Correcting the Record On the Deposition of an Episcopal Priest

This is a final, necessary post to correct the public record in the matter of Hunt Priest and the Episcopal Church’s disciplinary process.

On Friday, I posted the full Accord from the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia sent to me noting that Priest was deposed from ministry for offenses related to “Conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” and “Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy.” Earlier that week, I had asked the Diocese if I could include more details from their post-investigation report so that people could understand the context. I waited 48 hours for a response and, receiving none, released the Accord as-is. In response to this public disclosure, Hunt Priest posted a statement to the Ligare newsletter.

Before I share Priest’s statement, it is crucial to understand the history of how this disciplinary process began.

My concerns started over three years ago when, as a divinity school intern, I came to believe that Priest and his organization, Ligare, were putting people in harm’s way, being particularly disturbed by Priest’s private statements and conduct. I resigned my internship and attempted to follow the model of Matthew 18, speaking first with Priest, then with others on the Ligare board, then others in Ligare’s social sphere, during which Priest declined a non-disciplinary mediated conversation with Bishop of Georgia Frank Logue. Through these conversations, several others shared my concerns, and some board members left Ligare. After I became a whistleblower on the Hopkins/NYU study, Bishop Logue asked if I wanted to initiate a Title IV process, which I declined, wishing to give Priest still more chance to reform.

I continued to avoid a formal process with the Episcopal Church until Priest and Ligare sent a defamatory cease and desist (C&D) letter, copied to an officer at my Presbytery (I am an ordained Presbyterian minister) and an officer at Harvard Divinity School, in an effort to intimidate and censor. I publicly posted my response to the C&D and then initiated the Title IV proceedings. That process ended last week.

Now, here is Priest’s statement:

Priest’s statement contains a number of falsehoods that, like the original C&D letter, are proven false by the official documented record. The Diocese has confirmed that they will not further comment, as now Priest is no longer under their jurisdiction and the matter is closed from their perspective. Thus, I am compelled to correct part of the record he is distorting.

First, Priest claims he “was not removed from ordained ministry, but chose to remove myself.” The official Accord from the Diocese of Georgia states he agreed to a “sentence of Deposition,” which is a serious disciplinary sentence. While he may have “chosen” to agree to it (similar to a plea agreement) instead of choosing an ultimatum to leave his psychedelic non-profit work, it is a formal, disciplinary removal, not a voluntary resignation, which the Episcopal Church’s Canons distinguish. A “Deposition” (Canon IV.2) is explicitly disciplinary and is not the same as a voluntary, non-disciplinary “Release and Removal from the Ordained Ministry of this Church” (Canon III.9.9), which cannot be granted in the middle of Title IV proceedings. If Priest had left Ligare to stay as an ordained priest in response to the Diocese’s findings, there would have been an “Agreement for Discipline” (Canon IV.9), not an exoneration.¹

Second, Priest claims he was “cleared of the charges” which were “levied against me.” This is false. The Diocese formally referred the matter for investigation on two specific offenses, “Conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” and “Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy.” While the panel initially found “not sufficient information” to support the dishonesty and fraud charge related to the cease and desist (C&D), it was subsequently recategorized as a different charge.

As for why the C&D charge was recategorized, according to an email from the Diocese, “Rev. Priest said he did indeed receive the cease and desist before it was posted. However, he was surprised to hear from us that it says you were terminated. While he received the cease and desist from [his attorney] as expected by protocol, he did not read it carefully before it was posted on his behalf.”

In this version of events, months after my public rebuttal of the C&D, he was allegedly “surprised” to hear its contents, which included several other falsehoods that went unaddressed. Over a year later, after Priest had apparently privately admitted the letter’s falseness, neither he nor Ligare had ever publicly acknowledged nor privately contacted other parties to correct their defamatory statements. I had to ask the Diocese to reach out to officers at my Presbytery and Harvard Divinity School to clear my name, which they did.

Thus, even taken at face value, the charge of dishonesty was not “cleared,” but recategorized as Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy, because it meant that, in Priest’s version of events, he was approving defamatory legal threats without verifying if they were true. Whatever the case may be, the final Accord he signed explicitly states he was deposed for offenses including “Conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

Moving on from this, Priest falsely implies that the Reference Panel’s concerns amounted to semantics about “safe and ethical” that he used in podcasts, saying, “That’s it. Really.” While his use of “safe” with regard to psychedelics was noted as a concern (and the word “ethical” is not in their report), the review panel asserted additional findings that he did not disclose in his statement.

There were, in fact, multiple offenses related to Conduct Unbecoming of a Member of the Clergy in the official report. In addition to the issue of his unbecoming public communications and the re-classified C&D charge, the report stated, “Rev. Priest has not been serving in a sacramental capacity as part of his work with Ligare. This leads to (sic) Reference Panel to the conclusion that his priesthood is solely a way to lend credence to the work of Ligare.”

Further, during the investigation, Priest had been under a Restriction on Ministry, a suspension from acting as a priest or representing himself as one. In defiance of this order, the panel found he had violated the terms of this restriction by continuing to represent himself as a priest at a Harvard conference, both in the conference materials and while presenting.

At the conference, the panel noted, he also promoted the idea of psychedelics during the Easter season. As he said in the talk:

“Thinking about these things liturgically, what would it be like to think of Lent as a period of, oh I don't know, ‘preparation,’ and then maybe on Good Friday have a psilocybin experience, and then use the 50 days of Easter as a way to make meaning and integrate. And then Pentecost, which, all bets would be off on Pentecost. (crowd laughs) Just throwing that out there! Feel free to do with that as you wish. It's all there, it's all there.”

According to the report, “This highly concerns the Reference Panel, as it is further evidence that his work could easily be construed as the Episcopal Church encouraging the use of psylocibin (sic).”

Simply put, after agreeing to a Deposition that included charges of dishonesty, Priest has continued to be dishonest. Priest would like to frame the Diocese’s findings as a grand referendum on psychedelics and the Church, a noble cause for which he is being persecuted, a visionary ahead of his time. The reality is that this result was about repeated dishonesty and irresponsible advocacy that can cause people harm.

Rather than accept responsibility, Priest is following a playbook typical among Christian leaders found in misconduct, using impression management tactics designed to control the narrative. The tactics of these crisis narratives have been detailed by evangelical Christian abuse expert Wade Mullen's work, such as Discrediting the Truth-Tellers, Cutting Off Reflected Shame, Basking in Reflected Glory, When White Lies are Pink Flags, and the Coercive Cycle.

I spoke out on Priest and a number of parties now officially found by their institutions to have committed misconduct, continuing to pursue accountability at extensive personal cost, because I believed lives were at stake, and I am taking my ordination imperative seriously to protect the vulnerable. I know I have told the truth and done all I could.

1. These Agreements can also have required actions for a priest to complete, such as issuing a public apology or a possible temporary suspension, but I will not speculate on what those actions might have been in this case. Canon IV.9 indicates that before an Agreement for Discipline is reached, I would have been one of the parties consulted on the proposed terms of discipline.