About a month ago, I posted on Reddit, Facebook, and an email listserv, and reached out to folks around Birmingham, looking for people to talk to about something I didn't realize would be so controversial: how people were using AI to practice their faith.
Some users messaged me privately; they said they were worried about being “piled-up on” by anti-AI folks online, and I understood what they meant pretty quickly. Reactions to my posts ridiculed the idea of using AI for any type of spiritual support. When I did speak with people, I learned that they used AI to process their own thoughts, quickly source verses from scripture, and to compare perspectives from different faiths. One person I spoke to, though, left me particularly curious: Kyser Thompson.
Thompson founded and runs AI for the Rest of Us, a consulting firm that helps companies and organizations integrate AI into their workflow, including churches. I visited him at his downtown office building – a modern space inside an older industrial building right next to the train tracks. At his office, Thompson lowered his standing desk, closed the glass doors and we talked.
I asked what his elevator pitch to churches sounds like. He told me he encourages them to consider AI for executive and administrative tasks like accounting and managing records.
“I do not go into churches, organizations, and say, ‘Hey, use ChatGPT to write your sermons.’ I do not go in there and say, ‘Hey, use it to help you with pastoral care,’ or use it as a replacement. Of course, I don't say this for therapy or your church members needing some sort of counseling,” Thompson said.
Thompson has visited churches around town, varying in size and denomination, to explain what AI is, how it’s being used and how churches can start integrating it. His main goal is to clarify misinformation, especially since people can find it polarizing. He reminded me that AI isn’t brand new. Netflix recommendations, credit card fraud alerts and social media algorithms are all forms of AI. The new technology is generative AI, such as Claude and ChatGPT.
As part of his presentation, Thompson also shares his concerns about AI. He has three.
The first is companionship.
“These are tools that are quite literally built to be your companion, to be a friend, to be a girlfriend, to be a therapist, to be really anything you can think of,” Thompson said.
The second concern is cognitive offloading.
“The whole idea of these tools doing the thinking for you – why would I share that with churches? I think that it’s forming us into a different type of people.
“One of the big tenets of [being a Christian] is the Bible and studying the Bible and reading scripture and knowing God and having God know you. There’s thinking involved, there’s reasoning involved, and if that declines, then that is concerning,” Thompson said.
His third concern has to do with the value of work and how the prospect of AI taking people’s jobs affects what he sees as a biblical understanding of labor. He brought up Genesis 2 and one of the first things God communicated to Adam.
“‘This land is for you to work. This land is for you to till the soil. You are to grow plants, and you are to be in charge of this,’” Thompson said. “I mean, that’s pretty important. Work is, I believe, one of the big things that we were created to do here on this Earth. And so when that’s gone, what happens?”
Despite those concerns, Thompson is not pessimistic about AI. In fact, he uses it for pretty much everything. He told me he was using it when I walked into his office, and before he starts any task, he runs it through Claude, either for the tool to complete the task for him or to map out how he’ll tackle it himself.
That AI use extends to his faith. As a devout Christian, Thompson reads the Bible, with commentary or a devotional for context and guidance, and meditates on it. But he also programmed Claude to give him perspectives from famous theologians and schools of thought.
“It doesn’t always do that, but it’s helpful. It’s a helpful, what I’ll call study companion,” Thompson said.
Still, Thompson said AI has limits when it comes to faith. He told me about a pastor he didn't want to name. The pastor had a busy week and was thrown off schedule. By Saturday night, he didn’t have his sermon prepared and turned to AI to help him write it.
“The other choice that he could have made, and he probably would have made with these tools not around, is to get on his knees and ask the Holy Spirit to put something in his heart to be able to speak to his people tomorrow, and trust and have faith that what he delivers the next day is going to be from the Holy Spirit.
“Because if you just think about it, if you just look at his week, it's like, why wouldn't God answer that? Why wouldn't God show up to a faithful person on his knees being like, ‘I need you. I cannot do this by myself,’” Thompson said.
He was clear he wasn’t judging the pastor. Thompson said he’s taken plenty of shortcuts in his own life.
“But are we choosing an AI shortcut, or are we choosing faith and complete reliance and dependence on God?”
Thompson said that as a believer, he hopes he would choose the second option every time. He said turning to AI for spiritual answers is like putting your faith in a machine.
Advancing technology has shaped religion for centuries. The printing press, television, and even Zoom have changed how people practice their faith. Is AI merely the latest technology in that line? Or is it something more? That’s what Kyser Thompson and the many faithful around the world are figuring out.
