AI is coming to your house of worship...if it isn't already there

When London imam Asim Khan asked ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI,  to write a khutbah (sermon) on taqwa (God consciousness) that lasts 10 minutes, he was surprised by the results, which left him “lost for words.” The generative AI program provided a sermon that was not only lucid, but eloquent.

He posted the video on X (formerly known as Twitter). While some commenters warned that AI would be “more harm than good” and that “Shaikh AI” should not replace the counsel of trained Islamic scholars, Khan also joked that his career might be over given how well ChatGPT responded to the prompt.

Jokes and gimmicks aside, there are now entire websites devoted to providing AI tools for pastors, preachers and other religious leaders looking to get a leg up on sermon prep.  At Sermonoutline.ai — owned and operated by Sermon Central and its parent company, Outreach Inc. — pastors are promised an AI sermon generator that can produce “biblical preaching” for their next Sunday service. For just $7.50 a month, subscribers have access to sermon outlines, starter ideas and full sermon manuscripts “using the power of AI,” according to the site.

Perhaps aware of potential apprehension, one of the site’s FAQs is: “What if my church finds out I used this site?” The response:

Sermon Outline AI is a reference tool for preachers. … Preaching in any context requires knowing your audience and making your material personal. Sermon Outline AI can’t do that, only the preacher can. If your church finds out you’re here, great! They’ll know you value your time.

Beyond writing Friday khutbahs and Sunday sermons, AI has numerous practical applications for religious communities and in worship spaces, say some leaders. At an Exponential Conference at First Baptist Church Orlando in March 2024, speakers Kenny Jahng, Yvonne Carlson, Josh Burnett and Corey Alderin talked about how AI could be used to boost a church’s community engagement, provide virtual worship services and create small-group Bible study guides.

As ethical reflections among religious leaders over AI’s use in everything from fatwas and Bible translation to the creation of autonomous weaponry and surveillance continues, communities of all kinds are adopting it — or adapting to it — as AI seems set to become a banal aspect of our everyday social, economic and religious lives (or already is).

Debates about the best ethical approach — including whether an AI religion can save or doom us all — will intensify. In the meantime, pastors are using it to edit sermons, and there is Robo Rabbi for the Jewish faith; KhalsaGPT for Sikhs; Mindar, an android priest, for Buddhism; and a multilingual Islamic chatbot named “Ansari” offering spiritual remedies and Islamic perspectives in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Bosnian, English, French, Turkish, Urdu and other languages. Perhaps appealing to the growing ranks of the “spiritual but not religious,” ChatwithGod.ai wants to expand access to spiritual guidance for seekers from all religious backgrounds. It promises to “engage in conversation” with users “receiving personalized religious verses and comfort.”

While much of the conversation around AI — and generative AI in particular — can be alarmist, this resource focuses on the technology’s increasingly common uses in religious communities and places of worship around the world.

It provides background, related stories, sources and relevant resources for understanding how AI is already impacting the everyday realities of our spiritual lives.

Spirit Tech is here to stay

In our house, we have a new laptop.

It’s shiny and new, with a fancy blue OLED touchscreen and widgets galore.

Perhaps you too — not long after “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” nor long before the festive, gift-giving season — will be purchasing new tech.

Maybe a new smartwatch? The latest video game console? How about a meditation headset from tech startup Muse?

Yep, you read that right. The Muse headband is a brain-sensing device that provides real-time neurofeedback during meditation sessions or, as the company promises, to help you focus, sleep, or otherwise reach peak performance.

It is one of many technological innovations promising to trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experiences and deliver more peace and progress in the process.

From brain stimulation to synthetic psychedelics, new spiritual movements in Silicon Valley to the everyday ways technology is used in worship and devotion technology is changing the way we do religion.

This is what researchers Kate Stockly and Wesley Wildman of Boston University’s Center for Mind and Culture call “spirit tech.”

Not only do they believe “spirit tech” is here to stay, they also suggest it has the potential to heal our relationship with technology and radically alter the way we think and pray.

Recently, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into the world of “spirit tech,” writing two pieces to help you explore the wide world of religious technologies, their meaning, and their potential futures.

The age of "spirit tech" is here. It’s time we come to terms with it.

The electrodes are already attached to your scalp, so you settle into a seat that reminds you of the one they use at the dentist’s office. On the other end of a series of cords is a machine where a technician sits with a clipboard and a range of blinking and bleeping devices.

No, you’re not about to start a medical diagnostic exam.

You’re about to meditate.

Sound surreal? If so, welcome to the brave new world of “spirit tech,” where a range of researchers and practitioners are using brain based tech to “trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experience.”

In their new book — Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering — Wesley J. Wildman and Kate J. Stockly take a stimulating journey into the technology that could shape our spiritual futures.

Investigating the intensifying interaction between technology and religion, they talk to innovators and early adopters who are "hacking the spiritual brain” using ultrasounds to help practitioners meditate or experimenting with “high-tech telepathy” to build a “social network of brains.”

Not only did I get the chance to read the book, I also sat down with a one-on-one interview with Stockly about how spiritual entrepreneurs and tech-savvy religious practitioners are using technology to modify spiritual experiences.

While critics may question “spirit tech’s” efficacy, elitism, and ethics, Wildman and Stockly are careful to note that religious people have always used tools — from mantras to mandalas, prayer beads to palm reading — to enhance spiritual experience. The difference now, they write, is the sheer number of “customizable and exploratory practices at the threshold between cutting-edge tech and the soul,” from synthetic psychedelic trips in lieu of Holy Communion to LED orbs that create connection between congregants.

Wildman and Stockly do not pretend to have it all figured out — spirit tech’s ability to balance innovation and enlightenment, they say, “is still being written” — but their thought-provoking introduction to the brave new world of transcendent tech gives both pious pioneers and defenders of traditional religion something to consider as they imagine the future of spirituality in the 21st-century and beyond.