STANDARDS | LIBRARY
Member Standards
The Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct adopted by SPA's membership. Twelve principles covering right relationship to power, protection of vulnerability, competence and scope of practice, informed consent before altered states, touch and consent boundaries, dual relationships, dependency on spiritual authority, financial accessibility, non-exploitation, non-retaliation, accurate representation of legal status, and integration as a community responsibility.
Introduction
The Sacred Plant Alliance (SPA) is a self-regulating professional association of religious communities engaging in ceremonial practices with sacred substances, which are central to the exercise of our religious beliefs.
Religious community leadership is inseparable from ethical responsibility. Leaders of SPA member organizations may facilitate ceremonies that invite participants into non-ordinary states of consciousness, during which participants may be especially vulnerable. Therefore, when a participant chooses to engage in ceremonial work with the guidance and accompaniment of a SPA Member organization, all parties take on a special level of responsibility for one another.
In light of this responsibility, we establish and uphold these Member Standards as an expression of our collective ethical commitments in principle and in practice.
The Member Standards are expressed through two complementary components:
The SPA Code of Ethics (p.2-4) articulates core ethical principles that orient us toward shared values, responsibilities, and relational care.
The SPA Standards of Conduct (p.5-9) outline specific behaviors and expectations through which we enact those ethical commitments in practice.
SPA Members further commit to peer review and accountability should any question arise regarding how these commitments are understood or enacted. No document can anticipate every situation that may arise and this is intended to be a living document, subject to refinement over time in the spirit of growth. Our ethical review and accountability processes may consider conduct that is inconsistent with the spirit and values of SPA, even when such conduct is not explicitly enumerated here.
Code of Ethics
Introduction
The SPA Code of Ethics describes the values and principles that SPA Members share. We commit to reflect these commitments in our behavior, in ways that are appropriate for our individual communities. Together, these principles are the basis of our shared ethical framework.
Ethical Principles
1. Intention.
SPA Member organizations and their Leadership should practice and serve in ways that cultivate compassion, wisdom, and integrity. SPA Members should behave organizationally in a way that respects and protects the sacredness of their ceremonies and sacraments.
2. Serving Society.
Religious and spiritual practices should be designed and conducted in ways that respect the common good, with due regard for public safety, health, and order.
3. Serving Community.
SPA Members dedicate themselves to the spiritual support of their congregation. SPA Members should strive for making their offerings financially accessible for all who wish to attend, and offering transparency in church financials. Yet, SPA Members should steward their resources responsibly and with the sustainability of the community in mind.
4. Serving Individuals.
Member communities and Leaders should respect and seek to preserve the autonomy and dignity of each person.
5. Right Relationship to Power.
SPA Leaders remain attentive to the many forms of power inherent in spiritual leadership, including positional authority, relational influence, visibility, and symbolic or spiritual meaning-making. They take care to assure that unequal power dynamics do not detract from the well-being of participants, and strive to remain aware of how their own beliefs, values, needs, and limitations shape their use of authority. Leaders commit to exercising power with restraint, care, and accountability, and to avoiding undue influence in all contexts.
6. Protection of Vulnerability.
During religious and spiritual practices, participants may be especially open to suggestion, manipulation, and exploitation; therefore, Leaders should protect participants and not allow anyone to use that vulnerability in ways that harm participants or others.
7. Integrity and Humility.
Leaders approach their role with humility, recognizing the limits of their insight, authority, and understanding. They commit to ethical self-reflection, to remaining open to feedback and correction, and to resisting spiritual inflation, certainty, or exceptionalism that could compromise the well-being of others or the integrity of the practice.
8. Competence.
Leaders should assist with only those practices for which they are qualified by personal experience and by training or education. They should be aware of their own capacity to support and work within that capacity.
9. Accountability.
In cases where participants have experienced harm, Leaders should strive to be available for repair. They should take such instances as an opportunity to grow and change personally and organizationally. Leaders commit to ongoing self-reflection and growth regarding their relationship to power and responsibility.
10. Peer Review.
Each Leader should seek the counsel of other leaders to help ensure the wholesomeness of their practices and should offer counsel when there is need.
11. Justice and Human Dignity.
SPA Members and Leaders affirm the inherent dignity, worth, and belonging of all people. They honor the diversity of human identity, experience, and belief, and commit to engaging difference with respect, care, and fairness in religious and organizational life. SPA Member Leaders strive to remain open hearted to individuals who are different from themselves, including in conflict. Member communities and Leaders should practice openness and respect towards people whose beliefs are in apparent contradiction to their own.
12. Not Exploitive.
Religious and spiritual practices are to be conducted in the spirit of service, and not for personal financial gain.
Standards of Conduct
Introduction
The Standards of Conduct translates the Code of Ethics into clear expectations for participation, leadership, and organizational practice. They are intended to support consistency, clarity, and accountability in how we behave in community and within SPA. These Standards of Conduct are not exhaustive; ethical questions or concerns may also be evaluated through the broader interpretive framework of the SPA Code of Ethics, if conduct is inconsistent with its spirit and values even when not explicitly enumerated here.
Standards of Conduct
I. Informed Consent and Participant Safety
Member Churches are expected to ensure that participation in religious practices is voluntary and grounded in informed consent obtained while participants are in an ordinary state of consciousness.
Informed consent should include clear, good-faith disclosure of reasonably foreseeable physical, psychological, and spiritual risks. Participants should be advised that religious or spiritual experiences may at times be challenging or transformative, and that no specific outcomes are guaranteed.
SPA Members are expected to be transparent with congregants about the core religious beliefs that guide their community.
Where practices may involve physical contact or touch (such as bodywork or ceremonial cleansing), the nature of those practices and applicable consent boundaries should be discussed in advance of participation and prior to any altered state.
Member Churches are encouraged to maintain emergency response planning appropriate to the scope of their activities and to ensure that Leaders are familiar with and prepared to implement such plans.
SPA’s Guidance on Health & Safety provides additional best practices regarding screening, informed consent, and Leader preparation. These principles are intended as general guidance and should be implemented in a manner tailored to each Member Church’s jurisdiction, organizational structure, and unique circumstances, in consultation with the Member Church’s own legal counsel and advisors. Each Member Church remains independently responsible for determining how to apply these principles and for ensuring compliance with applicable law.
II. Boundaries and Relationships
A. Protection of Participants with Respect to Positional Power
Leaders should take steps to protect Assistants and Participants from undue impacts of positional power. They should be aware of the potential impact of their role on their relationships and take steps to prevent harm arising from positional power.
Leaders recognize that dual relationships are common within community-based religious settings. When such relationships arise, Leaders should actively assess and address the potential impact of positional power and take reasonable steps to mitigate undue influence, conflict of interest, or harm.
Leaders should seek counsel or shared decision-making when navigating power dynamics or complexity in dual relationships.
Leaders should not take advantage of community members for personal or community gain, for example, by exploiting their generosity.
Participants should not be obligated to demonstrate loyalty, devotion, or service in order to maintain belonging or access to spiritual care.
Leaders shall exercise spiritual and organizational authority in ways that promote participant autonomy rather than dependency.
SPA Members shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that important community decisions are not made solely on the basis of one individual’s spiritual authority or charismatic influence.
B. Sexual and Romantic Boundaries
Leaders should promptly seek counsel when navigating sexual or romantic energy in a relationship with a Participant or Assistant.
Leaders should exercise extreme care in matters involving romantic or sexual energy within the community. Leaders should not initiate, encourage, imply, or exploit romantic or sexual interest in a Participant or Assistant in a manner that leverages positional power, spiritual authority, or participant vulnerability.
If a Leader intends to pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with a Participant or Assistant, the Leader should first take appropriate steps to mitigate power imbalance, including clear role transition, consultation, and sufficient time separation where necessary to ensure that consent is not influenced by positional authority. They should not pursue romantic or sexual relationships in circumstances where positional power or participant vulnerability cannot be adequately mitigated.
When a Leader has a preexisting romantic or sexual relationship with a Participant, they should acknowledge, assess, and discuss potential impacts to that relationship with their partner before allowing them to be in ceremony. When a Leader has a preexisting relationship with a Participant, e.g. friendship, and romantic or sexual energy arises after the Participant begins attending a ceremony, the Leader must still seek counsel regarding the relationship and mitigate power imbalances before pursuing the relationship.
III. Competence and Scope of Practice
SPA Members should ensure that individuals conducting ceremonies have appropriate training and supervision.
SPA Members should serve participants only within their competence to do so. They should refer to other professionals if a participant requires care outside of their competence.
SPA Members should adhere to the guidelines on Leader training in the SPA Guidance on Health and Safety.
IV. Protection of Sacred Practices and Sacraments
SPA Members should implement safeguards to prevent unauthorized access, diversion, or misuse of sacramental substances.
Sacrament of a SPA Member should only be provided to its community as part of its religious exercise, or, in fellowship, to another duly sincere religious community for their use as part of religious exercise.
SPA Members are expected to carefully document any sacrament in their possession with respect to sourcing, storage, use during ceremony, and any losses.
SPA Members are expected to source their sacrament in a manner that has spiritual significance and is consistent with their religious beliefs.
SPA Members shall maintain ceremonial practices that are conducted with clear spiritual purpose, preparation, and integration appropriate to the intensity of the experience offered.
Members shall take reasonable steps to ensure that ceremonial leadership reflects ongoing personal practice, ethical formation, and accountability to community or lineage.
Communities shall cultivate conditions that support reflection, integration, and meaning-making following significant spiritual experiences.
V. Financial Practices and Non-Exploitation
Financial practices should be conducted in a manner that balances sustainability of the community with equitable access to participation.
SPA Members should not condition access to religious participation solely on an individual’s ability to pay.
SPA Members should clearly disclose any requested fees, donations, or financial expectations in advance.
Leaders should not use spiritual authority, positional power, or participant vulnerability to solicit or pressure financial contributions.
SPA Members should manage financial resources in a manner consistent with the long-term integrity and stability of their community.
VI. Humility, Communication and Representation
SPA Members should not make false or misleading claims about the benefits or outcomes of participation.
SPA Members should refrain from making claims outside their scope, e.g. therapeutic claims.
SPA Members should not use coercive, manipulative, or misleading messaging when inviting participation.
Members should represent their practices, affiliations, and legal status accurately and without exaggeration. Members should not guarantee protection from legal consequences.
SPA Members should represent the scope, lineage, and certainty of their knowledge with accuracy and appropriate humility.
Leaders should avoid claims of spiritual authority, insight, or protection that could reasonably discourage participants from exercising independent judgment.
Members should acknowledge uncertainty and limits of expertise when making spiritual, psychological, or health-related recommendations.
Leaders should refrain from framing their community as uniquely exempt from ethical norms, safety considerations, or accountability processes.
Members should follow all SPA Confidentiality policies, including not revealing the identities of other SPA members.
VII. Accountability, Reporting, and Growth
SPA Members should continually improve their practices. They should discuss concerns, challenges, and successes with SPA Members and share resources with the SPA Member community.
SPA Members and their Leaders must not retaliate in any way against individuals that raise an ethical concern. This applies to concerns raised within the community or to SPA.
SPA Leaders should practice receiving feedback from participants and peers in the spirit of openness and growth.
SPA Members should maintain a system for participants to seek repair or report being harmed. Participants should be made aware of this process in advance of entering any altered states.
SPA Members are required to fully comply with SPA’s Standards Review Process Policy.
SPA Members should establish and implement their own process to allow congregants, staff, and others in its community to report concerns related to community governance, safety, and operations, boundary violations, or other ethical matters.
VIII. Community and Inclusion
SPA Members should not refuse their services to anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, or socioeconomic status. This standard is not intended to prohibit Member ministries or programs that are specifically focused on supporting, healing, or serving particular populations or historically marginalized communities, so long as such ministries or programs are not organized around exclusion, supremacy, or discriminatory denial of services.
Members should make reasonable efforts to accommodate community members who have physical disabilities.
SPA Members should engage respectfully, collaboratively, and in good faith with other SPA Members, including where religious beliefs or practices differ. SPA Members should assume good faith on the part of other SPA Members.
Acknowledgement
This document was adapted in part from the Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides by the Council on Spiritual Practices (R. Jesse, Convener), licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). The original work may be found at: https://csp.org/code.
The Sacred Plant Alliance has significantly modified and expanded the original work to reflect its distinct organizational context. SPA encourages organizations and individuals to learn from, adapt, and build upon these standards. Anyone who reproduces, adapts, or builds upon this version is expected to retain the attribution above and to acknowledge the Sacred Plant Alliance’s contribution. Credit to SPA does not constitute or imply endorsement, membership, certification, or approval by SPA unless expressly authorized in writing.