11 May 2026 The deeper human questions: Why the church needs to be a conversation partner on AI
Artificial intelligence is not only a technical revolution, “[i]t is also a crisis of rhythm, meaning, truth, and human formation,” stated Stiven Naatus, director of advocacy at the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF), a WACC member, in his presentation at WACC Europe’s latest online discussion on 21 April.
Grounding his presentation in his work as former chair of the ELCF’s AI Working Group, Naatus argued that too many conversations about AI treat it purely as a matter of code and computation. What gets missed, he said, are the deeper transformations happening in how people live, work, relate, and make sense of the world.
He organised the church’s interest in AI around five themes: truth, attention, dignity, community, and hope.
On truth, he was blunt. Scrolling social media today, he said, he can no longer trust whether images of the White House – or anywhere else – are real or AI-generated. When the line between fabricated and authentic becomes indistinguishable, the institutions that have long cultivated a commitment to truthfulness have something important to offer, he stated.
In terms of attention, Naatus observed that AI systems are extraordinarily good at persuading us, engaging us, and making us feel understood – capturing our focus in ways that social media algorithms began but AI is accelerating to a new level.
Questions of dignity – who owns personal data, who can construct a detailed profile of your behaviour and desires – sit squarely within a tradition that has always insisted on the irreducible worth of each person.
And on community, he noted the strange irony of platforms like LinkedIn increasingly filled with AI-generated posts, mediated connection replacing the thing it was meant to foster.
Hope, he said, anchors us in the midst of it all. “In these times when the speed is so fast, we need something that grounds us.”
Addressing AI’s impacts on everyday lives
Speaking from Finland – a country of 5.5 million people where the church is woven into the fabric of villages, schools, and community crisis response – Naatus was careful not to overstate his institution’s technical credentials.
“We are not a tech company. We don’t understand technology better than others, and we are just learning it.”
But the church’s proximity to everyday life, he argued, gives it something tech companies and regulators typically lack: the ability to see consequences before systems are understood.
AI, he pointed out, enters society through education, media, work, healthcare, politics, and relationships. It therefore enters the church through the people who bring those lives through its doors.
The church meets the human effects of AI long before it understands the mechanisms producing them. That, Naatus suggested, is not a weakness but a form of knowledge.
The church has been putting this to use. For two years, the ELCF has hosted Heräys (Finnish for “awakening”), a major public event exploring AI through ethical, social, and spiritual lenses.
The results have been striking: 200 on-site participants and more than 3,000 livestream viewers, and a social media reach that exceeded 1 million in 2025 and hit 600,000 in the first week of the 2026 event alone. The digital discussion platform doubled in engagement between the two events, from 570 to 1,150 participants. And this, it was noted, only reaches a Finnish audience.
“I think and believe,” Naatus said, “that AI is already a public, ethical, and spiritual conversation.”
Human vs AI rhythm
Naatus also raised the “the rhythm problem.” Human formation – building trust, growing in wisdom, developing vocation, making meaning – is slow. AI production is extraordinarily fast. Institutions react somewhere in between. When these three tempos diverge, he argued, confusion grows.
The consequences he described were not abstract: Workers displaced by systems they barely know exist; students submitting AI-generated work without understanding it; a world where a movie, a book, or an advertisement can be produced in seconds.
“What will that mean?” he kept asking. “What will that make to us?”
To give depth to this concern, he reached into the Christian monastic tradition for the concept of acedia. Historically translated as “sloth,” acedia for the church fathers was something more specific: A thinning of desire, attention, and patience; the midday demon that makes all effort feel pointless.
Naatus argued this applies uncomfortably well in an AI-saturated culture. “When everything is ready too quickly, meaning no longer has time to ripen.”
If the rhythm problem is real, liturgy offers a response – not as retreat from technological society but as what Naatus called “a counter-rhythm within it.”
Liturgy, he explained, gives people a shared tempo they do not have to invent for themselves. It slows perception and attention. It creates space for meaning in a culture of instant output. Like nature’s own rhythms, which govern without asking permission, liturgy governs by formation.
He placed this within a broader theological claim: Christian tradition knows that not everything valuable can be accelerated. Wisdom, repentance, trust, reconciliation, and hope all have their own tempo. That is precisely why, he said, the church belongs in this conversation.
Addressing AI within the church
Discussion among the participants raised dilemmas when AI is used within the church setting officially or unofficially. Pastors using AI to write sermons or communications, people turning to chatbots for pastoral support, fast-growing churches that don’t rely on traditional liturgical rhythm all raise additional challenges for churches to address.
Watch Stiven Naatus’s presentation on “Why the Church Is a Good Conversation Partner on AI.” | Discover presentations from other WACC Europe discussions.
Naatus agreed transparency was non-negotiable. “We have to say how we use [AI] and where.”
He described the ELCF’s own policy of avoiding AI-generated images in official materials, on the grounds that authenticity matters when an institution speaks about people. Using AI to clarify and develop thinking, then setting it aside for genuine human deliberation, was, he said, the rhythm that was working in his own team.
Responding to a question about whether age, gender, and socioeconomic status shaped different relationships to AI, Naatus spoke of younger Finns using it more, though noted a generational paradox: the very youngest cohorts, shaped by experience of social media’s harms, are sometimes the most sceptical.
On access, he raised the equity concern plainly. Those with the time, resources, and knowledge to use AI well are likely to gain advantages in the labour market. “Those who have now may get more. And so on, that will happen once again – if you don’t do anything about it.”
The church in the room where it happens
A participant noted that the reach of Heräys was all the more remarkable for being conducted almost entirely in Finnish and asked about future ecumenical and international expansion.
Naatus said there was interest from both governmental and non-governmental partners in expanding the event beyond Finland. “We are in an early phase,” he said, “but we will start talking about it.”
“Everybody knows that this is everybody’s concern,” Naatus said, describing the mix of tech entrepreneurs, European Commission representatives, religious leaders, and politicians at Heräys. “We are in the same boat, somehow, as human beings.”
The conversation concluded that the church is not positioned as having the answers to AI. It is positioned as a community that meets human beings in the middle of transformation, that holds traditions for slowing down and making meaning, and that can host – across dividing lines of expertise, ideology, and sector – the broader public conversation that society urgently needs.
This, perhaps, is where the church’s distinctive contribution lies – not in outpacing technological development but in insisting we take time to ask what we are building, why, and for whom.
Top image: Scenes from the 2025 edition of Heräys (Awakening), the public event hosted by ELCF to explore AI from ethical, social, and spiritual perspectives. Credit: Jani Karlsson
WACC Europe’s monthly discussions aim to bring a justice angle to communication and technology’s challenges and build networks of informed engagement. The next is scheduled for 19 May. To be informed of discussion topics, contact WACC Europe.
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This article was initially drafted with AI assistance from a transcript and subsequently reviewed and edited by staff.
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