The priesthood of all chatbots?

Recently I received an email with an exciting opportunity to be introduced via webinar to an Episcopal-specific AI chatbot that promises to “supercharge my ministry.” I signed up. My intentions were not pure.

I am an Episcopal priest, an aspiring Luddite, and a hypocrite. My iPhone has an app-less, grayscale superiority complex, but the truth is I check Instagram on my laptop ten times a day, with YouTube constantly open in the background, pressuring me to watch cycling highlights. Still, I have been suspicious from the start of using AI and have mostly maintained, with Melville’s Bartleby, that I would prefer not to.

But this email invitation broke something in me. It whispered menacingly: The call is coming from inside the house. And dear reader, I spent an hour screaming silently at my laptop. I considered selling my house and investing the proceeds in a time machine to take me back to George Herbert, who could hold me and tell me everything is going to be OK. To the Episcopal Church, my mother, my rock, to whose service I have devoted my life, to my colleagues in ministry, who I love and whose good intentions I do not doubt, I gently ask: What are we doing?