Dreams of electric shepherds

Harry Plantinga, a professor at Calvin University in Michigan, is designing a chatbot that acts as a spiritual director. His web-based Journee app is part of a study group on centring prayer.

New users are greeted with a friendly message and an invitation to describe their personal prayer habits. “There’s no right or wrong answer here,” reads the opening prompt. “I simply want to understand your experience so I can best accompany you on this journey. What would you like to share about your practice?”

As users move through scripture readings and prayers, they are prompted with more specific questions like: “How was your experience of surrender in prayer today?”

Plantinga explains, “In centring prayer, as thoughts arise, you let them go and turn your attention to God. That feels very disorienting to people who are used to the mind always being active. The mirroring function offered by the Journee chatbot provides helpful support. You say something. It says it back to you in different words, maybe intensifies it, and it helps you to see yourself from a different direction.”

Plantinga has worked at the forefront of faith-based tech for decades as the founder of both Christian Classics Ethereal Library and hymnary.org, and is well aware of the risks. He warns about unhealthy attachment to artificial intelligence (AI) and the development of inappropriate trust. In a paper he will present at Baylor University later this spring, Plantinga writes that AI “can never replace human spiritual directors: they don’t love the user. They don’t have true discernment. They believe whatever the user says. They don’t pray with the user.”

Help with answers

Lizzie Niska is a mother of five with a background in computer programming. She runs a fishing lodge in Terrace, B.C. She echoes Plantinga’s warning. Niska stresses that AI is good at organizing, but adds, “Remember, it lies to you. It doesn’t care about you.”

Niska started participating in her local church when her children started school and has lots of questions about the Bible, but not much free time. She knows she could ask her pastor, but often turns to ChatGPT first.

“I started using it as a data sorter. I would ask for it to tell me all the different instances in the Bible where certain types of text or characters appear so I could have a broader view,” Niska says.

She considers AI a useful tool that speeds up her comprehension, organizes data and allows her to form her own understanding before speaking further with her pastor. Of course, some pastors are relying on AI too, but not necessarily for spiritual direction.

Ministry multiplied

Rt. Rev. Kimberly Heath, moderator of The United Church of Canada, says Wall Street United in Brockville, Ont., the church where she served for many years, says her church, has found AI useful for expanding on her sermons and reaching more people beyond Sunday mornings.

“I believe strongly in writing my own sermons,” comments Heath, “but AI has the ability to leverage that original content in helpful ways. We fed it the sermon I preached on ‘Pastor’s AI,’ and it produced a five-day devotional that we could send out to the congregation. What amazed me is how much the congregation loved it! The devotional kept the conversation of the worship service going all week.” She says it is also useful for creating catchy social media hooks that invite people to church and promote upcoming themes.

Clergy are increasingly finding themselves working not only as preachers and teachers but also as social coordinators, life coaches and counsellors. Can AI help share the weight of Christian leadership?

Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, associate professor of contextual education and theology at Emmanuel College in Toronto, sees Claude, an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, as a time-saving collaborator in her academic work.

“We’re all stretched so thin, and our work lives are so busy that I couldn’t necessarily get one of my faculty colleagues to sit down and talk.” She treats AI as an intellectual partner who helps streamline and clarify her own perspective. “That’s where I find it helpful. Getting to the heart of a task so that I can do more fine-tuned work.”

She is concerned, however, about the wider costs of AI, both environmental and social. She aims to mitigate environmental impact by limiting her usage, asking herself if each conversation is “worth the water spent.”

Despite the benefits of the intellectual companionship of AI, Wigg-Stevenson also feels conflicted about what is lost relationally.

“I do grieve that we’re so overworked that we have to resort to these kinds of moves if we want to be able to show up for our students as we want to be able to do.”

Balancing these concerns is not easy, but naming the complexities may help us weigh decisions with care.

Ways of knowing

Rev. George Buchanan, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Perth, Ontario, thinks deeply about the value of human relationality. He has a background in the technology industry and, for several years, has been working with a trained human spiritual advisor. He finds this sustained relationship very effective as it is built on understanding and trust. “It is my sense that she’ll give me advice that is good for me in a long-term spiritual sense and ask hard questions persistently that I need to hear.”

Buchanan goes on to describe two ways of knowing: “The first way is knowing the sun will rise in the east, or this part of Ontario will probably get more snow before the winter ends. The second way is my belief that more active human love is always possible.”

“For the first way of knowing,” he adds, “I rely on the experience and knowledge of all humanity, as well as my own experience, to understand what is happening. And increasingly, I will probably rely on AI to help me with this understanding. As will many of us. For the second way of knowing, I also rely on the general experience and knowledge of others. As well, I have been the personal beneficiary of trusted teachers and leaders who embodied wise and loving care.”

‘We did fine together’

The word “embodied” came up in many of these conversations, most of which were over Zoom. Even from thousands of miles apart, we could sit face-to-face, read each other’s expressions and share time together. We saw each other’s homes and held up the books we were reading. We spoke of our daily lives. The rush to get the family ready to go skiing. The excitement of a grandchild about to arrive.

I suppose that much of what we said could have been produced by artificial intelligence. A chatbot might have suggested a wider reading list or come up with better historical parallels. But I think we did fine together, this collection of preachers, teachers, parents and students, all teasing out our personal thoughts about this new cultural moment.

As with any technology, we need to talk about the role we want AI to play in our lives. We can choose – as humans often choose – to opt for convenience, outsourcing our thinking to something that does it more quickly. Or we can use this technology as a chance to deepen. We can ask ourselves hard questions about what we value in our encounters and exchanges, and why and how we might honour that, whatever new tools we might use.

This article is a collaboration between two faith-based publications, Christian Courier and Broadview, who are publishing simultaneously.