Christian Ministry and AI

It is time for believers to reclaim their minds – and the Holy Spirit:

There can be a fine line between laziness and new technologies. Often new developments mean we can save time and effort, which is normally a good thing. A slide rule was quicker and easier than pencil and paper for doing mathematical calculations. And a pocket calculator was even better still.

Gas- and electric-powered lawn mowers can be much preferred to the old manual mowers. And yet, some folks might prefer the latter, as they enjoy the exercise and so on. And things like electric vehicles seem to have many pros and cons. So to some extent new technologies can be a mixed bag.

But here I want to make the case against the new technologies when it comes to Christian ministry. I especially have in mind using things like AI, ChatGPT and the like to aid – or worse yet, take the place of – human effort in sermon preparation, podcasts, book and article writing, Bible teaching, leading worship, and so on.

That is a real worry. Let me go back a few decades: before AI and even the internet existed. I used to have to grade papers of theology students, and I always had to be on the lookout for plagiarism. Sometimes it was rather easy to spot. But today such deception and cheating has become an artform with generative AI.

Something I have noted of late is when I come across well-intentioned Christians who write articles or create videos while heavily relying on AI and the like. Sure, making pictures and animations and so on with AI can be somewhat OK, but I am especially concerned about using it to create the content – to write Bible studies, articles, etc.

It is often not too hard to tell when some document or article is mostly the result of AI. It just does NOT read like anything human. It reads like a machine-generated piece. It has no life in it. It has no humanity in it. It has no personal creativity in it. And worst of all, it has no Holy Spirit in it.

Sure, the author might say he just used AI to tidy things up, streamline things, make it flow better, and so on. But to me most of these pieces appear to have come straight off the AI assembly line. Why in the world would I want to read pieces like that? If I am going to read about biblical and theological themes, I prefer the work of real humans who have wrestled with the issues, studied the Bible carefully, and prayerfully sought the aid of the Holy Spirit.

Just yesterday I was saying all this to a Christian couple. A few hours later a friend sent me a link to a new article by American Christian philosopher and author Douglas Groothuis. It so happens that I have written about these matters before, and in one piece I had quoted from Groothuis. As I wrote in that 2025 article:

There is no question that the world of AI is changing everything. For example, we already have generative AI replacing or modifying all sorts of human activities, including human creativity, be it in art or in music. And the world of writing is no exception.

 

I am not a Luddite, and AI can have its place – especially in saving time in various areas such as science, math and so on. But I have also long been warning about the dangers of AI. And it is not just concerns about machines replacing humans. The Christian has further concerns as well.

 

Yesterday a noted American Christian writer, teacher, apologist and social media friend posted this on his social media page: “I have never used a ghost writer nor AI for writing in my name. I never will. I believe in authentic authorship under God Almighty.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/12/09/writing-and-ai/

But consider his brand-new piece. It is titled “We Refuse it: A Manifesto on Generative AI Writing”. At just 850 words, it is worth sharing in its entirety. Doug begins this way:

Preface: We the Writers

 

As writers, we are compelled to protect the authenticity and integrity of published writing in the age of generative artificial intelligence. We, as human beings, have labored to write books, articles, editorials, reviews, and poems. These works flow from our knowledge, experience, and passions. We are servants of the Word, who lives (John 1:1-5). We have spent much of our lives learning how to research, write, rewrite, and edit our work. We have invested ourselves in our craft and many of us have mentored other writers. We understand both the inspiration that sometimes comes and fatigue of pounding out prose drop by drop. We have felt the flow of ideas as well as the headwinds of writer’s block. But we persevere because we are writers who must write and writers who love writing.

 

Our Principles

 

We care passionately about integrity in writing, because truth counts forever. Therefore, we document our sources; we avoid plagiarism; we avoid trite cliches; and we aspire to write clearly and truly about what matters. Some of us started writing on typewriters, then moved to primitive word processors, and now mostly write on sophisticated word processing systems. But we must fight off myriad AI intrusions, asking (or demanding) that we get “help” from AI. So, we try to ignore or disable—or go back to typewriters. But it is all terribly worse than that.

 

Invasive advertisements ask if we would like AI to “write our books.” This is the ultimate labor-saving device, we are told and sold. It is efficient and effective. It is a human-free but humanoid production of words. But it is not writing. This is not literature. This is forfeiture—the forfeiture of all that goes into our humanity as writers. We forfeit our minds, our wills, our discernment, our style, our mistakes, our joys and sorrows, and our boredom. We forfeit ourselves in the worst way—by self-betrayal, by literary suicide. We forfeit ourselves as authentic authors and pretend to write what we did not write and that which was not written at all, but only produced by a mindless textual machine. AI does much well, but it cannot write, and we must not let it master and denature us as writers. If text must be produced by AI, then let that be known and let no author’s name be affixed to it.

 

AI cannot read and it cannot write because it is not conscious, and thus it has neither will nor discernment. It believes nothing, feels nothing, and knows nothing. It is we human beings, made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), who read and write because we are conscious agents who desire knowledge and its benefits—at least when we are at our best. AI scans data and produces text. It is a machine. Some of it is impressive and some of it is even true. But we will not let that impress us as writers or replace us as writers.

And he finishes the piece with these words:

We Refuse It

 

We refuse it. The machine will not manacle our minds. We will never affix our names to text that we did not write. We will not outsource our personalities to impersonal programs, no matter how efficient or convincing or popular or profitable. We will not bear false witness (Exodus 20:16). We will not trust AI “research” if we cannot verify the source. We will disable or ignore AI suggestions on improving style. We will not let AI “edit” our work, but will rely on editors. We will interact with them on our terms. We will not use AI to “clarify” or to “sound more academic” or to “sound less academic” or to “write at a graduate school level” or for anything. We will not use AI to merge or edit documents. We will do research for ourselves. We will not use AI to save time if in saving time we lose our literary souls to AI.

 

We will teach others these commitments by precept and by example. As teachers, we will ban AI in the writing of our student’s papers. We will not use AI to grade students papers, since it knows nothing and can write nothing. We will evaluate our students work for ourselves. We yearn to teach students to develop their human potential in humane and personal ways, not to become technocratic text generators. We leave that to those who sell their souls to the Machine, God help them.

 

We are the beneficiaries and stewards of a great literary tradition of knowledge, most of it tracing back to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Students need this knowledge and this knowledge needs students to carry it on, as Sir Roger Scruton has written. We, the humans, have learned to think and write by reading books, by taking courses, by talking to people, and by writing books, articles, reviews, and letters. We are not about to trade in this blessed patrimony for the onslaught of AI slop.

 

Therefore, we refuse the literary suicide of AI. We will not forfeit our souls to the Machine. Join us, the human writers who must remain human in our writing. https://www.douglasgroothuis.com/post/we-refuse-it-a-manifesto-on-generative-ai-writing  

I guess Doug and I are old school. But I happen to agree with him 100 per cent. The new technologies can be a blessing in various ways. But they can also rob people of their souls, their minds, and their humanity. And they can rob Christians of prayer, deep study of Scripture, careful reading of biblical and theological texts, and of the Holy Spirit.

Sorry, but I do not want a Christian world devoid of these things. Indeed, it is NOT a Christian world at all if these things are absent. So I will keep sounding the alarm here, as will Doug. We need to reclaim what it means to be human, and what it means to be a Christian. The world of AI and the new technologies will keep eating away at this. It must be fiercely resisted.

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