In this new year, an unexpected presence will slip into many church sanctuaries, quietly and almost politely: A line in the sermon that began as a chatbot prompt. A prayer drafted by an AI tool because the volunteer who normally writes it is exhausted. A bilingual announcement translated instantly for a mixed-language congregation.
I’ve watched this from the inside as a churchgoer and from the outside as an AI ethics university professor. I have heard fellow believers ask a chatbot to generate a sermon on the same passage their pastor preached, then say, half-joking and half-serious, that the machine “preached better.”
Haileleol Tibebu
AI will reshape Christianity less by replacing faith than by rewriting the conditions of trust: Who gets to speak with authority, what counts as authentic and whether communities can still recognize truth.
That matters beyond church walls because Christianity remains the largest religious identity in America. Pew Research reports 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christian in its 2023 to 2024 Religious Landscape Study.
That is tens of millions of lives, families, charities, schools and civic institutions. When AI changes how Christians learn, worship, give, argue and forgive, it changes public life too.
“When AI changes how Christians learn, worship, give, argue and forgive, it changes public life too.”
There is a hopeful version of this story, and it deserves attention. In many congregations, the most obvious benefit is access. AI translation and summarization can help churches communicate across languages, which matters for immigrants, international students and multilingual households.
AI can generate captions and transcripts quickly for people who need them. For pastors and volunteers stretched thin, it can help with research, outlines and editing, easing the mechanical load so human attention can go where it belongs: hospital visits, mentoring and the slow work of care.
You can see why some clergy are open to it and why others hesitate.
Barna reported in 2024 that only 12% of pastors were comfortable using AI to write sermons, while 43% saw merit in using it for sermon preparation and research, and 6% were comfortable using it as a counseling tool. The point is not that pastors are refusing the tools; many are still deciding where the tool ends and the calling begins.
That boundary already is being tested in public. In 2023, Pastor Jay Cooper of Violet Crown City Church in Austin used ChatGPT to generate an entire worship service, including the sermon, and later said the result felt stilted and “the heart was missing.”
More recently, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Helsinki held Finland’s first church service created mostly by AI. Attendees described it as interesting, even entertaining, while also noting what was missing: warmth and personal connection.
That is the heart of the issue. The same features that make AI useful for speed, fluency and imitation also make it dangerous in the places where religion depends on human credibility.
“The same features that make AI useful for speed, fluency and imitation also make it dangerous in the places where religion depends on human credibility.”
AI can generate confident answers about theology, Scripture and church history without accountability to a tradition, denomination or pastor. It can sound wise while quietly making things up or blending incompatible doctrines into one smooth paragraph. In moments of grief or fear, confidence can feel like competence. In religious life, a wrong answer is not just misinformation; it can redirect conscience.
Then there is authenticity. A sermon is not merely a text. It is a relationship. Congregations do not only listen for ideas. They listen for moral presence. They want to know the preacher has sat with the words, wrestled with them, prayed through them and brought them back to the community with honesty. If a pastor quietly outsources that work, the damage is not merely stylistic, it is relational.
People already share confession-like details with AI chatbots: shame, addiction, depression, abuse, money, panic. That data does not live inside the confidentiality norms people assume when they hear “pastoral care.” It moves through systems churches do not control.
And then there is the simplest danger, the one that will hit churches quickly if they ignore it: Fraud.
Recently the FBI warned Americans that holiday scams are being supercharged by artificial intelligence, including voice cloning and convincing fake videos. The FBI press release describes voice clones and believable fake videos as tools scammers use to deceive, and it reports more than 9,000 AI-related complaints in the first seven months of 2025.
A few weeks earlier, Ascension Press posted a blunt alert: Numerous AI-generated fake videos were circulating online that impersonated Father Mike Schmitz, including clips of him supposedly asking for money and delivering sermons he never gave. “These are all scams,” the organization wrote.
There is an obvious counterargument. The church always has adapted. The printing press spread Scripture. Radio and television expanded preaching. Livestreams carried worship during the pandemic. In that sense, AI is simply the next tool.
“AI is not only a new channel. It is a new kind of imitation.”
But AI is not only a new channel. It is a new kind of imitation.
A microphone amplifies your voice. AI can manufacture a voice that is not yours and persuade people it is. A printing press copies texts. AI can generate endless original-looking content that resembles the product of prayer and study without being either. The risk is not that AI exists. The risk is that it can mimic moral authority while being accountable to no one.
So what must churches do now, not in a theoretical future?
They do not need to panic. They need standards that are simple enough to remember.
First, tell the truth about the words. If AI significantly shaped what a congregation is asked to receive as spiritual guidance, sermons, prayers or devotionals, leaders should say so because trust is sacred. Hidden automation hollows out credibility from the inside.
Second, keep pastoral care human. Use AI for logistics, translation drafts, editing and research support. Do not use it as a substitute for confession, counseling, spiritual direction in crisis or anything involving vulnerable disclosure. When someone is in pain, the point is not a fast answer. The point is a faithful presence that can listen, carry responsibility and stay.
Third, treat verification as a form of discipleship. Assume voice clones and fake donation pages already are circulating. Build simple habits: Call-back verification with known numbers, one verified donation link. Tell congregants clearly that staff will not request gift cards or emergency wiring by text.
Christianity is not a set of beautiful sentences. It is a claim about presence. Incarnation means God does not save the world through perfectly generated paragraphs. God comes close.
A candlelight service works because it is fragile and real. The light passes from hand to hand. You can feel the heat. You can see the faces beside you. In an age of synthetic speech, that may be Christianity’s most countercultural gift — not smarter words, but embodied presence.
Haileleol Tibebu serves as assistant professor at the University of Illinois, is a Public Voices Fellow at The OpEd Project and founder of African Voice AI, which amplifies African perspectives in AI development and policymaking.