Santo Daime: A New World Religion

Andrew Dawson is a sociologist of religion, and this Bloomsbury book is his book-length sociological study of Santo Daime, the Brazilian ayahuasca-based religion, covering its doctrine, ritual repertoire and international expansion beyond Brazil. Its strength is that Dawson treats Santo Daime as a serious new world religion warranting sustained sociological analysis, examining its actual doctrinal and ritual structure rather than only its use of a psychoactive substance. Its limit is that as a sociological study it focuses on the movement's structure and spread, so a claim needing detailed theological or scriptural analysis of Santo Daime's own hymnal tradition, the hinarios, needs a source focused specifically on that textual content.