Opinion | The Christian Case for Marijuana

While a majority of Christians now favor permitting medical marijuana, they are far more resistant to legalizing it completely. But the faithful must consider that America’s drug war has been a catastrophic failure and has perpetuated social injustices against communities of color.

Justice is one of the main themes in both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian New Testament. This includes the famed teaching from the Jewish prophet Micah that “to do justice” is one of only three actions that God “requires” from God’s people and Jesus’s repeated teachings on justice (often translated in English as “righteousness”). The more than 2,000 verses about justice in the Bible have grounded Christians in every major political justice movement in modern American history — from abolition to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement — and provide solid ground for Christians seeking to rethink this matter as well.

The Christian rapper Jason Petty, known as Propaganda, has witnessed the injustices of this disparity firsthand as a black man. He told me that his cousin spent 25 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, and a close friend of his served a five-year jail sentence just for riding in a car with another person in possession of drugs. As he put it, “American Christians have to stop being the last ones to the table to have discussions like these. Given the proven racist intent of the war on drugs and the criminalization of marijuana, it’s time for Christians to think critically about this issue and not just default to abstinence.”

Indeed, people of color are far more likely to be searched or harassed, and black Americans are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses at a rate 10 times higher than white Americans despite the fact that white Americans use drugs far more frequently.

Even if arguments like these are persuasive to Christians, there is the matter of finding respected leaders to take them to the masses. Enter the California pastor and author Craig Gross, who has just started Christian Cannabis, a national effort to educate and engage the faithful on this issue. The organization’s flashy website, which includes a logo of a dove with a marijuana leaf in its mouth, includes a blog and a podcast. It also features a number of cannabis-infused vaporizer pens with names like Praise, Peace and Persevere, which will be for sale on the site in the future.

Mr. Gross is no stranger to sparking difficult conversations among believers. In 2002, after the explosion of the internet, he started a national organization called XXX Church with the mission of starting a conversation about the negative effects of pornography. Most Christian leaders felt uncomfortable discussing the topic so openly at the time, but Mr. Gross persisted and soon the issue went mainstream. More than 15 years later, XXX Church facilitates online Bible study groups and has created porn-blocking software. What Mr. Gross did with pornography he hopes to replicate with pot.

Mr. Gross, who is 42, admits to being personally invested in the issue. After years of struggling with a health condition that resulted in him being hospitalized and on the hook for expensive medical bills, he tried medical marijuana and found both relief from his symptoms and clarity about a new calling. He told me, “Through my experience, the Lord met me in ways more powerful than I’ve ever known. It convinced me that I am supposed to lead this new conversation.”