What A.I. robotic preaching might really sound like

Among the various publications and organizations for which I write is a service that provides model sermons for Christian pastors.

The idea of "Proclaim Sermons" is not to let preachers escape their weekly duties by simply reciting a Proclaim sermon as if they had written it themselves. Rather it's to give them another resource related to the weekly lectionary selection of Bible verses on which sermons often are based. If they need an example of how someone might approach this week's biblical texts they can find a Proclaim sermon based on those texts and then decide if that might be a path forward for them.

Preaching, after all, is serious business. Which is to say that the preacher's job is to provide the congregation with what the church considers to be the word of God as found in the biblical text and then to make it clear to listeners what the preacher thinks God is really saying to them. This work is not for the faint of heart.

At any rate, I know from experience what it takes to write and deliver a sermon based on biblical texts and I can tell you it's a very human and humbling enterprise. Which is why I am profoundly skeptical of the idea of using Artificial Intelligence to produce such sermons. The author of the article notes this: "Our tendency to conflate quick responses with correct responses when talking to humans also transfers onto the chatbot, which we can’t help but personify. A fast and confident-sounding chatbot may mimic the authoritative voice of a reference work, and it may draw from and contribute to our habits of laziness when seeking out truth and our impatience when engaging each other."

Later in the article is this: "Some clerics have voiced concerns about A.I. writ large, ranging from the pastoral – how should a priest help a parishioner following an automation layoff? – to the theological – can an LM be possessed by a demon?" (LM in that sentence means "language model," but I'll leave it to you to take it from there.)

Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to write a sermon based on the journey of the Magi (often called the three Wise Men) to see the Christ child in Bethlehem. The story is told in Matthew 2:1-12, and is the subject of the latest sermon I just turned in to Proclaim Sermons (we write way ahead). I first turned in my sermon and only then asked ChatGPT for its version.

My sermon ran, according to Proclaim guidelines for its writers, about 1,600 words. The ChatGPT sermon clocked in at a tidy 550 words, including its opening two words, "Dear Beloved" and also counting the next five scintillating words: "Today, we gather to reflect. . ." By which time many of the people in the pews of my congregation would be drifting toward doing what author Kurt Vonnegut says people come to church to do: Daydream about God.

By comparison, I will give you no comparison of that A.I. sermon to what I wrote for my Matthew 2:1-12 sermon because mine is proprietary. It belongs to Proclaim Sermons now. But I sure as hell didn't start out the way the ChatGPT sermon began.

The rest of the ChatGPT sermon contained nothing outrageous or objectionable. But it was almost entirely devoid of life, of surprises, of fresh language. It was the theological equivalent of an average sixth-grader's theme on the subject of why rules of discipline in a school are important. Snore.

What I have concluded is that I should -- at least so far in the development of A.I. -- always and everywhere resist the idea that serious Christian sermons (or sermons in any faith tradition) should come from ChatGPT or any A.I. source. Perhaps some day, long into the future, the technology may have developed enough that A.I. could produce at least a model for a sermon that has an original idea.

As for how scientists can plan for that day, I turn to this reliable adage: Man plans, God laughs.

(The image here today came from here.)

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ESTES PARK, Colo. -- There won't be the usual second item here today because I'm in Colorado for a brief reunion of people with whom I went to school in India when I was a boy. Yes, I grew up in Woodstock, Ill., and, for a time, attended Woodstock School in India, but the same-name deal was simply a coincidence. Indeed, I have several other Woodstocks in my life.