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When it comes to preaching, AI is already shaping life in many Protestant pulpits

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When it comes to preaching, AI is already shaping life in many Protestant pulpits

No doubt about it, artificial-intelligence agents are great at providing answers to basic questions that shape ordinary life.

AI has become a "nearly daily part of my life in the last couple years, as it has for many others," noted Collin Hansen, editor of The Gospel Coalition website, in an essay entitled, "Why AI Will Write Your Next Sermon." For example, "I've found help for home repairs. Diet and exercise plans. Meal preparation. Trip planning. Personal health assessments. … Even baseball swing and pitching advice for my son."

The deeper question is how AI will handle problems pastors face as the faithful wrestle with parenting and careers, marriage and morality, sin and forgiveness. These questions affect work in the pulpit, as well as private hospital conversations and prayers.

Pastors who seek AI help with sermons need to understand that the software pros who build these platforms struggle to separate factual questions from those focusing on ethics and morality, said Hansen, reached by telephone.

"Does AI mean that we don't have to study and remember the Bible as much? … If we do that, it turns what used to be Bible study into some kind of science in which you can chop it up into pieces and then process it somehow," perhaps with another AI program, he said.

The computer "doesn't recognize what happens in your counseling, and in your evangelism, and in your apologetics, and in your death-bed ministry, when there is a difference between asking AI to come in and supply the answers you need, instead of your own personal, intimate familiarity with the scriptures," he added. "Those kinds of distinctions are going to be lost on people who think these AI tools will make things a lot more efficient."

Religious leaders and pastors need to pause and ask: "Efficient for WHAT? What is this THING that you are trying to accomplish? What are you going to say to these people? How are you going to pray for them if you are not actually formed in the scriptures and in prayer yourself?"

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AI agents are creating scary temptations for many clergy and religious leaders

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AI agents are creating scary temptations for many clergy and religious leaders

Over and over, the Instagram, YouTube and Facebook algorithms tell young men they have digital ways to deal with loneliness, anxiety, depression and failure to find love.

Consider this chatbot promise: "The AI Girlfriend Who Actually Texts You Back. Flirty, jealous, sweet, a little bit dirty when she wants to be. GirlfriendGPT remembers every conversation, sends you selfies, and is online whenever you need her."

Pope Leo XIV warned, on the 60th World Day of Social Communications, that chatbots are "capable of imitating human feelings and thus simulating a relationship. … The power of simulation is such that AI can even deceive us by fabricating parallel 'realities,' usurping our faces and voices. We are immersed in a world of multidimensionality where it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction."

Thus, a 2025 Vantage Point Counseling Services study found that 28% of adults say they have had an intimate AI interaction or relationship. The same study said 53% of Americans mentioned AI friends, colleagues or confidants.

Some romance chatbot statistics "seem high," but not when linked to the "numbers you would find of Americans viewing pornography, because those two things are obviously connected and will become more connected in the future," said Collin Hansen, editor of The Gospel Coalition website.

While AI "girlfriends" make news, it's important to see trends relevant to religious groups and other communities, he said, reached by telephone. The key is that these platforms can offer realistic voices and faces. "It did not have to be that way. It did not have to be designed to relate to you as if it's a person. That's a choice the designers made."

In a recent meeting, Hansen asked church leaders to list the most popular uses of artificial intelligence. They were shocked to learn that, according to the Harvard Business Review, the "therapy-companionship" category was No. 1 in 2025 and again in 2026.

"Maybe OpenAI isn't valued at nearly $1 trillion just because it's making your work more efficient. Maybe someone knew that were AI going to take off, it would need to take on a human face," wrote Hansen, in his essay, "Why Computers Pretend to Be Humans."

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On death penalty, Catholics have evolved by Protestants clash on doctrinal details

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On death penalty, Catholics have evolved by Protestants clash on doctrinal details

After the Second Vatican Council, the 1566 Catechism continued to teach that civil authorities could use the death penalty to "punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Far from involving the crime of murder, the just exercise of this power is an act of paramount obedience to this divine law, which prohibits murder."

On November 5, 2009 -- when Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 at Fort Hood, Texas -- an updated Catechism said if guilt was "fully determined" church teachings do "not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." Civil authorities were urged to seek "non-lethal means … more in conformity to the dignity of the human person."

Quoting a 2017 Pope Francis address, the Catechism now says, "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person." Thus, the church "works with determination for its abolition worldwide."

Catholic leaders spoke quickly when the Department of Defense said President Donald Trump backed Hasan's death by firing squad on December 3 at Fort Hood, the first military execution of this kind since World War II. After initially approving a public livestream, Trump cancelled that order but said victims' families could attend.

A televised firing squad would have been a "strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with terrorists and SCUM," the president posted. However, "many very good … people would rather not watch him die."

During the days when the livestream was in play, the Hasan drama offered a case study of modern Christian debates about capital punishment. Catholics cited the evolving Catechism. Protestants debated Old Testament passages supporting public executions.

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Who was Jim Bakker, really? And why did so many Americans join his TV flock?

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Who was Jim Bakker, really? And why did so many Americans join his TV flock?

Ten minutes before show time, Jim and Tammy Bakker -- standing in clear view of the audience -- huddled with producers to discuss final details of the upcoming show.

With a minute to go, they waited calmly just offstage until the announcer cued them to dash out with giddy excitement, offering apologies for almost being late. The studio audience played along and cheered.

Journalist Louis Moore, and his wife Kay, were there because this 1982 "PTL Club" stop was required as promotion for their book "When You Both Go to Work," offering advice for two-income Christian couples.

"What was Jim Bakker good at? Well, he was good at bringing Tammy Faye on stage and letting her do her thing. … She was so interesting and Jim Bakker was just there," said Moore, recalling that day. At that time, Moore was poised to become president of what is now the Religion News Association.

Bakker didn't appear to be interested in the Moores, according to my notes from that taping, during my religion-beat years in Charlotte.

"Jim didn't interact with us at all. He was hard to relate to or to follow what he was saying. That was strange for a talk-show host," said Moore, reached by telephone.

Journalists called Bakker a "televangelist," but he never showed interest in being a pastor or an evangelist. His hero was Johnny Carson. Moore noted that Bakker's "goal was clearly to be a talk-show host. That was his life. … He loved sitting behind that desk in front of the cameras."

After his death on October 5th, at age 86, news reports chronicled Bakker's rise from doing a Christian puppet TV show for children, to building the PTL Satellite Network and the 2,500-acre Heritage USA theme park near Charlotte.

Bakker raised millions selling shares to condos for faithful donors, with rides, skating, tennis courts, a miniature railroad, a shopping mall, a biblical-drama theater and a water park with a giant water slide. The problem was that Bakker kept using money he raised for new buildings to complete work on unfinished projects. PTL sold more time-share contracts than he had rooms for buyers.

By 1987, Jim and Tammy's lives turned into a soap opera. In national news coverage, the focus was on his 1980 tryst with a young church secretary named Jessica Hahn, which led to a $250,000 check to buy her silence. In the end, Bakker went to prison for nearly five years.

After years of scrutiny, Bakker called the Charlotte Observer newsroom when he was forced out at PTL. The newspaper's obituary included this quote: "I sorrowfully acknowledge that seven years ago, in an isolated incident, I was wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends and then colleagues who victimized me with the aid of a female confederate."

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Talkin' faith, football and what ESPN's Paul Finebaum understands about the South

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Talkin' faith, football and what ESPN's Paul Finebaum understands about the South

Sports analyst Paul Finebaum is often called the voice of Bible Belt football, but he has never had the luxury of preaching to one choir.

The war between Auburn University and the University of Alabama has, for example, verged on a crusade with fans so devoted some seem possessed. In the most infamous moment on "The Paul Finebaum Show, "Al from Dadeville (Harvey Updyke)" offered this explanation for his poisonous attack that killed Auburn's hallowed Toomer's Corner oak trees: "I just had too much 'Bama in me."

But there's more to Finebaum's ESPN flock than Southeastern Conference shouting matches. He often allows regular callers -- "Squirrel," "I-Man," "Jim from Tuscaloosa," the late, beloved Tammy "War Damn Eagle" Bullard -- to veer into commentary about grief, health issues, personal tragedies and answered prayers.

"Paul Finebaum truly listens to what Americans have to say, and as a result he hears a lot of God talk," noted Michael Schmitz, editor of Compact, an online magazine that blends progressive economics with cultural conservatism.

Writing for First Things, he added: "On a recent show, Legend -- known for his bravura calls and the fifteen years he spent in prison for murdering his cousin -- reassured listeners that he was fine after being unceremoniously ejected from the SEC's media days. 'I've actually really been being blessed by the Lord.' … He also admitted that he may have been at fault for the recent dustup. 'Pride and ego, those are horrible things. I asked God to deal with me.'"

Yes, some of this may be a sign that talk-radio listeners are often old, retired or in jobs -- truckers, for example -- with time to ponder the puzzles of daily life. When Southerners testify about suffering and their own mortality, these are rarely secular subjects.

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Art, suffering, faith, pain, joy and stories in the Southern Highlands

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Art, suffering, faith, pain, joy and stories in the Southern Highlands

In black-and-white Merriam-Webster Dictionary terms, "sickbed" is defined as "the bed on which one lies sick."

Anyone who has experienced years of chronic illness knows the reality is much more complex. Shortly before her "Para(site)dise" exhibition at the William King Museum of Art in Abington, Virginia, artist Jocelyn Mathewes used a pillowcase and 30 pieces of fabric to create a 7-by-9 floating sculpture called "The Bed (Horizontal Time)."

"Illness often leaves humans bed-bound, horizontal in space. Lying flat, habitating flat, a sick person exists on this plane," she wrote, in a text prepared for the William King Museum of Art in Abington, Virginia. The exhibit opened in August and closes January 10.

"The bed, however, is the center of the universe -- a nest, a resting place. For the chronically ill, it becomes the workspace, the conversation space. All uses are combined into a single whole, bleeding into one another, fragmented yet fundamentally attached."

This experience touches minds and souls, as well as bodies. The sickbed can become a place for confession, penitence, forgiveness and communion. People bring faith and joy with them, as well as fear and worry.

"All of the things that you need can come to you in that bed. … It's a place for the sick, but it is also a place for people who love them," she recently told me. "It can morph and change shape and your feelings about it change with the things that are happening in it, and around it."

In her "the tiny little high five" newsletter, she added: "A bed is a horizontal space that becomes the place of healing, the place of possibility. A bed that takes you to other worlds. A bed that you return to as a refuge. A bed that envelops you kindly, or consumes you, suffocating. It is not static. … It sometimes takes flight."

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C.S. Lewis readers brace for big-screen arrival of 'Ziggy Aslan' in Narnia flick

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C.S. Lewis readers brace for big-screen arrival of 'Ziggy Aslan' in Narnia flick

During a fistfight, young David Bowie suffered an injury to his left eye, leaving its pupil permanently wide open, with one blue eye looking radically different than the other.

Bowie didn't have heterochromia -- different-colored eyes. But his mysterious gaze was a key trait of Ziggy Stardust, his genderbending, rainbow-hued stage persona mixing glitter, bright lipstick, platform shoes and various female fashion trends.

This early 1970s bolt of glam-rock lightning was part of the cultural storm that shaped Greta Gerwig's imagination, leading to her "rock opera" vision of "The Chronicles of Narnia," the classic C.S. Lewis novels for children.

"David Bowie saved my life," Gerwig told Empire Magazine, while discussing "Narnia: The Magician's Nephew," poised for release in early 2027.

"Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. … When I heard their music, I had this deep sense of [thinking], 'You're gonna be okay.'" She added: "Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan."

In Narnia, Aslan is the Christ figure, repeatedly described by Lewis -- an Oxford don and Christian apologist -- as the "King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. … The Lion, the great Lion." In "The Magician's Nephew," Narnia's creation story, Aslan is first described as "a Lion. Huge, shaggy and bright," with a basso profundo voice "deep enough to be the voice of the earth."

Gerwig ignited an online firestorm by choosing the legendary actress Meryl Streep to provide Aslan's voice. And the director moved "The Magician's Nephew" from the early-1900s to the 1950s, so that its young hero Digory Kirke would grow up in the world that produced Bowie and other rock visionaries. Thus, the Narnia timeline created by Lewis will, in its climactic books, move from World War II Britain to the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s.

Also, the Empire cover offers the first portrait of the character some call "Ziggy Aslan."

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Among Southern Baptists, as well: More adults are converting, and getting baptized

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Among Southern Baptists, as well: More adults are converting, and getting baptized

Back in the Southern Baptist Convention's boom years, from the 1960s to 2010, the experts charting baptism statistics divided "children" into three groups -- starting with those under age 6.

Behind the scenes, there were discussions about when children reached the "age of accountability" and could make mature professions of faith in Jesus Christ, leading to "believer's baptism" by full immersion in water. As with many other doctrinal issues, this was settled by local-church leaders. The same was true when adults asked to be rebaptized, for various reasons.

"At the end of the day, when someone says they've decided to give their life to Christ, the local church is going to let them symbolize that by being baptized," noted Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. "That's what Baptists do. That's who we are."

Obviously, Baptists pay close attention to baptism statistics, along with trends with church attendance and membership. In a new report, Lifeway dug into Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile numbers for 2025 and reported that baptisms rose for the fifth consecutive year.

Baptist leaders quickly noted another current trend -- adults 30 and older represented 33% of all baptisms. That was higher than the baptism of those 12-17 (25%), children before age 12 (22%) and young adults between 18-29 (20%). In the past, it was common for the baptism of minors to be two-thirds of the total, noted McConnell, reached by telephone.

The "seismic development" in these numbers is the consistently rising number of conversions among Americans over age 18, noted the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Looking at today's Las Vegas through Southern Baptist missionary eyes

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Looking at today's Las Vegas through Southern Baptist missionary eyes

Say the word "Vegas" and most travelers think about the 30-plus casinos and resorts along the 4.2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard known as "The Strip."

The Southern Baptist "City Missionary" for Las Vegas thinks about a different set of numbers -- the 30 churches the denomination's Send Network has planted in this desert valley in the past decade. There are nearly 100 SBC churches in greater Las Vegas and 177 in Nevada.

"It's hard to narrow Las Vegas down into some kind of majority culture that fits the stereotypes. … This place is multiethnic, multicultural and we have people who are dealing with all kinds of issues and sins," said the Rev. Heiden Ratner, 37, who leads the WALK Church, a 10-year-old congregation with about 1,100 worshippers.

"Las Vegas is pretty much pre-Christian, and what I mean by that is that there has never been a revival that has swept through this city. When I was growing up here, there wasn't a single Sunday morning that I woke up and thought, 'Maybe I should go to church.' Never.”

Obviously, the Strip has not vanished, and its "Sin City" label remains relevant. The Nevada Gaming Control Board reported $8.82 billion in Gross Gaming Revenue (what operators keep after payouts) for the Strip in 2025. But the world has changed. Researchers struggle to describe online gambling today -- from $100 billion global GGR in 2025 to a Gaming Compliance International estimate of $5.9 trillion in unregulated activity.

For decades, Ratner noted, Las Vegas couldn't land big-league football, baseball, basketball and hockey because of gambling. Now the city has teams in three of the four sports, and the National Basketball Association may be next. The city hosted its first Super Bowl in 2024 and the game returns in 2029.

"That kind of credibility is leading all kinds of people and corporations to take a second look at this city," he said.