A day in the life of a local pastor might include one-on-one counseling with congregants, preparing a sermon, leading staff meetings, and now… consulting on AI?
In Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas — his first encyclical, which was published for the public on May 25 — he focuses on the dangers of artificial intelligence and the threat AI poses to human dignity.
Having chosen his name after Leo XIII, whose leadership was marked by his theological response to the Industrial Revolution, Leo XIV fittingly prioritizes addressing the dangers posed by the rise of new technology in his own papacy.
But Pope Leo is just one of many faith leaders across denominations and traditions stepping in to provide ethical and moral frameworks surrounding the growth and use of AI as the technology rapidly develops.
Part of the reason faith leaders have become deeply involved in this conversation, explains Institute for Faith and Learning Director Dr. Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, is because of the value the church places on human dignity and human life.
“One of the phrases that comes up repeatedly throughout Catholic social thought … is this idea that the church is … an expert on humanity,” explained Kincaid, who teaches ethics, faith, and culture at Truett Theological Seminary.
“We understand humanity because we have gotten to see and know what perfect humanity looks like in the person of Jesus Christ,” she later further explained.
But why might people look to the church before looking to the technologists developing AI to answer questions about how to use it?
“The simple answer, probably, is that the knowledge and the understanding and the experience and expertise that you need to develop AI systems is just not the same as the knowledge and the understanding and the experience that you need to reflect ethically on them [and] to address the questions these systems raise,” explained Dr. Neil Messer, a professor of theological bioethics at Baylor.
Pope Leo’s encyclical focuses primarily on the threat AI poses to undermine human dignity – such as by displacing people from their jobs or making it impossible for them to find jobs.
According to Catholic social teaching, which sees work as an integral part of human dignity, taking away the opportunity to work and find meaning in work threatens personhood.
“If you have a mindset that assesses human beings and their value solely in terms of their outputs and their productivity, and if you can get the same outputs and productivity or greater outputs and productivity more cheaply from an AI, well, why wouldn’t you?” explained Messer. “But a document like Magnifica Humanitas is going to say [that] work matters for human flourishing, not just in terms of productivity but also because it’s an essential component of human dignity.”
Kincaid also points to a general lack of trust in technology and government as one reason people might look to religion for answers on AI.
“I think one of the huge challenges in this time right now is that we have this huge deficiency of trust. People don’t find these institutional leaders or these commercial leaders trustworthy. They think they’re out for themselves,” Kincaid said. “So, I think perhaps some of the hope in this is in an age of religious decline, when people haven’t been trusting the church, what are the potentials that people are coming back to faith leaders?”
As Kincaid notes, amid major sexual, financial, and workplace scandals from prominent denominations, trust in the church and its leaders has quickly declined.
But Kincaid sees the AI revolution as an opportunity for the church to step in and fill a necessary gap — offering deliberative and contemplative thinking in a cultural moment that incentivises rapid change.
“Maybe this sort of slower, deliberative, communal aspect to faith community life may end up being a strength and draw people in,” she said.
However, with rapidly changing AI, it can be difficult for faith leaders to form coherent ethical frameworks that keep up with the ever-shifting technology.
“For some churches and faith communities, there’s a danger that they more or less exclude themselves from conversation,” Messer said. “This may not be such a danger for the big, well-resourced denominations, but smaller denominations and smaller churches may not feel equipped to play a part.”
But this is an issue that pastors need to understand — no matter the size of their church, according to Kincaid.
“The people who are pastoring and leading … in any situation need to understand the challenges that the people in their congregations are facing,” she said.
At Harris Creek, a large Southern Baptist church located in McGregor, Texas, and one of the most popular churches for Baylor students to attend, lead pastor Jonathan Pokluda is addressing these very questions. Even at a large, well-staffed, highly resourced SBC church, the answers are not always clear.
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Pokluda has built a significant social media following, making him a faith leader for his own congregation, young people across America, and viewers outside his own congregation who often submit questions to his Becoming Something podcast.
“I’ve noticed a lot of people, including myself, are using tools like AI or ChatGPT to give them biblical advice or are using these tools to ask questions about their faith, and I’m just wondering if it’s okay to do this or should we be bringing our questions strictly to God in prayer or strictly to our pastors or even the wise friends around us?” a student attending Middle Tennessee State University asked on the podcast episode titled “Christians and ChatGPT.”
It’s a question many Christians are asking. According to research from the Barna Group, a large majority of pastors and Christians are worried about AI as a spiritual authority. They fear it might misinterpret Scripture, act as a replacement for God, replace the role of spiritual leaders, or cause people to lose their faith.
“You don’t have to be afraid; you have to be aware,” Pokluda said. “Everything is spiritual. Spiritual warfare has implications for everything we do, and so I don’t think you should avoid it entirely. C.S. Lewis says, ‘So great is something’s potential for good but equally great is its potential for evil.’ I think that’s for sure true with Chat [and] AI.”
He goes on to explain how he uses AI as a tool in his sermon preparation, helping him research information, find the right words, and consolidate his thoughts.
Pokluda is not the only pastor in Waco whose congregation is asking questions about AI, trying to figure out where to draw the line, and deciding how to use it in their own work.
“[God] uses the tools that we’ve created to advance his kingdom, but He doesn’t need them. And in some sense, we do, and that’s what separates us from God,” Drake Osborne, pastor for teaching and liturgy at Grace Church Waco, told Baylor Focus Magazine. “I think that’s the key. The moment that we need them, and we depend on our technology or our tools more than we depend on God, something’s gone wrong.”
But for pastors who don’t have the time to learn about AI, or whose daily responsibilities leave little room to develop an AI ethical framework, Messer said institutions like Baylor can step in – providing local churches with the resources they need to prepare their congregations for the AI revolution.
“The place where the person in the pew becomes informed is precisely there – in the pew,” he said.
At Baylor, AI has been at the forefront of conversations across departments as faculty and university leadership wrestle with how a distinctly Christian research university should contribute in developing an ethical AI framework.
On June 1, the University launched the Center for Ethics – an interdisciplinary center that gathers faculty research groups to investigate various fields of inquiry. One of the center’s primary areas of focus currently is AI ethics.
“A university like Baylor has a tremendously important part to play because it’s able to combine a really strong and distinctive Christian identity with academic excellence at the first rank,” explained Messer. He said having prominent researchers both in technological development and Christian ethics at one university places Baylor in a unique position.
Christians are concerned about many of the same issues that non-Christians are – the environment, job displacement, misinformation, and so on. Just as they are concerned about many of the same issues, many of them are also looking for answers that place greater care on human life than technological advancement.
“It’s helpful to think that … there are forces of good in the world that build up human agency, not [destroy] it,” said Kincaid. “That’s where I’m seeing a lot of resonance.”
