A Helpful Partner in Theologizing About AI

On my review of "AI Goes to Church" for The Gospel Coalition

Earlier this morning, my review of Todd Korpi’s AI Goes to Church was published on The Gospel Coalition. You can read the review here, but as the TL;DR–it doesn’t always live up to its own ideals, but it’s a good read when playing to its strengths.

Korpi’s book is not the first book on AI and the church–other books on this subject include The Church and AI (which I have skimmed, but not fully read) and AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep (which still remains my go-to recommendation even after reading Korpi’s book). There will be a cottage industry of AI-and-church type books emerging at some point over the next several years just as there was with social media. Most of these books will end up being forgettable, but despite my criticisms of his book, I don’t think Korpi’s book will be one of them.

AI Goes to Church is ambitious in its scope–almost too ambitious at times. When Korpi tries to bite off more than he can chew in a single chapter, he resorts to quickly telling you what to think (or indulges in speculative opinion) in contrast to his stated goal in training you on how to think. But in the parts of the book that fulfill that goal, Korpi’s insights have remained with me long after I finished reading and annotating his book. I look forward to engaging directly with some of his sharper insights over the coming months.

The biggest thing that I appreciated in his emphasis that the church is more prepared to deal with AI than we realize. Unlike with smartphones and social media, we do not have to be reactive to the environment around us; we can proactively theologize about AI with an aim towards longevity in our thinking. My Digital Babylon framework was largely born as a reactionary analysis, but while I’ve not written much on the framework as of late, I’ve found the categories of event, empire, and epoch are excellent starting points for helping me think through AI in my own ministry. In addition to applying lessons we’ve learned over the past twenty years to AI, we have more resources at our disposal to meet the needs of the moment and speak with distinctly Christian voices on this issue, and not simply contextualize secular media ecologists and experts.

Should you read AI Goes to Church? It depends. If you’re in pastoral ministry, my default recommendation remains AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep, which has proven far more helpful to me in on-the-ground pastoral ministry than Korpi’s book. But if you’re interested in Christian theologizing about AI, Korpi’s book will be worth your time. While he is generally pro-AI overall, his unique contributions and emphases are ones that those of us who are more AI-skeptical will find illuminating even if there is disagreement along the way. Writers are at their best when they are thinking through blind spots raised by others, and Korpi is a helpful partner to that end.

Thanks for reading this newsletter (and, hopefully, my review). Next week’s newsletter will be based on my segment on Carmen LaBerge’s show earlier that morning (likely on AI Genetics, but not certain), and then the week after that I will be writing about the single most disturbing thing I’ve ever read about the Internet and what it means for discipling young men.

Together, we are passing through Digital Babylon.

Austin