The market in religious chatbots is now quite healthy. If you’re Episcopalian you can go to Ask Cathy; if you’re Catholic there’s Magisterium; if you’re a Latter-day Saint there’s LDSBot; if you’re Muslim there’s Ansari; and if you’re Jewish you can go to Rav Dicta, or use of the services that lets you talk to the avatars of famous historical rabbis.

Zohar Atkins is the creator of Yochai, a chatbot designed for engaging with Jewish texts, rather than just getting answers to Jewish questions. We demoed the newly-launched product and talk about how AI might change Jewish learning.

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As a decentralized faith, Islam does not have one single approach to AI. Muslim communities are constructing norms around AI usage in religious scholarship and sermon-writing through a mix of guidance from religious leaders and emergent communal practice. I talked to Waleed Kadous, the creator of Islamic AI assistant Ansari, about how the technology is shaping not only Islamic scholarship but our value systems and real world politics.

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The idea that human beings are created in the image of God is a central part of both Jewish and Christian theology, and with the rise of AI it has become perhaps the best example of how ancient religious wisdom can regulate modern technology by reminding us of what we value most of all. If human beings are created in the image of God—if we have something in us that separates us from animals—then we have an idea to rally around, a way to articulate that humanity’s special status needs to be preserved at all cost.

The problem is, this theological idea is a lot more unstable than we’d like to admit. I talk to Tomer Persico, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea.

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There is more than one type of religious approach to AI. While the Catholic response has received by far the most media attention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been developing a response that has a stronger emphasis on practice. I spoke with Elder Gerrit Gong, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, about the church's approach.

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On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued Magnifica Humanitas, a major new document on AI for the world's biggest religion. I talked with Brian Green about what it says, why it was written this way, where it sits in the history of major church documents, and whether it is likely to effect change on the AI industry.

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After less than a year from the end of our first season, Belief in the Future is coming back into a world where religion and technology are now crashing into each other.

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Belief is affiliated with the Faith Family Technology Network. It is a production of Sinai and Synapses and is supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. This episode was edited by M. Louis Gordon, and our production manager is Misha Holleb.

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To close out our summer episodes, we're talking with Kevin Kelly, founder of WIRED Magazine and writer about all things tech and culture. Kevin is a devout Christian with an eye toward the ethical good of technology. In our conversation, we cover technological skepticism, the AI identity crisis, the Amish, and much more. 

P.S. Check out host David Zvi Kalman's new YouTube channel, Sabbath Mode, for more in depth conversations about religion and technology.

Resources:

Kevin's website

Kevin's books

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BIG NEWS: Belief in the Future now has a YouTube channel: Sabbath Mode. Go check it out before listening to the episode Coding is one part skill, one part magic, and one part tradition. But when AI use takes out the conversation of code -- the necessary language of the code itself -- can the tradition be kept alive? How do we keep something living and growing without passing along its stories, its trials and errors, and its complexities? On this episode, host David Zvi Kalman speaks with scientist Samuel Arbesman about his new book, The Magic of Code, and the ways that religion and coding reflect one another. 

Resources: 

The Magic of Code by Samuel Arbesman 

The poetic web

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Religious organizations, like all other organizations, are beginning to use AI. Some of these uses are unremarkable, but others bring AI into the business of delivering religious messages. In this episode, host DZ Kalman speaks with religion and AI evangelist Kenny Jahng about the tools he sees churches adapting and what it means to use AI as a tool for evangelism.

Resources:

Kenny Jahng's website

Futureproof, by Kevin Roose

Exponential NEXT

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We often think about how technology has influenced religion, but we rarely question the opposite: how has religion pushed technological advancement? In the case of Christianity, software to share the Bible has been in development for decades and has been shaping tech advancement behind the scenes for even longer. On this episode, we're talking to John Dyer, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and the author of the new book People of the Screen that details the entwined history of software and evangelism.

Reading and resource list: 

YouVersion

Hebcal

The Medium is the Message, Marshall McCluhan

Geneva Bible

The Scofield Study Bible

Encountering Peace

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What if AI and religion had a converging relationship rather than a parallel one? In Professor Beth Singler's new book, Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction, she explores how enmeshed technology and religion are in our current era, and how we as a society may be heading toward the creation and worship of a god-like AI.  

Reading list: 

Roko’s Basilisk or Pascal’s? Thinking of Singularity Thought Experiments as Implicit Religion

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

Existential Conversations with Large Language Models: Content, Community, and Culture

The Turing Church

Theta Noir

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