AI: The newest squirrel distracting evangelicals from their own decline

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has finally penetrated the evangelical cultural bubble. And some of them are very upset and worried about what this technology might mean for humanity’s future. Others see AI as a money train. At a time when they ought to be more concerned about fixing their most serious problems, evangelicals are off chasing their latest distraction.

Evangelicals have figured out that AI is a thing that exists

Recently, I caught an opinion post on Baptist News Global that deals with AI. It’s titled “Artificial intelligence spells the end of church as we know it” (archive). In it, writer Cynthia Astle wrings her hands over AI’s growing popularity and incredible flexibility. As you might tell from the title alone, she’s not enthused with AI’s potential effect on evangelicalism as a whole. She writes:

The advent of artificial intelligence marks the end of human endeavor in church and society. Maybe not now, and maybe not in 10 years (if humanity lives that long), but sooner than we’re prepared to cope with it.

“Artificial intelligence spells the end of church as we know it,” Baptist News Global. (archive)

Well! That is quite an alarming assessment. She bases it on a few different sources. First, she cites an April 2023 post in the Economist (archive) by Yuval Noah Harari. In it, Harari asserts that AI can and will annihilate humanity if allowed to proceed further. Harari also points out that AI has already “hacked the operating system of our civilization” by learning to tell stories and communicate its own ideas to people.

Second, she mentions a fake AI-generated robocall (archive) that recently threatened election integrity in New Hampshire.

Third, she briefly mentions “a recent 90-minute webinar produced by a church agency.” I couldn’t find it, and she doesn’t say what it was or who specifically made it. This webinar taught attendees a little about AI: its history, the philosophical ramifications of using it, etc. Alas, Astle tells us, “the webinar centered on how to use AI without delving into a substantive why to use it.” [All emphases come from the original source, unless stated otherwise.]

Very briefly, Astle later mentions an Austin, Texas congregation that didn’t like their experiment with AI. As she puts it, they “found that an AI-generated worship service lacked sufficient heart and soul to inspire church members.”

She didn’t cite the source there, either, but I found it. This experiment occurred in September 2023 (archive). The pastor involved, Jay Cooper, used ChatGPT to write his service one Sunday. He thought this AI sermon lacked “the human touch” of a pastor/preacher performing live for a congregation. (A Turkish church ran a similar experiment in June 2023.)

As we’ll see in a moment, that’s not exactly the own Astle thinks it is. But forget it. She’s on a roll.

The allure of AI, according to evangelicals

Many evangelical ministers perceive AI as a useful tool.

Eric Rountree of the YouTube channel “Beyond The Pulpit” offers some mundane ideas for AI to help pastors: composing emails, making research faster and more efficient, organizing emails as they arrive, and the like.

Another YouTuber, Michael Moyer, suggests that pastors can make cool, attention-grabbing thumbnails for their sermons using AI art:

Other ministers are thinking far more grandly.

Bigger. Bolder. Creepier.

A recent on-demand webinar (archive) offers tips for evangelical pastors who might be interested in using AI. Its main backers include Barna Group, a for-profit evangelical survey house, and Gloo, a weird, behind-the-scenes data gatherer, engagement booster, and communications business.

Gloo’s presence tells us exactly what this webinar’s primary focus must be: recruitment. This company also turns up in the billion-dollar, years-running “He Gets Us” ad campaign. The creators of the campaign piously promise that they just want to mend Christianity’s tattered, tainted brand. However, it does nothing of the sort. In truth, the campaign gathers a great deal of personal information about potential recruits (archive).

(Related: Will evangelicals be fooled by the “He Gets Us” campaign?)

Really, the only possible way to make Gloo or “He Gets Us” sound creepier is to involve AI. And that’s the cue for me to bring up that the very evangelical CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) did a puff piece on February 21, 2024 on Gloo’s part in this webinar.

In that puff piece, we learn that yes indeed, Gloo is “investing $25M in implementing AI in the church.”

Ten years ago, church revitalization was the trendy way for hucksters to capitalize on evangelicals’ decline. Now, apparently, they are all about the AI.

(Related: The problems and pitfalls of church revitalization.)

The danger of AI, according to evangelicals

Cynthia Astle isn’t the only evangelical expressing concern about AI these days. For a few years now, I’ve seen headline after headline on evangelical sites—all fretting about the ethical implications of AI.

Sometimes, the concerns sound silly. A presenter on an October 2023 webinar from the Kairos Network says, about 10 minutes in, that one potential problem with AI is “lazy pastors” using AI to do their work for them. It briefly mentions the Austin experiment as well.

Another YouTuber, Trey VanCamp, said in a 2022 video that he was “freaked out” over how quickly and suddenly ChatGPT showed up everywhere he looked.

VanCamp’s written a book about pastors who experience anxiety, so he asked ChatGPT to list five sources of anxiety for pastors. It immediately offered a list that sounds (to both of us) exactly correct. But he doesn’t seem to notice that ChatGPT just made his book irrelevant. He’s way more concerned with the human situation itself, you see.

See, VanCamp thinks AI “is diminishing” to people because of how quickly and effectively it satisfies our curiosity and how “delighting” it is to use. Citing another book, VanCamp declares that AI degrades humanity because it “doesn’t involve the whole person.”

Well, neither does reading—unless the reader walks a treadmill while doing it, I suppose. But I don’t hear VanCamp complaining about books degrading humanity.

Evangelicals fretting hard about AI

Early on, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) began sounding the alarm klaxons about AI.

In 2019, their Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) laid out exactly what problems they had with this new technology. They called their list of problems “An Evangelical Statement of Principles” (archive), but it’s more like a shopping list of their worst fears.

First and foremost, they’re worried that AI might “usurp or subvert” their perceived ownership of the universe. Yahweh gave everything to them, his very most favorite humans, not some computer programs! Along those same lines, they also oppose any suggestion that AI might gain human-like rights. (Given how hard evangelicals fight the idea that animals might merit rights of their own or have abilities previously thought to be solely human, that’s not surprising. They tend to dislike even the idea that all humans have human rights.)

Second, they are afraid that AI might supplant evangelicalism. Their statement tells us so:

Since the Lord Jesus alone can atone for sin and reconcile humanity to its Creator, technology such as AI cannot fulfill humanity’s ultimate needs.

“An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” ERLC, 2019 (archive)

They’re forgetting that neither can evangelicalism, which we know because people keep leaving evangelical churches and having problems that evangelicalism simply cannot fix.

Third, they have some very science-fiction notions about humans letting AI run our legal and judicial systems. After all, as their statement tells us, Yahweh won’t be judging AIs at the end of the world! Only humans risk having their ghosts tortured in Hell forever after they die!

Fourth, they have some very science-fiction notions about what AI can do to improve humanity in physical terms. Maybe they’ve been playing Cyberpunk games too much lately, you tell me:

Furthermore, we reject the materialist and consequentialist worldview that understands medical applications of AI as a means of improving, changing, or completing human beings.

“An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” ERLC, 2019 (archive)

The statement goes on and on like this. And the SBC ain’t letting things go at that, either. In 2021, they begged Joe Biden to let them participate in AI policy discussions (archive) so they can make sure their perceived divinely-granted superiority over everything isn’t threatened even a little.

These evangelicals are deeply concerned that AI might somehow “subjugate human autonomy under the power of the state,” as the 2019 statement puts it.

But it’s okay if Gloo gathers all kinds of deep intel about unwitting marks for later manipulation in all kinds of ways, right? Let’s ask Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist big name involved with Gloo. Maybe he can tell us.

Or maybe that $25M Gloo is spending on AI speaks louder than any statement of principles.

To be evangelical is to pick fights with everything new that popular culture likes

This entire tempest-in-yet-another-teapot sounds a lot like evangelicals’ one-time opposition to virtual reality (VR). I worked at an indoor all-ages amusement park for a while in the mid-90s. Though I was Pentecostal, I had no problem with the VR games they offered. But plenty of evangelicals did, and more than a few tried to save my immortal soul from all that demonic VR while I was at work. Oh, that was always such an awkward situation!

They’ve gotten over it as a group since then. Some of the D-list ministers even run virtual churches in VR hangouts. But I suppose they needed something new to fear lately.

For that matter, culture warriors once opposed Elvis Presley’s music. Some still do (see also this guy). They also ferociously opposed roleplaying games. And movies and television.

When I was Pentecostal, our “holiness standards” dictated that we opt out of a great number of popular pastimes: parades, concerts of any kind (though young adults in less-stringent churches might get away with very Christian bands’ concerts, Pentecostal pastors didn’t allow it), movies, TV watching of any kind, organized sports (from the bleachers or on radio/TV), ballet and opera, and much much more.

That left us with only a few ways to enjoy ourselves: Church services, prayer meetings, summer meetings, choir practice, and symphonies. Yes, symphonies. Nobody ever told them about the riots that sometimes broke out (archive) over now-classical composers’ work. Thank goodness for small favors. Against those few allowable secular diversions, church stuff looked a lot more appealing!

Perhaps that’s why every new thing that popular culture likes becomes culture-warriors’ newest enemy. It’s competition!

Almost a century ago, Bellamy Partridge fretted over all the new delights of the late 1940s—like urbanization itself—that were drawing Americans away from wholesome activities in general and church in particular. Similarly, right now ChatGPT looks a whole lot more interesting than anything evangelicals can offer.

A few decades ago, evangelicals lost the ability to effectively punish dissenters and apostates. Sure, some communities make life rough for heathens, but most can’t make it so incredibly rough that it frightens the flocks out of considering deconversion/deconstruction. So every distraction must be trampled down immediately.

AI: The distraction of the hour, and the newest money train

Surveying the evangelical Christ-o-sphere, one gets a certain sense of dread about AI. To be evangelical is to be afraid, but this is something more than their usual fearmongering. This time, the flocks seem far less worried than their leaders. But they also can’t dream nearly as big as their leaders about the potential involved here.

I’m not sure evangelicals have that much reason to be dreading or afraid of AI. As at least two congregations have already discovered, AI sermons just aren’t entertaining enough on their own (yet) without a real human to provide all those necessary flourishes and jazz hands. For as long as evangelicals exist as a cultural force, they’ll still need their entertainment managers—er, I mean pastors and preachers—to be human.

But for all the dread they express, evangelicals still can’t resist the allure of AI. It’s just so mysterious! So panicky pastors might just shell out big bucks for AI webinars and consulting to harness its power to turn their declining churches around at last. Where revitalization utterly failed as a trend, maybe AI will be the ticket to thriving, growing congregations.

Or maybe AI will turn out to be just another distracting squirrel for evangelicals to chase so they never have to confront the real problems they have as a group.