A contested label
Some within Santo Daime resist the word "religion" as too easily identified with an organized set of doctrinal claims, arguing instead that Santo Daime is better understood as a spiritual practice: a shared, participatory activity built around singing hymns together in Portuguese and consuming ayahuasca in ritual, rather than a fixed set of beliefs to be affirmed. On this view, the varied cosmological references found in Santo Daime hymnody — drawing on African, South American, and Christian imagery — are treated as material sung about, and as a vehicle for personal experience, rather than as articles of doctrine requiring assent.
At the same time, Santo Daime has needed formal recognition as a religion in legal settings — including in Brazil and, notably, in United States court rulings on the sacramental use of Daime tea — where the protections available to religious exercise have depended on the tradition being classified as a religion rather than merely a practice. The tradition has not settled this tension between how practitioners describe their own experience and how courts and regulators have needed to categorize Santo Daime in order to protect it.