Pastors worried about ChatGPT doth protest too much

Yeah, religious leaders are freaking their heads out, per the AP, about ChatGPT writing AI sermons.

In part, maybe they're worried it's better than them:

Todd Brewer, a New Testament scholar and managing editor of the Christian website Mockingbird, wrote in December about an experiment of his own -- asking ChatGPT to write a Christmas sermon for him. 

He was specific, requesting a sermon “based upon Luke’s birth narrative, with quotations from Karl Barth, Martin Luther, Irenaeus of Lyon, and Barack Obama.” 

Brewer wrote that he was “not prepared” when ChatGPT responded with a creation that met his criteria and “is better than several Christmas sermons I’ve heard over the years.” 

“The A.I. even seems to understand what makes the birth of Jesus genuinely good news,” Brewer added.

There you go.

On the other hand, Brewer went on to voice what many other people claimed in the piece:

Yet the ChatGPT sermon “lacks any human warmth,” he wrote. “The preaching of Artificial Intelligence can’t convincingly sympathize with the human plight.”

Problem?

Yes, and not with ChatGPT.

This is social science 101 problem; There's no double-blinded study on the AI sermons lacking a heart, soul, emotions or whatever.

Riffing on Tales of Whoa, who I saw post this a couple of weeks ago (and from whence the idea for last Saturday's post came), this is exactly NOT a Turing test, for exactly that reason.

Let's go next to Mike Glenn:

In Brentwood, Tennessee, Mike Glenn, senior pastor for 32 years at Brentwood Baptist Church, wrote a blog post in January after a computer-savvy assistant joked that Glenn could be replaced by an AI machine. “I’m not buying it,” Glenn wrote. “AI will never be able to preach a decent sermon. Why? Because the gospel is more than words. It’s the evidence of a changed life.”

And, the well-known Russell Moore:

Also weighing in with an online essay was the Rev. Russell Moore, formerly head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy division and now editor-in-chief of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. He confided to his readers that his first sermon, delivered at age 12, was a well-intentioned mess. 

“Preaching needs someone who knows the text and can convey that to the people — but it’s not just about transmitting information,” Moore wrote. “When we listen to the Word preached, we are hearing not just a word about God but a word from God.” 

“Such life-altering news needs to be delivered by a human, in person,” he added. “A chatbot can research. A chatbot can write. Perhaps a chatbot can even orate. But a chatbot can’t preach.”

Well, a chatbot can't preach, but a humanoid robot could, especially with a megachurch with satellite campuses seeing a video sermon.

As I told Tales, first of all, pastors, priests and rabbis have been preaching out of sermon books for decades if not centuries. And, whether canned sermons or their own, despite homiletic delivery training, many of them can't preach that well, either. Per Moore, they either write or deliver well-intentioned messes at 52. Beyond that, per Brewer, if I heard a pastor cite Irenaeus in a sermon outside a collegiate or divinity school campus chapel, I'd think him clueless for other reasons.

What I really see this worry covering is a follow-on to COVID slashing church attendance. With the rise of the "nones" being accelerated by that, these pastors are worried that, instead of the old time cable channels like Trinity Broadcasting, per what I said above about video sermons, you're going to get chatbot-robot sermons streaming on YouTube.

Beyond that, metaphysics aside, if you're worried enough to claim a ChatGPT doesn't have "soul," maybe your own sermons don't? And, besides, sermons aren't the only part of pastoral ministry. Maybe you're not doing good counseling? Not making hospital and homebound visits? Of course, at megachurches, the grifting chief pastor doesn't do that anyway.