Digital rituals: how technology is reinventing religion

For billions of people worldwide, religion serves as the framework through which they understand, and draw meaning from, the world. Faith shapes daily decisions, offers comfort during hardship, and connects individuals to something larger than themselves. Whether through prayer, study, or community gathering, religious practice has long served as an anchor in the human experience. Historically, that practice centred on physical spaces and face-to-face interactions – usually through services at temples, churches, and mosques. People learned from clergy and religious scholars in their local communities. Prayer happened in sacred buildings or private moments with physical texts and objects. The rhythm of religious life moved according to set times, specific locations, and the availability of teachers who could guide spiritual development.

Technology has gradually entered this space over the years. Online sermons reached those who couldn’t attend in person. Digital versions of sacred texts made scripture searchable and portable. Religious communities began forming in forums and chat groups, connecting believers across continents rather than neighbourhoods. And now, AI is taking this digitisation of religion one step further. Algorithms curate personalised religious content, matching seekers with teachings that align with their questions and interests. AI-powered apps offer prayer suggestions, meditation guidance, and scripture interpretations tailored to individual contexts. Some congregations are even experimenting with AI-generated sermons and prayers, forever changing how people explore faith, connect with fellow believers, and engage in prayer.

An AI-powered avatar of Jesus

Would you trust a digital facsimile of ‘Jesus’ with your innermost thoughts and troubles?

In 2024, Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, took an unusual step when it installed an AI-powered Jesus avatar in its confessional booth. Named Deus Ex Machina, the installation was the product of an ongoing collaboration with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts that spanned multiple years and previously included projects involving virtual and augmented reality technologies. The AI was first trained on theological texts, after which the chapel opened the booth to visitors who could pose questions to a long-haired image of Jesus projected through the latticework screen. The figure responded in real time, generating answers through a combination of technologies: OpenAI’s GPT-4o handled the responses, an open-source version of Whisper managed speech comprehension, and Heygen’s AI video generator produced voice and video output modelled on a real person. 

People asked the resulting ‘Jesus’ all sorts of questions. Some inquired about true love and loneliness. Others wanted to talk about war and suffering, what happens after death, and whether God exists. Others raised more controversial topics, such as sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church and the institution’s stance on homosexuality. The visitors themselves came from varied backgrounds; while most were Christians, participants also included agnostics, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and Taoists, according to a recap released by the Catholic parish of Lucerne. And since AI Jesus spoke about 100 languages, conversations happened not only in German, but also in Chinese, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.

The intersection between the digital and the divine

Overall, more than 1,000 people took part in the project during its two-month run. Marco Schmid, the chapel theologian who led the project, said that it was largely successful, with many visitors leaving the confessional looking thoughtful or moved. “What was really interesting was to see that the people really talked with him in a serious way. They didn’t come to make jokes,” he said. However, he was careful to point out that AI Jesus was an artistic experiment meant to prompt thinking about digital tools and spiritual life, rather than a replacement for human priests or sacramental confession. While Schmid dismissed the idea of making the installation a permanent fixture of his chapel, he nevertheless sees potential in the concept – perhaps as a multilingual spiritual guide that could help people explore religious questions in a more accessible way.

Not everyone felt the same way, though. Some visitors told the church they simply couldn’t talk to a machine, while others found the AI’s responses “trite, repetitive, and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar cliches.” Some within the church community were also critical of the AI-powered Jesus. Catholic colleagues objected to using the confessional booth in this manner, while Protestant colleagues remarked they felt outright troubled by the imagery. Some went even further in their condemnation of the project, calling it blasphemous or the work of the devil.

“Usually when people talk about AI, they are talking about what AI can do in the future. But the future is now.”

Reverend Petja Kopperoinen

A church service created entirely with AI

Churches are increasingly turning to AI for help with various tasks, from bookkeeping to drafting sermons.

St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Finland went a little bit further than just installing an AI avatar – they created an entire service using AI tools. The experimental service attracted over 120 people to the church in northeastern Helsinki on a weeknight, far more than would normally show up. Some travelled from outside the city specifically to attend, including a handful of foreigners curious about what an AI-led service would look like in practice. “Usually when people talk about AI, they are talking about what AI can do in the future. But the future is now,” said Reverend Petja Kopperoinen, who was behind the whole idea. “AI can do all those things that people think that it can maybe do in 10 years or so.”

The 45-minute service was created over the course of several weeks, through the use of multiple AI platforms. ChatGPT-4o generated all the spoken content except for explicit biblical passages. Suno composed some rather puzzling music that sounded more like pop than traditional church hymns. Meanwhile, Synthesia produced video avatars to deliver portions of the liturgy. Between these AI-generated elements, the congregation sang familiar hymns with a traditional live organ accompaniment, creating an odd blend of experimental technology and traditional worship.

Reactions from the pews were, unsurprisingly, decidedly mixed. People found the service interesting – even entertaining – but many struggled with how quickly the AI spoke and how hard it was to follow the speech patterns. When asked whether AI could replace human-led services, worshippers and Kopperoinen agreed: not anytime soon. “It can’t be empathetic towards people. AI can’t really answer your questions in a spiritual way,” he explained. Still, he sees practical uses for the technology. St. Paul’s already relies on AI for bookkeeping, and Kopperoinen himself occasionally turns to ChatGPT when he’s drafting sermons or searching for verses on a particular theme.

Religious advice from a bot

How AI is helping Muslims reconcile ancient religious teachings with modern social environments.

Of course, Christians aren’t the only ones turning to AI for religious guidance. Muslims have been building their own digital tools, including some that tackle one of Islam’s most traditional practices: the fatwa. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, a governmental non-profit organisation that provides religious guidance to Muslims, launched FatwaPro, a mobile application designed to answer religious questions from Muslims worldwide, with particular focus on those living in secular Western societies. 

Seeking a fatwa (an Islamic legal opinion) has traditionally meant direct interaction between a questioner and a mufti. The exchange was often personal, allowing the mufti to understand the specific context and nuances of someone’s situation. But Muslim communities now span continents and cultures, bringing questions that earlier generations might never have encountered. People ask about family law in secular legal systems, about gender identity, bioethics, financial transactions that didn’t exist decades ago, religious doubt in pluralistic societies, and even – circling back on itself – the ethics of using AI for religious guidance.

Reconciling religious teaching with modern times

FatwaPro builds on a principle embedded in Islamic jurisprudence: that religious rulings must respond to changing circumstances. Time, place, people, and context all shape how religious guidance applies to specific situations. Since launch, the platform has processed 6,740 fatwas, with 3,470 issued in 2024 alone. It now receives up to fifteen inquiries daily, mostly in English and French rather than Arabic – a telling detail about who’s turning to the service, and where they live.

Family matters dominate the questions, accounting for over 60% of recent inquiries. Marriage, divorce, parenting, gender roles – these deeply personal topics reflect the tensions many Muslims feel trying to navigate religious teachings alongside modern societal expectations. Someone living in Paris or London faces different pressures and options than someone in Cairo or Karachi, and their questions reflect that complexity. In addition to answering these questions, the app also tracks patterns in what people ask. Dar al-Ifta can see which issues keep coming up, which new concerns are emerging, and where Muslims need more thorough scholarly engagement. The data shapes how they develop content and where they focus their attention, turning individual questions into a map of evolving religious life.

A robot preacher

Can technology help revive interest in religion among younger generations?

Kodaiji temple in Kyoto has stood for 400 years, but its latest addition to religious life is unabashedly modern – an adult-sized humanoid robot named Mindar. Standing 195 centimetres tall and weighing 60 kilograms, Mindar was modelled after Kannon Bodhisattva, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy and is designed to preach sermons to visitors. Most of the android is made of aluminium, although its hands, face, and shoulders are covered in silicone to mimic human skin. Its appearance is gender- and age-neutral, similar to how Buddha’s statues are designed. During its 25-minute sermon on the Heart Sutra, a foundational Buddhist text, Mindar moves its torso, arms, and head while speaking to imitate human interaction. It can also establish eye contact with the visitors using a camera lens in its left eye.

Mindar was developed through a collaboration between Kodaiji temple and Hiroshi Ishiguro, a robotics professor at Osaka University, with the reported cost of US$1m. The project started when Tensho Goto, the temple’s former chief steward, asked Ishiguro to create a Buddhist statue via robotics. The pair wanted to enhance spiritual experiences and bring new interest to Buddhism, which has been losing adherents in Japan as modernism and generational shifts pull people away from traditional religious practice.

Goto positioned the robot as the next logical step in how Buddhist teachings are shared. Buddha’s lessons started as oral stories, then got written down as texts. Artists then created paintings and stone reliefs, which eventually became statues – three-dimensional forms that made it easier for ordinary people to understand Buddhist teachings and helped the religion spread. Those statues worked well for 2,000 years, Goto said, but they haven’t really changed since then. Meanwhile, everything else has. “Modern technology has shifted to printing, the internet, and AI. […] It is high time for Buddhist statues to speak and look into people’s eyes.”

“The use of AI to generate interpretations or commentaries on religious texts could result in a rigid, dogmatic, and overly authoritative structure, due to the algorithmic nature of AI. This mechanised approach risks diminishing the fluid, interpretive, and inherently human aspects of understanding religion.”

Ahmet Dag, Professor at Bursa Uludag University

The impact of technology on religion

While technology makes it easier than ever to access religious information, it also poses genuine threats to the integrity of religious practice and belief.

AI and religion might seem like a rather awkward pairing at first glance, but the truth is that technology has been reshaping religious practice for centuries. The printing press changed everything when it arrived in 15th-century Europe. Mass book production became possible for the first time, and newly formed Protestant groups used it to spread their ideas about Christianity. The Catholic Church, recognising the threat, scrambled to ban works it considered heretical. The internet has done something similar, albeit at a scale that dwarfs even the printing press. “You now have access to religious ideas and practices from around the world that you didn’t really have access to before,” says Robert Geraci, Knight Distinguished Chair for the Study of Religion and Culture at Knox College. “That gives you a new perspective on whatever it is that you, in particular, perceive.”

Kenneth Cukier, a journalist, author, and expert with the US-based nonprofit AI and Faith, sees striking potential in tools like AI Jesus. “If AI Jesus helps people connect deeper to themselves and the world, it has to be a good thing. It will lead to better individuals and a better world,” he argues. He’s quick to add a caveat, though. “However – and there’s a big however – this does feel a little bit infantile, and pardon my pun, machine-like,” adds Cukier. “The risk is that it pulls people, ultimately, farther away from that which is more meaningful, deeper and authentic in spirituality.” It’s a worry worth taking seriously. Tools designed to bring people closer to spiritual truths might end up creating distance instead, offering something that feels like connection but lacks the depth people actually need.

The human aspect of religion

Some scholars go even further in their criticism. Professor Ahmet Dag, who specialises in philosophy of religion at Bursa Uludag University, is concerned about what might happen when religious interpretation gets handed over to algorithms. “The use of AI to generate interpretations or commentaries on religious texts could result in a rigid, dogmatic, and overly authoritative structure, due to the algorithmic nature of AI,” he explains. “This mechanised approach risks diminishing the fluid, interpretive, and inherently human aspects of understanding religion.” His point touches on a fundamental limitation: AI can process enormous amounts of religious texts and identify patterns within them, but it cannot draw on lived experience, cultural nuance, or the kind of spiritual reflection that comes from grappling with doubt, suffering, or transcendence. Religion has always been interpreted through human experience, and that interpretive work shapes how teachings get understood and applied across different contexts and generations.

Dag also suggests that AI might not just serve existing religions but – for better or worse – spawn entirely new ones. “The integration of AI in religious contexts could lead to entirely new forms of representation, potentially giving rise to various religious beliefs or groups rooted in digital structures,” he notes. Rey Ty, who teaches peace studies at Payap University in Thailand, raises more practical concerns about accuracy and bias. AI systems rely on metadata to generate their responses, and that metadata can be incomplete or skewed in ways that distort religious teachings. “Misinformation and inaccuracies generated by AI can damage the integrity of faith and religious communities,” he warns. There’s also the added risk that AI might inadvertently produce content disparaging other religions, potentially creating tensions where none existed before.