Recently, a gospel singer named Solomon Ray saw his songs climb to the top of the Christian music heap—but there’s a catch! He’s an AI created by right-wing rapper named Topher. More than that, the AI’s music is created in an AI program called Suno. This isn’t even the first enormously popular music Suno has created!
Musicians in the Christian music scene are fretting hard about this new competition. But they’re not upset for the reasons we’ve seen out of many other kinds of artists. They’re focusing on another reason entirely. And they’re quite right in feeling the pinch of competition from AI. Today, we’ll cover this news, explore their opinions, and see why they have a very particular and intense reason to fear AI competition that other artists simply don’t.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 11/29/2025. They’re both available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: The rise and possible fall of Solomon Ray
On November 29, four songs by Solomon Ray turned up on the Top Ten Gospel list over at Billboard.com. The #1 song on the list is by him too: “Find Your Rest,” which debuted on October 20, 2025. Solomon Ray’s official YouTube channel uploaded a lyrics-only video on November 7th.
It’s a solid gospel song with all the elements one expects of the genre. Aside from its lack of vocal artifacts and sounding weirdly polished, it doesn’t sound substantially different from any similar song I’ve ever heard. And for a while, Christians really liked the song. Top comments described it with fire emojis. Many described finding it on TikTok, where it was quite popular indeed. Soon enough, more songs followed it—along with an album, Faithful Soul, released November 14.
On November 19, another Christian musician, Forrest Frank, called attention to Solomon Ray’s situation (local archive). Yes, Solomon Ray is an AI-generated musician. Yes, his songs are likewise AI-generated.
It wasn’t like anybody even tried to hide that fact. On Solomon Ray’s social media accounts, his creators noted he was AI-generated. So of course, eventually Christians were going to catch on.
In a response to Forrest Frank, Topher, the right-wing rapper behind Solomon Ray, said on his own Instagram reel (local archive): “Who am I to say what God will or won’t use to get the message his people need to them?” Additionally, he expressed confusion about why a Christian song absolutely had to be sung by a Christian to be valid.
When they found out, most Christians turned on Solomon Ray. I expected that. Christian musicians themselves are extremely unhappy about Solomon Ray being a top-selling artist in the gospel genre. I expected that too.
What Christians (and Christian musicians) might not be expecting is the truth that makes Solomon Ray a top-selling musician: In a lot of ways, they’ve done this to themselves.
One piece at a time, Christians built the engine that made an AI-generated chart-topping gospel musician not only possible, but inevitable.
The results of these contrasting elements would have impressed Johnny Cash as much as his homemade Cadillac did!
(TIL that there are some mad lad gearheads out there who’ve actually tried to make the car in “One Piece at a Time.” Gotta hand it to them, that’s a helluva goal.)
Christian musicians are upset about Solomon Ray
On November 21, Christianity Today covered the Solomon Ray story. Their headline blared: “The Current No. 1 Christian Artist Has No Soul.”
The artist who called attention to Solomon Ray, Forrest Frank, stated in his Instagram post what bothers him most:
At minimum, AI does not have the Holy Spirit inside it. So, I think that’s really weird to be opening your spirit up to something that has no spirit. [. . .] I, personally, will not be listening to this. [Instagram, November 19, 2025; local archive]
As well, a worship leader coincidentally also named Solomon Ray weighed in:
How much of your heart are you pouring into this? If you’re having AI generate it for you, the answer is zero. God wants costly worship. [Christianity Today, November 21, 2025]
Other Christian musicians, like Colton Dixon, say they’re “wrestling” with the concept of AI music. (That’s Christianese for trying to figure something out, but in a Jesus-flavored way.) Another, Philip Wickham, seems pretty down on the idea of AI replacing humans in his field (remote archive; local archive).
But none of this is new. This story borrows from several important trends.
What is old is new again: Virtual bands
Solomon Ray isn’t the first fictional singer, of course. His songs aren’t even the first AI-generated songs to top charts.
By now, virtual and fictional bands have been around forever. Alvin and the Chipmunks, Gorillaz, Dethklok, Hatsune Miku, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (of the Muppets), and many more have been part of the music scene since the 1950s.
The summer phenomenon K-Pop Demon Hunters is one of the most popular entries in this category. Its characters’ songs and singing voices are created by real people—many of them award-winners and chart-toppers themselves, like Ejae. They’re good songs, too! The main song’s beat dances across all the happy spots running down my spine:
Within Christian music, one doesn’t see virtual bands of this nature. During the pandemic, some churches organized “virtual choirs,” but they aren’t the same thing. In a virtual choir, the church’s actual choir members join a stream to sing together.
Outside of Christian music, AI-generated songs and artists have slowly made inroads. Just last month, Breaking Rust had a #1 country song on Billboard. The band is AI-generated and so is its music. This past summer, Xania Monet—another AI singer using Suno to create songs—began showing up on Billboard charts as well. Recently, her human creator signed her to a recording contract worth millions. For audiences already used to virtual bands, AI bands might not seem that different.
However, Christians have some additional concerns about AI music that secular audiences simply don’t. We’ll get to those in a moment.
What is new is old again: AI involvement in sermons
By now, pastors have made much use of AI assistance in writing sermons and preparing for them. In some surveys, almost half of them feel comfortable with AI assistance at least. In others, pastors almost universally support using AI “to some degree.” About 2/3 might already use it for sermon preparation. Moreover, they tend to really like the results. As one pastor told NPR:
“Literally within not even 30 seconds, I had a 900-word sermon. And I read through it and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really good,'” she [Naomi Sease Carriker] recalled. But she also thought, this feels wrong. [. . .] “Why not, why can’t, and why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit work through AI?” Carriker asked. [NPR, July 17, 2025]
But as a group, Christians are still figuring out if they approve of the idea of AI being used anywhere near pastoral duties.
In particular, evangelicals seem bothered by the idea. In 2023, Brad East wrote an opinion post for Christianity Today that insisted, “AI has no place in the pulpit.” The theo-bros over at Reddit’s r/Reformed community really dislike AI. Creationist site Answers in Genesis slammed AI in a scholarly-looking paper on their site. And The Gospel Coalition (TGC), a hard-right Calvinist theo-bro site, claimed that there’s no way that AI can “preach with Spirit-empowered passion.”
Over and over again, I saw evangelicals objecting to AI content creation because of its supposed lack of connection to their god’s invisible Holy Spirit. As TGC declared confidently, “AI cannot walk with God [. . .] It can’t repent from sin in and amongst one’s community.” Many other sources echoed this sentiment in their own ways.
The empty shell of evangelicalism opens the door to AI singers like Solomon Ray
It’s almost like evangelicals don’t realize just how easy it is to fool them. And fakers have been fooling them for many years. In 2006, LifeChurch.tv pastor Craig Groeschel published Confessions of a Pastor as a confession of doing exactly that for most of his career. Former pastor Bruce Gerencser has also had a lot to say about preachers who fake it till they make it.
There’s a reason for all this faking, of course.
Authoritarianism in general produces very surface-level relationships and social interactions. We see that abundantly in evangelicalism. In dysfunctional authoritarian groups like theirs, leaders lack accountability and choose lieutenants based on loyalty rather than skills. As a result, nobody can really get close to or trust anyone else, nor to say anything too controversial.
In such an environment, pastors preaching soulless sermons becomes a common norm, not an unusual outlier. The delivery of an impassioned sermon is easy to do. It’s nothing but technique, and technique can be learned. I guarantee you that any man with reasonable acting chops could fool any right-wing evangelical church that way. And I bet a lot of them are doing exactly that already.
So within evangelicalism, fakers and conjobs have an all-too-easy time gaining attention from the pew-warmers. Nobody suspects a thing—till it’s too late.
An AI singer doesn’t need to do much to fit right in with that kind of crowd.
How the Christian music industry opened the door to Solomon Ray
Ever since the 1980s, I can personally attest that many evangelicals and fundamentalists viewed the Christian music industry as soulless. Sure, I had my Michael W. Smith phase. Back then, most of us did.
But sooner or later, the strangely empty quality of the music bothered many of us. When South Park lampooned the Christian music industry in 2003, they weren’t saying anything that evangelicals themselves hadn’t been saying for years.
Neither were these evangelicals:
In 30 years, nothing has changed in the Christian music scene. Despite multiple efforts to change it or shift its direction, it remains the same: spineless milksop music that never paints any kind of realistic picture, that is terrified to call out the biggest dealbreakers in Christianity, that steadfastly refuses to allow genuine art to flourish in its dusty, echoing halls.
How on earth could Solomon Ray—or any AI—possibly make the current and absolute state of Christian music any worse?
Solomon Ray is a soulless AI for a soulless industry in a soulless religion
Solomon Ray reveals an important problem within Christianity itself, and particularly within Christian music. It has to do with the nature of competition. As we’ve been talking about AI lately, that one motif has shown up again and again.
As Baptist News Global points out, Christian musicians who don’t feel Solomon Ray is competition seem a lot friendlier to the idea of an AI gospel musician. According to Collider, as well, the sheer proficiency of Solomon Ray as a character and musician speaks to the massive gains AI has made in acting human.
But I’d say that acting like a human evangelical is a lot easier than acting like most other humans. When it comes to AI, evangelical competition functions very differently from most other kinds.
When we talked about the app ‘Text With Jesus,’ I compared Jesus-themed chatbots to sex dolls. In a world with women in it, women don’t view sex dolls as competition. Indeed, they’re not. The kind of men who want sex dolls would not want the kinds of relationships that women want—and women wouldn’t want the kind of men who want only sex dolls. So sex dolls compete only with other relationship substitutes. Within the world of flesh and blood relationships, the real thing always wins.
Similarly, in the world of art itself, real artists bristle at AI art for good reasons. Art made by human hands means more to those who like art. It’ll always win against AI-made art, just like it wins now against mass-produced decorations.
But AI-generated Christian music is not competing against anything with a soul. One hollow substitute competes with another. One substitute for the real thing stares down another. It’s just that one is made with AI, while the other’s made by humans.
Whichever side wins that showdown, Christians lose.
They always have.
NEXT UP: Speaking of soulless hype lacking the Holy Spirit, we’ll be starting our review of the next two Alpha Course videos! See you soon! <3
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