AI is coming for your pastor’s job.
As more Gen Z and millennials turn to AI for spiritual advice, a new survey from Barna Group and faith tech company Gloo has found that two in five feel the guidance they’re getting is just as trustworthy as asking a pastor. In other words, for a lot of people, the list of “trusted spiritual authorities” in their life now puts the guy behind the pulpit and the app in their pocket on the same plane.
The research suggests Christians aren’t just turning to AI for curiosity. Roughly four in 10 practicing Christians said AI has helped them with prayer or spiritual growth.
Here comes the awkward part: it’s proven that ChatGPT gives bad advice.
Take a recent University of Oxford-led study on AI chatbots and medical decision-making, for example. Researchers found people using popular chatbots often struggled to land on the right answer, performing about as well as people using Google in the same scenarios.
The bigger issue was not simply what the bots “know.” The Oxford team flagged a messy, predictable human problem: people rarely give clean, complete information. Users leave out key details, misunderstand what they’re being told or ignore guidance they don’t like, which means even a confident-sounding response can be built on partial inputs and shaky assumptions.
“Spirituality and religion have always involved placing trust in forces beyond human understanding,” said Douglas Yeung, a senior behavioral and social scientist at RAND. “But crucially, that trust has been mediated through human institutions—clergy, religious texts, and communities built on centuries of wisdom and accountability.”
That gap matters when people start treating AI like a trustworthy authority for high-stakes questions, whether that’s “Should I go to urgent care?” or “What should I do with my life?”
“Though the majority of practicing Christians remain the most cautious about embracing AI as a spiritual tool, their views are shifting and remain largely uninformed by their pastor,” Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research, said. “There’s a real opportunity here for pastors to disciple their congregants on how to use this technology in a beneficial way, especially as pastors remain among the most trusted guides for integrating faith and technology.”
