AI Religion and How It All Ends

The Singularity Pings for Thee

Alright.

What started as a single essay surveying the state of American religion circa 2025 expanded into a six part series. (start at the beginning here so you don’t miss the fun)

But now we’re on the final homestretch—exploring what the advent of artificial intelligence is doing, and might do to our sense of the Sublime.

In the first essay I wrote about surveying the religious scene:

At first I wanted to map this onto a tidy 2x2 chart that would make a McKinsey MBA proud.

Two axes, with four neat buckets to capture everything I was talking about.

Either I’m past my prime and can no longer conjure such things, or there’s more than two axes at play here.

So for now, will just map it on a single line from More Traditional to Least Traditional and I’ll try and describe the variations and mutations as we go.

After mapping out the full spectrum from the weird return to traditional Orthodoxy all the way to the advent of Silicon Religion, I think I’ve got a more helpful visual image.

You can still see it as a progression from Most Traditional to Most Emergent going from left to right on a line.

But for each stop on the scale, there’s a trap door that leads to a different, darker and altogether more concerning variant that we should be wary of.

For instance:

Underneath the nostalgic turn towards ultra orthodoxy (either Catholic of Eastern) lurks a trap door into arch-traditional Opus Dei hair shirts, flogging and Supreme Court packing.

Or to Confederate loving Putin stans who lift weights, tote AR-15s and hate the gays.

These strange mutations highlight the “Cradle vs. Convert” schizophrenia in the traditionalist movement more broadly.

Folks born and raised within Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (the “Cradles”), for instance, tend to harbor deep reverence for their Church Fathers, and defer to the hierarchy for guidance.

But the Converts, like JD Vance to Catholicism and the Texas “Ortho-Bros” to Eastern Orthodoxy? Not so much. They’ve come to these religious faiths from an extremely online culture war angle, and tend to dismiss the findings of their popes and bishops if they appear too conciliatory or soft.

THE CONVERTS HAVE ENCOUNTERED MEDIEVAL THEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS IN A VACUUM DEVOID OF COMMUNITY AND WHEN THEY DO ENCOUNTER THESE LIVING COMMUNITIES […] THEY ARE FREQUENTLY SURPRISED…

LAYPEOPLE ATTACKING THEIR HIERARCHS IS ABOUT THE LEAST “TRAD” THING ONE CAN DO. IT REVEALS JUST HOW LITTLE THESE CONVERSIONS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING ORGANIC TO THESE TRADITIONS, BUT ARE INSTEAD AN ACT OF REBELLION AGAINST THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM, WITH A DOSE OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION THROWN IN.

(see if you can spot all the crosses!)

#deusvult

#incelsforjesus

So that’s Trap Door #1, located directly underneath what might at first be viewed as a comforting return to obedient tradition–Cosplay Fascism for Western Civ.

Onto Trap Door #2.

This one lives underneath the floorboards of the Fundamentalist MegaChurch. What at first might seem like friendly, welcoming Jesus Rock and aww-shucks preaching actually harbors some anti-semitic “Christ-killer” riffs , homophobic “Sodomite” slurs and even downright un-democratic leanings.

You won’t pick up on it in the broad daylight of the Sunday morning “seekers services.” (those are intentionally designed not to scare aware the newcomers).

But hang around long enough, start attending mid-week classes and Bible studies, and you just might catch a whiff of the real church lurking off line.

from The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows

A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism.

At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy.

It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly utopian.

It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. Early leaders called it the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a rebranding effort as the antidemocratic character of the movement has come to light.

And people who have never heard the name are nonetheless adopting the movement’s central ideas. These include the belief that God speaks through modern-day apostles and prophets. That demonic forces can control not only individuals, but entire territories and institutions.

That the Church is not so much a place as an active “army of God,” one with a holy mission to claim the Earth for the Kingdom as humanity barrels ever deeper into the End Times.

Charming! And utterly batshit crazy. Mainline Protestantism this isn’t.

Trap Door #3, the one that hides beneath the Prosperity Gospel churches and their kissing cousins in the New Age/Law of Attraction world is more sadly predictable than sinister.

Though taken to its extreme, can still be lethal.

That’s the Christian multi-level marketing plays of Amway (remember that old door to door shilling of household cleaning products? It’s former Trump Secretary of Ed Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince of Blackwater’s billionaire family!) And don’t forget Gwen Shamblin (the crazy self appointed Jesus guru with the giant hair) and her Christian weight loss program.

And on the New Age side of the fence, you get “Pastel Q-Anon” all the anti-vax, colloidal silver, quack remedy natural mommy bloggers that bent hard for Q-Anon conspiracies during COVID and haven’t let up since.

(see: MAHA, #savethechildren)

After all, once you’ve broken your brain to believe that thoughts become things and you manifest reality (vs. do your best to live in it), pretty much anything else is on the table!

So that’s the first three stops on our tour—Arch traditionalism all the way to New Age Law of Attraction. On the surface level, each can provide meaning, comfort, and community for seekers.

But underneath, there are darker, more extreme variants that can attract and seduce the unwary.

***

Which now brings us to the doorstep of today’s final chapter: the rise of AI in religion.

First, the surface level–AI augmented religion.

From the Nuns of TikTok, shucking and jiving in their habits and showing that they’re funny, relatable and digitally savvy,

to Mindar, a million dollar Buddhist android at a Kyoto temple dispensing Bodhisattvic wisdom

We are seeing a morphing and shaping of traditional faiths supplemented by AI.

This, much like the trend in college essays and peer-reviewed academic papers, seems like it only goes one way–into the Uncanny Valley.

Almost human. But. Just. Not. Quite.

Better than what a mediocre minister might come up with, if pressed for time writing their own sermons.

Think: Successories posters made by Ned Flanders

But a long way from the searing prose and gnostic insights of St. Francis, or Leonard Cohen.

So what happens when we optimize LLMs to tell us soothing bedtime stories about the human condition, all with just enough plot to make it passable?

AI SpiritSlop.

Copies of copies of copies.

Regressing from the mean to the mediocre.

Often soothing. Rarely soaring. Never searing.

Will we even notice this turn towards McSpirituality?

Or will synthetic soul food just make us all spiritually obese?

(collard greens are out. soylent green is in)

***

Next week: the payoff for the setup, Trap Door #4 underneath AI augmented religion.

Through the floorboards and into the realm of autonomous AI religion

–what Elon Musk, back in an earlier, more innocent time called “summoning the demon.”