Last week, we looked at how the Western church, represented by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer, viewed and navigated the wrappings and trappings of Christian worship in the light of the communication technology or medium of their times, culminating in today’s age of AI movies as the medium of Scripture.  In the Eastern…

I was going to show you a short video made by AI that has gone viral.   But mysteriously, the video (and in fact the producer’s whole account) was taken down from YouTube this week, but there’s something similar at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXwXXOVtXH4. It is not as sophisticated as the one I wanted to show you. The…

Last week we gazed into the crystal ball. We asked whether the AI that is already here—and the AI that is still coming—has the makings of a sacred, spiritual Shangri-La, or whether it will turn out to be a profane, secular Brave New World. Is it leading us toward Utopia—or Dystopia? Either way, the real…

Over the course of four Sabbaths, we’ve discussed some simple questions that have big consequences. We’ve asked: What is AI? What does it do to truth, trust, and community? What roles belong to intelligent machines, and what must stay human? We’ve acknowledged that today’s AI cannot be considered as a sentient being, let alone as…

Across this series, what I’ve been recounting is more than just a technology story: It’s a creation story. AI is a whole new kind of communication medium, because it talks back, it shapes our attention and even our cognition, and—if we let it—it can shape our spiritual life. We’ve examined AI’s “neo-oracular” role, which is…

We’ve looked at AI as the latest in a line of epochal communication technologies, each one reshaping human culture and spirituality. From the first spoken stories to printed scripture to the Internet, each shift expanded our capacity to seek, share, and shape meaning. Now, for the first time, we are in conversation not just with…