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When practices that shape a faith tradition and its believers — prayer, the study of sacred texts, sermon writing — are outsourced to AI, how does spiritual formation happen?
And if AI begins doing more of that work for us, what happens to the gradual and often daunting process of becoming a person of faith?
These were some of the questions that members of four Christian denominations discussed last week at an AI summit in Nashville, Tennessee. The participating churches — the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church and the United Methodist Church — represent more than 44,000 congregations and 12 million members.
At the Deseret News, we’ve written about the teachings of Elder Gerrit W. Gong of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the perils and opportunities of AI. I’ve also covered Pope Leo’s sweeping encyclical, which covered the impact of AI from employment and parenting to military and transhumanism.
At the summit, I heard some similar concerns from believers across mainline denominations. AI is raising important questions about the future of faith and human agency, and Christians are banding together to chart a path forward.
What also became clear to me is that people of faith are attuned to what is at stake. They can articulate the dangers of AI with a particular urgency because they see that the risks extend beyond technology and economics — and touch on the nature of the human person and their divine origins.
Here are a few takeaways that stood out to me.
‘Holy inefficiency’
Churches should remain “places of friction,” argued Jace Martinez from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “Friction is where our agency takes shape. Staring at blank pages, questioning and requestioning our problems, conversations that take all night to be had. These, along with so much more, are the spaces of friction.”
“When the church protects spaces of friction, it protects the very conditions in which human beings become capable of faithful response through formation,” he said. “AI excels at production; the Holy Spirit is committed to formation.”
Martinez said God forms people through “holy inefficiency,” which Jesus practiced himself: He spent three years wondering and questioning, and “that apparent inefficiency is exactly how God reshaped the world.”
Before adopting an AI tool at church, congregations should ask: What kind of people will this turn us into?
Responding to AI not out of fear but out of love
In a session with Chloe Lubinski, a spiritual director at Anthropic and a Christian, the group discussed what a courageous and faithful response to AI would be, as opposed to a fearful one.
Earlier this year, Anthropic convened a series of meetings with religious leaders, working on how AI models can draw on a broad range of wisdom traditions.
In July, over 1,300 representatives from leading AI companies signed a letter asking the U.S. government to pace the development of the models. Among signatories are OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta AI and Google. “We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” the letter said.
If stopping AI is impossible given the geopolitical and economic competition, then the task at hand may be figuring out how to shape it so that it serves human flourishing, and how to respond together. That raises a deeper question: What would it take for AI to be good for us?
Handy tools
One Presbyterian pastor from rural Iowa described the use of AI beyond sermon and lesson preparation. On a youth trip to Florida with 19 students, he quickly created a site that allowed the students to upload and share photos through a single private link.
Before a group taco outing, this pastor also coded an app in about 45 minutes that let each student choose a menu, select toppings, all within a spending limit. The app generated a simple PDF listing everyone’s order by name, which he printed and brought to the taco shop. These shortcuts allowed him to actually spend more time with people.
Another man shared that he created an avatar of himself — a “Dave’s Double” — so he could talk to his wife, who has dementia and is in a memory care facility. He has trained this avatar on transcripts that recount their shared memories and trips, and it can display photos from their trips as well. “It gives her a reminder of my presence, even though I can’t physically be there,” he said.
Fresh off the press
- Reading the tributes to the legendary Dolly Parton this week, I gained a greater appreciation for the honest, generous and joyful quality of her faith.
- On the complicated truth about trade school.
- The Trump administration is turning to large faith-based organizations to distribute $2 billion to humanitarian organizations and clinics globally. Can faith-based organizations do a better job?
End note
I love when an artistic project brings together two faith traditions that don’t always appear side by side. I recently attended a premiere of “Stations of the Cross,” an hourlong musical piece that follows Jesus’ journey from his condemnation to his crucifixion through a series of 14 stations. Stations of the Cross is a Catholic tradition, also known as Via Crucis in Latin, and it was interesting to see it reimagined in a Latter-day Saint setting.
The piece was composed by BYU Museum of Art composer-in-residence Andrew Maxfield (a relative on my husband’s side of the family) and performed by Sound of Ages. It was commissioned by the museum in response to a series of drawings by BYU illustrator David Habben called “The Way of the Cross.” Habben said that he would start his day with praying and reading St. Francis prayers that go along with each station. Maxfield calls the work a “musical pilgrimage.”
There are themes of ancient choral tradition and more modern elements — one of my favorite things was the haunting breathing alongside singing during the part dedicated to the crucifixion. I highly recommend both the exhibition and the music.
You can listen to the composition performed by Sound of Ages here.
Thank you for reading and being part of the State of Faith community. I love to hear from readers, so feel free to reach out at any time with ideas and comments: mmanzhos@deseret.com.