What is in Kelvin's Head?

AI Ethics Questions for Preachers

12/12/2025

The first time that I encountered ChatGPT was three years ago when I was staying in a seminary in the USA. It was a place dedicated to teaching theology and particularly to training Episcopal clergy.
The ChatGPT preview release was let loose on the world on 30 November 2022, so I must have discovered it very early on. AI has moved on significantly since then but at the time one could use it to render a piece of text in the voice of someone well-known. The entertainment at mealtimes was to give it a well-known piece of the Bible such as Psalm 23 and get it to rewrite the text in the voice of a well-known American politician.

The Lord is my shepherd — a truly incredible shepherd, by the way, the best. Nobody shepherds like He does!
I’m not going to want; I’ve got everything I need. Believe me!

This seemed very entertaining to the students though I suspect that the joke may not be quite so entertaining these days.

ChatGPT seemed an incredible plaything. A novelty. A curiosity. A wonderful new internet gewgaw.

Three years on and a lot of development later, AI has changed a lot even if people haven’t yet moved on quite so much and many are still using it primarily as a novelty. You can still ask ChatGPT to translate bits of the Bible into the voice of someone else. It still seems remarkable to many that a machine can write anything at all.

The primary thing that people think of when they think of text-based AI is still the creation of written material in response to some kind of prompt though there are vastly more interesting things that one can do with AI than you could back in the olden days of December 2022.

There have been a number of surveys released this year which focus on the use of AI by preachers and I thought that it might be interesting to mull over a few questions in order to think about the ethics of using AI in sermon generation.

The obvious question is perhaps the least interesting though I’m not 100% sure that it has a clear answer.

Is it ethical to preach a sermon generated by AI rather than something that you’ve thought up yourself?

I think many people might initially answer this question in the negative and be fairly sure that this isn’t OK. However, I find myself remembering being trained by clerics when I was first ordained and clearly remember being told – “If you find you don’t have a sermon of your own, then preach someone else’s”. In the intervening years, the internet has come of age and that has complicated this question. There are sites dedicated to providing sermons for particular Sundays. I sometimes read a few sermons by other people on a particular text before settling myself down to write one of my own. I suspect most people would think that was absolutely fine ethically – indeed it falls well within the learning and study that clerics are all supposed to pursue.

Would I lift an idea from someone else’s sermon?

Yes, absolutely.

You get to know the preachers who inspire you. I would pay particular tribute to the preaching of Fr Grant Gallup who, when he was alive preached audacious sermons. I think it is a positive good to catch hold of things that inspire you and let them inform your own thinking.

But would I lift a paragraph from someone else’s sermon?

No, I don’t think I would, though I have come across people who do. (And I’ve known people do it with things I’ve written).

I remember once assessing someone for a job and looking at some of the sermons that he had been preaching. Something didn’t seem quite right about them. A little clever googling revealed that he was simply lifting sermons wholesale from one particular preacher from the other side of the world and preaching them as though they were his own. “And that reminds me of something that happened to me this week…” falls a little flat when you know that the same thing happened word for word to someone else three years ago in the lectionary cycle.

I never outed him as stealing ideas from someone else. But there was no chance of him getting the job.

I’m not convinced that it is ethical to preach someone else’s words verbatim in a sermon.

AI raises whole new questions beyond that though.

It is more or less ethical to lift a paragraph from a sermon that no human being ever wrote?

I think that’s a complicated question and is made even more complicated for me by my knowing that some AI engines have been trained on my own sermons.

Indeed, one of my tests when looking at a new AI tool is sometimes to ask it to write a sermon in the voice and style of Kelvin Holdsworth on the Bible passages for a particular set of Bible readings. This test, which I have to acknowledge I’m rather pleased with myself for devising certainly sorts out the AI sheep from the AI goats.

I did it recently with one engine and it produced this paragraph:

“It reminds me of the week before my mother-in-law comes to visit. You know the drill. It doesn’t matter if the house is generally tidy; you go into a state of panic. You’re not just cleaning the surfaces; you’re clearing the cupboards and organising the spice rack. Why? Because you’re trying to create a perfect space for a very important guest. You want the place to look like your best self, a version of reality that lasts exactly as long as the visit.”

Now there’s no risk in my stealing anything from this at all. It doesn’t sound like my spoken style and anyone who has ever shared an office with me knows that tidiness isn’t necessarily next to provostness. The really exciting thing, I thought, was the appearance of a mother-in-law. I rather like the idea that in some alternative cyberspace I’m tidy, happily married and have a well-organised spice rack.

Here, in the real world alas, things are different.

However, I asked another AI engine to come up with a sermon in my style and the more I read, the more I realised that it had been trained on my own sermons, most of which have been freely available online for the last 25 years or so. Here’s a fragment that I asked it to generate for a sermon in my voice for Midnight Mass.

“And so we come here at midnight—a time for secrets, hushed voices, and the honest acknowledgement that the world is not always as we wish it to be. Midnight is truthful. It exposes our longings. It meets us without the polite veneer we put on during the day. Midnight Mass is the Church daring to say: God meets us in the dark.”

It isn’t better than me and the middle sentences are a bit vapid. But there’s an idea in there at the end that I could have come up with and could have preached. And maybe, who knows yet, maybe I will.

So it is ethical to preach a sermon that is generated from an AI engine that has been trained on one’s own voice?

That’s a really complicated question and worth a good deal of pondering. And it is a very different question from those facing authors who make a living from their work.

As I try to think about the ethics of where the words come from there will always be people who tell me that nothing ethical comes from AI because of the world’s resources of power and water that are consumed in their production. I get it. But people have frequently taken to social media to make that point to me without acknowledging the irony of doing so. We are living beyond our means environmentally in so many areas of life. Yes, AI contributes negatively to this. But I don’t think that fact is going to put it back in its box.

At the moment I’ve never read a sermon from an AI engine that I think is better than any that I could have written. However, I suspect that in a year’s time I won’t be able to make that claim.

So, is it AI generated sermons from me from now on?

No actually. But primarily because I enjoy the writing. Wrestling with the ideas, thinking about the scripture and pondering where the world is at gives me life and I suspect that ultimately those listening to sermons can tell whether there’s life and spirit in them. And being a preacher who does grapple with the text is part of who I think I am and part of what I think the church has formed me to do.

Are there easy ethical answers to AI related questions for preachers? I don’t think so. And I think that’s what makes those questions so very interesting.

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/hand-of-a-person-and-a-bionic-hand-6153343/

AI, Artificul Intelligence, digital ministry, homiletics, plagiarism, preaching, sermons. preacher

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
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  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
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    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
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      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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