cannabis possession charges. Armstrong publicly stated on social media that the charges appeared politically motivated, writing that their “poll numbers were high enough to scare them.” The pair argued that the arrest was engineered by then-candidate for attorney general Peter Neronha, with whom Gordon was directly competing, and that the prosecution stemmed from personal and political animus rather than legitimate law enforcement concerns. That case was similarly dismissed, with the court finding a lack of probable cause.

A subsequent raid followed approximately ten days after the 2018 case dismissal, forming the basis of a new prosecution that became the subject of lengthy proceedings in Kent County Superior Court before being transferred to Newport Superior Court. Armstrong and Gordon were charged with felony manufacturing with intent to distribute between one and five kilograms of cannabis. During a notably contentious August 2022 hearing before Judge Maureen Keough, Armstrong told the court, “If I go to jail, then I’ll just minister in jail. I’m not afraid of that.” The court granted an unusual pre-trial motion by the defendants: that the word “marijuana” would not be used during court proceedings, on the grounds that the term has racist and anti-Mexican origins, having been popularized in American discourse largely by Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the 1930s, as part of a broader campaign of racialized anti-drug propaganda. The judge granted the motion but almost immediately let the word slip while discussing the current state statute, prompting her to immediately apologize to the defendants. Attorney General Neronha recused himself from the prosecution for reasons that were not formally disclosed, though Gordon stated in open court that the recusal stemmed from long-running animosity between himself and Neronha dating to their competing 2018 candidacies.

Armstrong and Gordon attempted to run again in the 2022 election cycle but were disqualified after failing to gather the required number of signatures for ballot access, a burden they attributed to their ongoing need to prepare for trial.

The Healing Church’s argument regarding religious cannabis exemptions is legally grounded in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the government from substantially burdening the exercise of religion unless it can demonstrate both a compelling state interest and that the least restrictive means of advancing that interest has been employed. The church has pointed to the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, which upheld the right of a Brazilian-origin religious group to use the psychedelic brew ayahuasca in its ceremonies in the United States, as evidence that religious exemptions to federal drug law are constitutionally viable. Critics and courts have nonetheless drawn distinctions between that case and the Healing Church’s situation, noting the substantially longer documented history of ayahuasca use in the União do Vegetal’s tradition compared to the Healing Church’s more recent origins.

Beyond its domestic legal battles, the Healing Church attracted brief international attention in 2016 when Armstrong and Gordon publicly challenged Brazilian and other Latin American health authorities to test cannabis oil against the Zika virus, arguing that cannabis possesses well-documented general anti-viral properties that could inhibit the virus’s spread and reduce the severity of birth defects caused by fetal infection. Armstrong, describing herself as pro-life, argued that the suppression of cannabis as a medical option was ethically indefensible when a virus threatening prenatal development was spreading unchecked, and that the anti-viral properties of cannabis had been acknowledged in research on HIV, hepatitis-C, and other viruses for decades but had been suppressed by government and industry interests protecting pharmaceutical patents.

The group has also drawn attention for its claims regarding the Virgen de Guadalupe, the sixteenth-century Marian apparition image venerated across the Catholic world. Armstrong has argued that the garment depicted in the image contains a cannabis floral print, and has carried a life-sized reproduction of the image at public events including anti-abortion marches, contending that the image validates the compatibility of cannabis use with Catholic doctrine and pro-life values. Gordon, who describes himself as a Jewish Freemason, has argued from within his own tradition that the time has come for Freemasonry to acknowledge the role of cannabis in ancient religious and esoteric practices.

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