The Rev. Flourish Klink

AI for Priests (and Other Religious Professionals)

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:07:07 +0100

The Rev. Flourish Klink https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/aiforpriests/ -

I originally wrote this essay in the fall of 2025 and never published it. The topic, however, is not going away, and it seemed appropriate to finally share it. Many thanks to Rev. Jayan Koshy for his input.

Commercial AI is ubiquitous these days—especially generative AI. We interact with customer service chatbots. Our phones let us speak to virtual “agents” who can answer our questions with some moderate degree of accuracy. And every other day we read a new pearl-clutching thinkpiece about someone who wants to marry Chat-GPT, or college students cheating on tests, or something along those lines.

Naturally, religious professionals are exploring AI. Some, like my Buddhist friend Alex Sarkissian, are thinking deeply about the concept of artificial intelligence and how (or whether) we as humans ought to pursue it. Most of us, though, are just trying to answer a more basic question: is it OK for us to use AI in our jobs? Can it improve our daily lives, give us more bandwidth, as we try to tend to the innumerable and ever-expanding needs of parishes, synagogues, and other religious communities?

The framing of this question usually equates “artificial intelligence” with commercial AI products, such as ChatGPT or Claude. It also assumes that AI is a tool, an object which can extend our natural human abilities. Lenses are tools that extend our eyes; the book is a tool which extends our memory; AI is a tool which potentially extends our mind, as well.

Zac Koons takes this position in his article in The Christian Century, critiquing the EpiscoBOT chatbot from TryTank, and I generally agree with his conclusions—as far as they go. AI can be a tool to extend our language composition skills, enabling us to skip the boring part (e.g. writing a letter to dispute a parking ticket) and get on with our day. However, when it comes to preaching or praying, the act of composition is more than an instrumental formality. Composing a prayer is part of praying it. Delivering a specific, targeted, original sermon is part of what we, as pastors, have agreed to do for our congregation week after week—and we may not even know what we want to say until we have labored at writing and rewriting it.

From this perspective, using AI as a tool to “skip the boring part” both misses the point of praying and preaching and sidesteps our responsibilities as spiritual leaders. It even has the potential to distort our own relationships with God, which is developed through our very thoughts. Allowing Google to suggest responses to an email (“Should we buy three or four dozen donuts for coffee hour?”) is one thing. Allowing it to suggest entire prayers or preach for us is another.

It’s easy to see, too, how AI might “creep up on us,” becoming more and more a part of our daily practice until we have forgotten how we used to think without it. As I have watched my toddler daughter grow, I have become more and more convinced that it is very important that we keep generative AI out of our children’s learning process for as long as possible—and that it would be good for adults to eschew it, too. People may joke about “frictionmaxxing,” but it’s true that “if you don’t use it, you lose it,” and I have no interest in losing my capability to write coherent texts!

There is, however, another way to think about AI and other text generation tools. This is as a medium, like paint, stained glass, or videography. Approaching AI as a medium means that we are not treating it as “transparent,” as merely a means to an end, but rather that we engage with AI to create things which could not be created any other way.

To understand what this looks like in a religious context, it may be sensible to think about something else—something simpler, something secular. The artist Dara Birnbaum made a classic work of video art called “Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman,” reworking material from the 1970s Wonder Woman TV show. (It’s worth taking a few minutes to go watch it now.) Birnbaum could have made an original animation of Wonder Woman doing the same things. Or she could have recorded an actor playing Wonder Woman using a film camera. But instead, she chose to record an existing TV show using a videotape and recut those clips into her own work of art. In doing so, Dara Birnbaum provokes us to think about how women are sexualized and/or empowered (on TV, in particular) and to think about the way technology like the VCR lets us rewind, replay, and thus interact with motion pictures in a particular way. Video recording and replay here is not just a tool used to produce a representation of Wonder Woman. It is central to the meaning of Birnbaum’s work.

With “Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman” in mind, I would invite us to think about an artwork by Kyle Booten: “To Pray Without Ceasing.” In many ways, this project is exactly the kind of thing that Zac Koons is critiquing. The project was a computer program which scraped Twitter for any desires or needs that people were posting about. The program then generated prayers for those people. It continued to do this day and night, with no human intervention needed, until changes to the Twitter API disrupted its operation.

There are some important ways that “To Pray Without Ceasing” is different from using AI to write a collect, though. “To Pray Without Ceasing” is an artwork and a personal spiritual project, not an attempt to replace a pastor’s prayer and care for their flock. It also makes no attempt to hide what it is and what it is doing. The entire point of “To Pray Without Ceasing” is that the computer is capable of writing infinite prayers, truly without ceasing, for people that it knows nothing about. These are capabilities humans do not have. Indeed, the artist says that he has “tried to make a computational system that—whatever its faults and limitations—is in some limited but objective sense a better person than I am. And one that invites me into its way of paying attention to the world, with constancy.”

Whether we think that the computer’s prayers are efficacious or not, Booten’s project invites us to consider what it would take for us to truly pray without ceasing. If the important part of prayer is our intention or orientation toward it—if the important part is that we are really allowing the Spirit to speak through us, in “sighs too deep for words,” then we might also consider the possibility that AI-generated text could serve as a medium that we engage as we give voice to our intention.¹ Whether we are praying the rosary under our breath on the bus or speaking a long, spontaneous prayer with and on behalf of other members of our Bible study, the intentionality of prayer already takes a variety of forms, drawing on a range of media. This includes computational technology! The medieval theologian Ramon Llull, for example, used combinatorics in his Ars Magna to generate all the logical qualities of God. Surely the Ars is just as prayerful a work as any manually composed sermon or prayer, even though its author relied on mathematics and spinning dials to fully express his vision of God!

In a similar way, we might be able to write programs, even train AI, to generate prayers which are ultimately the fruit of a human’s labor and thought, because a human created the inputs and parameters of the prayers’ creation, even though they did not directly arrange the words of the prayers. A human author could then read those prayers without feeling that the process of voicing their prayer intention had been shortchanged.

For this framework to work, religious leaders would need to approach the process of writing those programs, well…prayerfully. Thinking of the AI as a labor-saving tool, rather than a medium or a method, would be exactly the wrong attitude to take. We would need to be prayerfully engaged with the process of text generation, and this type of prayerful engagement is exceedingly difficult when using commercial AI products, like Claude or ChatGPT. These products are absolutely opaque to the end user—both by necessity (they are the work of many programmers and have been trained on essentially all the text on the internet) and by design (commercial products need to be slick, easy to use, and not complicated; otherwise the average person will find them too confusing). This opacity makes it impossible for a human to have sufficient control of any commercial AI product for it to genuinely function as a medium shaped by a human author.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to commercially available AI products. We might choose to spin up our own small-scale AI and train it on a corpus we have chosen, or even use a simpler method of text generation (Markov chains, combinatorial Python programs…).² Does this require learning basic programming skills? Yes! Does it make your life as a parish priest easier? No! But I believe it creates a result more pleasing to God.

Generative AI is a powerful extension of our minds. It can enable us to converse across language barriers, can reduce busywork, and otherwise save many kinds of labor. It can create artistic effects and lead us to understand the world in new ways, and it is not appropriate in every context. But the same is true for other media and technology. The book is also a powerful extension of our minds, and it is not appropriate in every context either. Sometimes it is fitting to pray a written collect from the Book of Common Prayer, but sometimes extemporaneous prayer is necessary; sometimes it is deeply important to recite memorized prayers, such as the “Our Father,” rather than reading them off a piece of paper. We need discernment to decide what tools to use, what media to use, in each circumstance. I hope that as religious professionals, we will commit to the discernment process, rather than deciding based on knee-jerk reactions in any particular direction.

Non-Christians reading this might consider the Tibetan Buddhist practice of using prayer wheels. Christians have historically had a complicated relationship to this type of prayer, because of Biblical injunctions against using “vain repetitions” (Matt 6:7), but that does not make it any less valuable for those not bound by Christian scripture. ↩︎
If we eschew the use of commercial AI, we also dodge the most serious ethical problems with AI: the enormous environmental impact in electricity and water use, the inevitable biases reproduced within it, and the pillaging of intellectual property for the financial benefit of a few venture capitalists. ↩︎

- https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/aiforpriests/ - Flourish Klink, 2026

Easter Vigil Homily 2026

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 07:07:07 +0100

The Rev. Flourish Klink https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/easter2026/ -

I have a tradition of preaching John Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily, with mild tweaks and updates to bring it into context, every Easter Vigil. Thus, this sermon is based on John Chrysostom—specifically, on the version prepared by André Lavergne.

Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways. Thousands of years ago a preacher named John Chrysostom gave a sermon on Easter that still can’t be beat. In fact, it continues to be read in Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches every Easter Vigil.

This year we will join with our Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic siblings in hearing Chrysostom’s message. I’ve built on the work of other translators who have brought it from Greek into English, and only made a few changes to modernize the language.

I think it’s particularly fitting to read such a traditional sermon as we welcome our sister Alice into the community of Christians, because it reminds us that Alice has joined not just our church here on the Upper West Side, not just the Episcopal Church in the United States, not just the Anglican Communion, nor even just the Christian church as it exists in the world today. Alice has joined the communion of saints, living and dead, that stretches behind us to the dawn of time and before us to the Day of Judgment. They will walk with her, as they walk with all of us, and guide her her whole life through.

We can hear these words, which come to us from approximately the year 400 B.C.E., in their power and their majesty and their glory, today just as much as on the first day they were written.

So, in more-or-less the words of John Chrysostom:

The Lord is risen! (He is risen indeed!)

Does anyone here love God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Does anyone here work hard to help others, with gratitude for what they’ve been given? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Is anyone here tired of fasting and deprivation? Let them now receive their reward!

If anyone here has worked since the first hour of the day, let them receive their due.

If anyone only made it to work after the third hour, let them with gratitude join the feast.

If anyone arrived after the sixth hour, the Altar Guild might have something to say about it, but don’t worry: you won’t be left out.

If anyone dawdled until the ninth hour, never doubt: you’re still invited.

If you only made it here at the eleventh hour, don’t be afraid you were too late!

God is gracious and receives the last the same as the first. God gives rest to the one who came at the eleventh hour, just the same as the one who’s worked all day. God accepts all offerings based on our good intentions, and honors all our good deeds, however inadequate.

So let’s all enter into the joy of the Lord, the joy of this Easter Day!

First and last alike, receive your reward. Rich and poor, rejoice together!

Whether you kept a holy Lent or not, it doesn’t matter. Whether you got baptized years ago, or were baptized tonight, you’re welcome! Whether you came to church every Sunday or whether this is your first time in years, who cares? Celebrate!

We’re having a champagne toast after the service. In the morning I’m told there will be the traditional big ol’ cake in the shape of a lamb. Nobody will go away hungry. Feast royally, for the calf, as it were, is fatted: partake of the banquet of faith, both literal and figurative, and enjoy the bounty of the Lord’s goodness!

Let no one grieve their poverty, because God’s universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one lament their sins, because forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, because Jesus’s death has set us free.

Jesus destroyed death by living through death.

He destroyed Hell when he went down to Hell.

He put it in an uproar just at the moment it thought it had him.

Isaiah foretold this: he said “You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”

Hell was in an uproar, because Jesus abolished it.

It was in an uproar, because Jesus mocked it.

It was in an uproar, because Jesus overthrew it.

It was in an uproar, because Jesus took it captive.

Hell took what it thought was just another body, and it discovered it had tried to take God.

It took Earth, and it discovered it had tried to take Heaven.

It took what it saw, and it was defeated by what it couldn’t understand.

O Death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen and you are cast down!

Christ is risen and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen and we all are liberated!

Christ is risen, and the tombs are emptied of their dead! For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep.

To Christ be glory and power to the ages of ages. Amen!

- https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/easter2026/ - Flourish Klink, 2026

Celebration of Trans Joy and Resilience 2026

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 07:07:07 +0100

The Rev. Flourish Klink https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/tdov2026/ -

As you may know, I’m a member of the Greater New York Area Episcopal Trans Task Force. For the past three years, we have organized a Celebration of Trans Joy and Resilience at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine around the time of the Trans Day of Visibility each year. (I say “around the time” because TDOV typically falls during Lent, often during Holy Week, and it is therefore usually impossible to do it on the day itself for religious reasons.)

This year, I was honored to be invited to preach the sermon. I’m grateful to the cathedral for permitting it, and I’m grateful that the Episcopal Diocese of New York arranged for both videography and photography (the featured photo on this post is by Angela James.)

It’s tough out there right now. It’s extraordinarily difficult to be a trans person in this moment. I don’t know about you, but it feels to me like I spend a lot of time justifying my own existence. Starting from first principles. Teaching about the realities of life as a trans person. I spend a lot of time arguing against proof-texts, those little bits of the Bible that people use to claim that God agrees with their transphobia. I spend a lot of time introducing people to the basics of trans theology, helping them understand why the Hebrew Bible is not as anti-trans as they might think.

And you know, that time isn’t wasted. It’s important to explain to people that contrary to what they may have learned, Genesis doesn’t describe the creation of only men and women; God first created the ha’adam, the Earth Creature, who was non-binary. It’s important for people to actually read their Bible and discover that contrary to what they may have believed, in Isaiah—Isaiah, the book of the Hebrew Bible perhaps most beloved by Christians—God instructed his people to accept and welcome gender-non-conforming folks, saying that they would receive special blessings: “I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

All these things are true and there are many people who don’t know them, so it is good to repeat them. But Lord, I am so tired of justifying myself. I am so tired of begging for scraps and fearing that I will be cast out. There is a passage in the New Testament where a woman tells Jesus that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that the children drop beneath the table.” She is a model of humility and I honor her for it, but I have been in that place, begging for those crumbs, for so long. Lord, for so long. We go begging outside the church, and it feels like we are rejected and misunderstood at every turn; we go begging inside the church, and there too we count ourselves lucky if we are given a piece of bread, an ounce of understanding and respect, we don’t have to fight for.

But my friends: this is not what God wants for us.

My God, our God, is a God who promises to care for the humble, the hurt, the broken-hearted. My God, our God, is a God who knows the pain of being rejected and cast out. Trans people are twice as likely as cis people to live in poverty but my friends, my God—our God—is the God of the poor. Our God scorns the wealthy and the powerful and chooses in favor of the downtrodden and the hopeless. Our God will walk with us and defend us in our trials, even to the end.

And that is not all. That is not all because it is not enough that our God promises to be with us to the end, however difficult things might get. God promises us life, joy, beauty, dignity. God made us joyful and beautiful and authentic and wise.

It is easy to see how much God values our lives because our God is trans. I mean that. God is trans. It is not even a particularly convoluted theological statement to make.

First of all, it isn’t controversial at all to say that God is non-binary. Theologians have always agreed that God is beyond human categorizations like gender. And, of course, when God made human beings, either God made just one creature that had both male and female elements, or God made two beings because they were both necessary to fully reflect God’s image. God is non-binary.

God is non-binary—but I’m going to go further than that and say that God is trans. Let’s get on the same page here. When we trans people are born, people assign us a gender based on what they see. Then when we’re old enough, we realize that society was wrong, and we’re not—in our deepest selves—the gender that everyone thought. Right? That’s a reasonable working definition of a trans person, yes?

OK. Here is why God is trans. When God, who is non-binary, was born in human form as our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary said “Oh, look! A baby boy!” But God isn’t a boy. God is beyond boy and girl. God was assigned a gender at birth, and later on, it became clear that that gender wasn’t quite right.

When I say that “later on, it became clear that that gender was not quite right,” I mean it. Jesus didn’t live life the way your average first-century Judean man did. To the best of our knowledge he didn’t get married, and he chose to teach and engage with women in ways that were very unusual. Then Jesus died and was resurrected, and when Jesus was resurrected Jesus was changed. Jesus was different. Jesus did not look like himself. There was something different about Jesus.

Now the Bible doesn’t tell us what that was. The Bible doesn’t tell us why it is that Jesus’s best friends, his disciples, the people who had walked with him to the end of his life, the people who buried him in the tomb, still didn’t recognize Jesus for a good long time. I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t there. But I have an idea. I think Jesus was resurrected as Jesus’s true self, which is beyond male or female. I think that Jesus was not only transfigured. I think that Jesus transitioned. And I think that when the disciples met Jesus they were astonished because they were seeing who Jesus truly was.

That’s gospel, that’s good news, for trans people. Just saying “God made us who we are”—that doesn’t mean anything if God doesn’t really understand where we’re coming from, if God doesn’t really understand our struggles. But God does. And God didn’t make us for the purpose of torturing us with dysphoria, with societal scorn, with struggle. God made us with the goal that we would reflect God’s own self, God’s own glory, through our lives, indeed through our transitions. God made us and gave us memory, reason, and skill in order that we might work towards our own sanctification, that we might work towards becoming the people that God intended us to be. And God promises, God promises us that all our tears will be wiped away, that God will make all things new, that we will work with God to become our truest selves!

That’s good news!

And so I refuse to cede the holy spaces of our world, the cathedrals and churches, to people who do not recognize that in God’s complete eternity and immensity, that in God’s omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience, God is beyond our human gender We refuse to cede sacredness to people who think that God is so small that God cannot understand us trans folks. We refuse to cede sacredness to people who cannot see that in that holy city we are promised, in the New Jerusalem, each person will live their life honestly, truthfully, without fear or shame or constraint. We will fight for our rights in the political sphere, we will fight for our dignity in the social sphere, but we will do it with joy and with complete security because we know, we know that in doing so we are following Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Redeemer. We know that we are marching in the light of God.

My friends, today is a tough day. Yesterday was too and tomorrow is probably going to be again. The world is against us. But God is for us. God sees us and loves us and will justify us as we work to live our lives honestly, to not hide our true selves in the shadows. Today is a tough day, but it is the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it, because we are truly made in the image of God.

Amen.

- https://www.flourishklink.com/posts/tdov2026/ - Flourish Klink, 2026