Christians Should Use AI With Caution and Discernment or They Shouldn’t Use It at All

A recent poll shocked me, not because it was unexpected but because it highlighted the contradictions facing the church today.

The Barna Group dropped a study last week that should have set off alarms in every pulpit in America, and judging by the silence, it largely hasn’t. Roughly 48 percent of practicing Christians told researchers they trust artificial intelligence’s advice on how to grow spiritually. Among Gen Z and millennials, 40 percent now say spiritual guidance from a chatbot is just as trustworthy as guidance from a pastor. Nearly one in three American adults agrees. The machine has been welcomed into the sanctuary, and most of the shepherds didn’t even notice it walk in.

We can blame the technology itself but that would not tell the real story. At its heart, this is a story about a discipleship vacuum so vast that an algorithm with no soul, no covenant, and no accountability to a local body of believers has quietly filled the void. The Barna findings, released in partnership with the faith-tech platform Gloo, surveyed more than 1,500 U.S. adults in November 2025 and followed up with 442 Protestant pastors a month later.

This isn’t about something on the horizon. These types of numbers describe a present reality that has already arrived in living rooms, group chats, and quiet times across the country.

The most damning figure in the entire report is not the percentage of laypeople trusting AI. It is the disconnect among the clergy. Forty-one percent of pastors now use AI for Bible study and sermon preparation. Only 12 percent say they feel equipped to teach their congregations how to handle it.

The shepherds are using the tool and saying nothing. The sheep are using the tool and asking no one. Meanwhile, 31 percent of practicing Christians say they want pastoral guidance on how to navigate AI, and they are not getting it.

Honesty demands an admission and I definitely do not want to be a hypocrite. Artificial intelligence is a remarkable tool for studying the Bible; I use it every day. It can run instant concordance work, pull Greek and Hebrew roots, cross-reference passages across all sixty-six books faster than a Strong’s exhaustive lookup, and surface historical and cultural context that would take a layperson hours to compile. Used rightly, AI is the most accessible Bible study assistant in church history. The danger is not the tool. The danger is what the Christian then does with the tool’s output, and which tool the Christian chooses.

There are far too many occasions when I find errors in AI’s “guidance” that range from subtle misinterpretations to outright heretical teaching. I am not a pastor but I am confident in my knowledge and discernment. For those who are newer to the Bible, I fear that AI can do more harm than good.

Not all AI is equal on matters of faith. Some popular models hedge, moralize, or quietly insert progressive theological framing when asked questions about Scripture, sin, sexuality, or judgment. Others treat the Bible as one religious text among many and refuse to engage Christian doctrine on its own terms. From extensive testing across the major platforms, Claude, developed by Anthropic, consistently handles Scripture with greater care, intellectual honesty, and respect for the text than its competitors.

It will quote the King James Version when asked, it does not lecture the user about ancient morality, and it engages theological questions as theology rather than anthropology. For readers determined to use AI as a study aid, Claude is the most trustworthy option currently on the market amongst standard chat models. But trustworthy as a tool is not the same as trustworthy as an authority, and that distinction is precisely where most Christians are getting lost.

I am also beginning to test out Logos, but I haven’t used it enough to pass judgment. That will come in a future post.

The Line a Chatbot Cannot Cross

A pastor is not a search engine. A pastor is a man called by God, ordained by a church body, accountable to elders, embedded in covenant relationships, and answerable on the day of judgment for the souls under his charge. Hebrews 13:17 commands believers to obey them that have the rule over them and submit themselves, for they watch for souls as they that must give account.

An algorithm gives no account. It has no soul. It cannot weep with those that weep. It cannot rebuke a wayward brother in love. It cannot administer the Lord’s Supper, baptize a new believer, lay hands on the sick, or sit at the bedside of the dying and read Psalm 23. It cannot bear a burden. It cannot pray.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. The apostle John wrote those words to a church confronting voices that sounded plausible but were not anchored in truth. The principle scales effortlessly to a generation that consults a chatbot before or instead of consulting a pastor.

The question is not whether the AI sounds wise. The question is whether the source is of God, accountable to God, and tethered to the body of Christ. An AI is none of those things. It is a mirror polished by engineers, reflecting back a synthesis of whatever training data its makers selected, with whatever guardrails its corporate stewards thought appropriate. It is not a spiritual authority. It is a probability engine.

This is why it is so important for those who do use AI in their studies to use it strictly as a tool for expedience and sorting through vast information. But for those who strive to be like Bereans, we must be doubly cautious with anything that comes from AI. Remember, it is designed to emulate and to please. It is supposed to sound smart, caring, and trustworthy. In reality, it is none of those things. It’s a tool built for deception, not out of malice but because anything artificial that is supposed to appear real in inherently rife with ways to deceive.

In other words, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is the lens through which AI must be used. Without that lens and a strong understanding of the Bible, it is best to not use it for Bible study at all.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

The Vacuum Was Already There

AI did not steal the church’s authority. The church surrendered it. Decades of declining membership, abandoned catechesis, therapeutic preaching, and pastors who feared offending more than they feared God left a generation of believers spiritually undernourished and accustomed to outsourcing their formation.

Then came the pandemic, when churches across the country closed their doors while liquor stores stayed open, and millions of Christians learned to consume their faith through a screen. The machine walked through a door the church had propped open.

The Barna data captures the cognitive dissonance perfectly. Eighty-three percent of practicing Christians worry about AI misinterpreting Scripture. Sixty-five percent worry about AI being treated as a replacement for God. Seventy-three percent fear people will lose their faith because of AI. And yet a near majority of those same Christians are personally trusting AI’s spiritual advice.

Copeland called it extending trust and registering fear in the same breath. That is the spiritual condition of American Christianity in 2026. Believers sense the danger, name the danger, and walk into the danger anyway because no one in authority has shown them another path.

What Pastors Must Do Now

The solution is not to denounce AI from the pulpit and walk away. That posture has already been tried with television, with the internet, with social media, and it has lost every round. Christians are going to use AI. The only question is whether they will use it under instruction or under the algorithm’s. Pastors who refuse to engage the subject are not preserving their authority. They are forfeiting it.

Sound teaching on AI is not complicated. Use it as you would use a commentary, a concordance, or a study Bible written by an author you do not personally know. Verify what it tells you against Scripture. Bring its conclusions to your pastor, your elders, and your small group.

Never let it pray for you, because it cannot. Never let it counsel you through sin, because it has no standing to call you to repentance. Never let it replace the gathered worship of the saints, because Hebrews 10:25 still commands what it has always commanded. Use the tool with discernment. Refuse the priesthood it offers.

Can AI be used to go and make disciples of all nations? Can it enhance an individual’s understanding of the Bible and if so, can it strengthen our relationship with our Creator? The church that disciples its people on these questions will produce a generation of believers who can wield a powerful tool without being wielded by it.

The church that stays silent will discover, too late, that the algorithm finished the catechesis the pulpit declined to begin.

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I’ve worked for years with several news aggregators, but until now I’ve never had one that was strictly my own. Now I do. For a constantly updated “Drudge-like” site that hits on conservative politics, culture, AND the Biblical questions we face as Americans, check out jdrucker.com

Also, I have a Substack that is completely focused on my Biblical perspectives and a short podcast. Check out Blessed.Report. Funny coincidence: I often use an AI version of my voice for that particular podcast, not because I like it but because it’s better at reading a script than I am. For my regular podcasts, I just don’t use scripts.