Clergy grapple with the ethics of using AI to write sermons; 90.5 WESA, July 17, 2025

Deena Prichep, 90.5 WESA; Clergy grapple with the ethics of using AI to write sermons

"AILSA CHANG, HOST:

On any given Sunday, churchgoers settle into pews and listen to a sermon. A member of the clergy uses text from the Bible and figures out what it has to say about our lives today, right? But how would you feel if you found out that sermon was written by artificial intelligence? Deena Prichep reports.

DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Writing and delivering sermons, homiletics if you're in the biz, is not an easy job.

NAOMI SEASE CARRIKER: It's like a mini research paper. You have to prepare every week, and some weeks, life is just a lot.

PRICHEP: Naomi Sease Carriker is pastor of Messiah of the Mountains Lutheran Church in North Carolina and recently had one of those weeks, so she popped open ChatGPT.

CARRIKER: And boom, 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.

PRICHEP: But she also thought...

CARRIKER: This feels wrong.

PRICHEP: It's an ethical question clergy across the country are wrestling with. When it comes to something like homework, the goal is students learning. So using AI can get in the way of that. But the goal of a sermon is basically to tell a story that can break open the hearts of people to a holy message. So does it matter where that comes from? Some denominations have issued general guidelines urging thought and caution, but they don't really mention specifics, given that the technology is changing so quickly. So clergy are left to figure it out themselves. Naomi Sease Carriker decided not to preach that AI sermon, but she does use the tech to get her draft started or wrap up what she's written with a nice conclusion, and that feels OK."

Artificial Intelligence in the pulpit: a church service written entirely by AI; United Church of Christ, July 16, 2024

Renee DeLuca , United Church of Christ; Artificial Intelligence in the pulpit: a church service written entirely by AI

"Would you attend a church service if you knew that it was written entirely by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program? What would your thoughts and feelings be about this use of AI?

That’s exactly what the Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter wanted to know — and he let his church members at the Congregational Church of Patchogue on Long Island, New York, know that was what he was intending to do on Sunday, July 14. He planned a service that included a call to worship, invocation, pastoral prayer, scripture reading, sermon, hymns, prelude, postlude and benediction with the use of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a free AI program developed by OpenAI, an Artificial Intelligence research company and released in 2022.

Taking fear and anger out of exploration

“My purpose is to take the fear and anger out of AI exploration and replace it with curiosity, flexibility and open-mindfulness,” said Wolter. “If, as widely claimed, churches need to adapt to survive, we might not recognize the church in 20 years if we could see it now; then AI will be a part of the church of the future. No matter what we presently think of it, it will be present in the future doing a lot of the thinking for us.”...

Wolter intends to follow up Sunday’s service with a reflection about how it went. On July 21, he will give a sermon about AI, with people offering input about the AI service. “We will discuss their reactions, feelings, thoughts, likes and dislikes, concerns and questions.” Wolter will follow with his synopsis sharing the benefits, criticisms, fears and concerns of AI...

Wolter believes we need to “disarm contempt prior to investigation,” when it comes to things like Artificial Intelligence. “AI is not going anywhere. It’s a tool–and with a shortage of clergy, money and volunteers, we will continue to rely on it.”"

The AI Ethicist: Fact or Fiction?; SSRN, Wharton University of Pennsylvania, November 20, 2023

 

Christian Terwiesch, University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department, Lennart Meincke, University of Pennsylvania; The Wharton School, Gideon Nave

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School; SSRN, Wharton University of Pennsylvania;

 The AI Ethicist: Fact or Fiction?

"Abstract

This study investigates the efficacy of an AI-based ethical advisor using the GPT-4 model. Drawing from a pool of ethical dilemmas published in the New York Times column “The Ethicist”, we compared the ethical advice given by the human expert and author of the column, Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, with AI-generated advice. The comparison is done by evaluating the perceived usefulness of the ethical advice across three distinct groups: random subjects recruited from an online platform, Wharton MBA students, and a panel of ethical decision-making experts comprising academics and clergy. Our findings revealed no significant difference in the perceived value of the advice between human generated ethical advice and AI-generated ethical advice. When forced to choose between the two sources of advice, the random subjects recruited online displayed a slight but significant preference for the AI-generated advice, selecting it 60% of the time, while MBA students and the expert panel showed no significant preference."