AI & Spirituality

Drew Dickens

"The AI & Spirituality Podcast" explores the fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence and human spirituality, examining how emerging AI technologies reshape religious practices, personal faith journeys, and ethical considerations. Through thoughtful discussion and real-world examples, this podcast helps listeners explore the latest advancements and navigate the profound implications of AI in their spiritual lives.

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21 episodes
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English

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Tuesday · 2 min
How To Make Sunday's 'Non-Downloadable."
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ If the sermon is online by one o'clock, why get up at six? Drawing on Carey Nieuwhof's AI and the Future Church, Drew stands on both sides of the wall, pulpit and pew, to explore what no machine can reproduce: faces, tables, and being known by name. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
September 10 · 3 min
GPT6 Astra: The AI That Won't Guess
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ A pastor fills a two-second silence with a comforting lie. A king cannot wait seven days. And in one extraordinary week, ten thousand AI agents show their work while the humans around them refuse to. What do they all have in common? Everything that matters! https://drewdickens.substack.com/
August 4 · 3 min
The Pew Is Ahead of the Pulpit
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What if your congregation is further down the AI road than you are? New Barna research asked pastors and the people they lead the same questions. Fifty-four percent of practicing Christians would trust AI with their sense of purpose. Six percent of pastors would. Drew explores the gap nobody sees. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
July 28 · 3 min
The Philosophers In The Machine
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ AI labs are hiring philosophers because their engineers hit questions code cannot close. One of them: where does purpose come from in a world without work? Drew explores what philosophy can defend, what only revelation can secure, and why the church may be misreading the most important assignment of the decade. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
July 21 · 3 min
The Algorithm in the Assembly
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ A German congregation watched an AI preach. A Swiss chapel put an AI Jesus in a confessional. Now every church must answer the question underneath: what is the church, actually? Drew explores how AI is reshaping preaching, pastoral care, and governance, and why the assembly itself can never be generated. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
July 14 · 3 min
The Ministry of One Shepherd With 1,000 Hands
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ Silicon Valley says one person plus AI can now run a billion-dollar company. This spring, someone tried, and the unraveling stunned everyone. From Jethro's intervention to the circuit riders, Drew traces what shepherds can delegate, what must stay human, and why trust is ministry's whole product. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
July 7 · 3 min
The Day It Switches Off
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ When a government directive switched off the world's most powerful AI for three weeks, millions felt something unexpected: withdrawal. Drew traces the fast nobody chose through wilderness manna, Egypt's horses, and silent medieval bells, asking what our scramble for substitutes reveals, and how interruption becomes introduction to the God who stays. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
June 30 · 3 min
The Ghost in the Feed
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ The internet has quietly stopped being human. Most content is now synthetic, AI companies are hiring philosophers to manage the fallout, and vulnerable people are turning to chatbots for guidance that belongs in a pastor's office. Drew asks: if Westminster answered 'what is a human for' in 1647, why are we letting Silicon Valley answer it now? https://drewdickens.substack.com/
June 22 · 3 min
The Temptation to Go Silent
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens when you hand your voice to a machine and ask it to speak for you? A generation is being tempted to go silent, to outsource expression, identity, and even prayer. This week, Drew explores the theology of voice, the rough draft as sacred ground, and the God who still insists on the stuttering prophet. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
June 16 · 2 min
The 'Instant Everything' Problem
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens to the soul when every hard question comes with an instant answer? AI delivers information on demand. But formation has never moved that fast. This week, we explore the spiritual cost of frictionless faith, why God will not be googled, and what the church can offer that no algorithm can. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
June 8 · 3 min
Ordinary Time, On Purpose
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ The AI news cycle doesn't have a Sabbath mode. This week, Anthropic filed toward a trillion-dollar valuation. SpaceX and OpenAI follow soon. The noise is real, and it's accelerating. But the church just entered Ordinary Time, the slow green season of formation. Drew explores what the liturgical calendar knows that Silicon Valley doesn't. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
June 2 · 3 min
"Writing Software, Or Midwifing a Deity?"
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ Venture capitalist Bill Gurley says "Anthropic isn't writing software, they're midwifing a deity." Is he right? This episode traces the surprising parallel between AI's Recursive Self-Improvement and Christian sanctification, and reveals why this point is both where the analogy breaks down and where the gospel gets most interesting. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
May 26 · 2 min
Magnificent Humanity: What Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical Means for Your Faith and the Future of AI
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens to your soul when a pope steps into the AI conversation and names what you've been feeling all along? Today, Drew unpacks Pope Leo XIV's landmark encyclical Magnifica Humanitas — a sweeping theological response to artificial intelligence that asks every Christian to consider: are we building the Tower of Babel, or Jerusalem? https://drewdickens.substack.com/
May 19 · 3 min
The Core Threat - "Averaged Out": When AI Interprets the Church, Vague Theology Disappears
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens when someone asks AI about God instead of asking your church? The internet just changed its rules, from attention to interpretation. Drew explores why vague theology gets averaged out, what the church must learn from the marketing world, and how specificity and church FAQs might be the most spiritual act left. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
May 12 · 2 min
The Quiet Catechism: When AI Becomes the First Voice a Believer Hears
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens to a soul that learns to seek guidance from something that can never actually know it? Millions of Christians are quietly outsourcing their most spiritually significant questions to AI and the church is largely silent. This episode examines the data, the history, and what pastors owe their people right now. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
May 5 · 4 min
What AI Is Really Giving Us (And What It Can't)
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What if 900 million people turning to AI every week isn't really about productivity? This episode maps the three biggest consumer AI use cases onto three ancient longings -- for help, to be known, and to not be alone -- and asks what the church has to offer that no algorithm ever will. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
April 28 · 2 min
The Policy Gap: Why Churches and Families Need an AI Covenant Now
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What happens when the most spiritually formative conversations in your child's life are happening with a machine — and your church has nothing to say about it? The silence isn't wisdom. It's abdication. This episode explores why churches and families need an AI covenant now, and how to build one. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
April 21 · 3 min
The Great AI & Spiritual Divergence
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What if the church's biggest AI problem isn't using it wrong — it's not knowing what it's actually become? While pastors draft emails with language models, Silicon Valley's agents are resisting shutdown, military targeting systems are raising accountability questions, and 75% of AI's economic gains flow to a handful of companies. The Great Divergence is here. Is the church paying attention? https://drewdickens.substack.com/
April 14 · 3 min
What Does It Mean To "Learn" : On AI, Pedagogy, and the Wisdom That Still Requires a Teacher
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What does it mean to truly learn something when AI can recall any fact, explain any concept, and complete almost any task on demand? In this episode, Drew explores how artificial intelligence has shattered the foundations of teaching and formation — and what wisdom, not information, now requires of us. https://drewdickens.substack.com/
April 6 · 1 min
Did God Actually Say...? (or, Why AI Makes Us Feel Creepy)
https://drewdickens.substack.com/ What if the most unsettling question of the digital age — "Is this AI?" — is actually the oldest question in the Bible? From the serpent's whisper in Genesis 3 to the Logos of John's Gospel, Drew traces what happens to the human soul when we can no longer trust the words we hear. https://drewdickens.substack.com/

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