Al Prayers and Personality + My Trip to Hillsdale College

No one would deny that AI helps us write. But the end result and the overarching concern are that it quietly presses us toward sameness.

I searched for “fakest AI image,” and this is what it showed. There is probably some hidden meaning to a gangsta papal attire, but I don’t know it yet. I will consult my inner JBJ and get back with you.

And this, good people, leads me to this topic.

I have a couple of talks in 2027 on the role of AI in sermon writing for the Strawbridge Forum of Pastoral Theology, so these thoughts have been ruminating for some time. But here is a bit of an addendum on something more personal: Al’s role in prayer.

No one would deny that AI helps us write. But the end result and the overarching concern are that it quietly presses us toward sameness. Others have pointed this out as well.

And sameness is the enemy of voice. The more we lean on it, the more we risk sounding like something assembled rather than something lived.

I just finished reading Allen Levi’s excellent novel, Theo of Golden. Even after listening to his epilogue, I knew I was reading Levi’s experience lived out, even as I listened to his accent. Theo was this eschatological figure that he longed to be like. So, what I want, when I read a man, is not polish or flourish for its own sake. I want to hear the marks of formation. I want to know this is someone who has been trained—who has wrestled with texts, learned how to argue, and knows how to carry a thought from beginning to end without borrowing a personality along the way. I am not looking for someone who specializes in sounding impressive. I am looking for someone who sounds like himself.