Denominations are writing AI guidance — your church doesn't have to wait

In one week, three parts of the Church took the same step: set up the slow work of writing AI guidance. That is worth noticing — and worth not waiting for. Reading time: about 5 minutes.

In the space of a few days, three different parts of the Church took the same step. None of them published a finished set of rules. All of them set up — or, in one case, explained — the slow work of writing some. That is worth noticing, and worth not waiting for.

The United Methodists: a task force, a toolkit, and a 2028 horizon

On 5 November, the United Methodist Council of Bishops voted to convene a task force on artificial intelligence. Its job is to develop a statement, related resources, and a connectional toolkit on AI, grounded in Christian faith and Wesleyan heritage, and to coordinate the work of the church's general agencies toward the 2028 General Conference. A progress report is due at the Council's spring 2027 meeting.

Two lines from the meeting are worth keeping. Bishop Lanette Plambeck, who presented the motion with Bishop Tom Berlin, said: “The church has wisdom to offer this conversation, and the time for us to do it is now.” Bishop Mande Muyombo, president-designate of the Council, put the point more sharply: “The challenge of AI is not technological, but it is theological.”

That is the right framing, and it is also a timetable. A statement and toolkit worked through the agencies toward a 2028 conference is, quite properly, a two-year piece of work. A local church deciding this month whether a volunteer may paste a prayer list into a chatbot cannot sensibly wait for it.

The Anglicans in Canada: terms of reference, not yet principles

Two days later, on 7 November, the Anglican Church of Canada's Council of the General Synod adopted terms of reference for a new task force on artificial intelligence. The Council had called for those terms in June. The task force's purpose is to develop guiding principles to help the church engage faithfully with AI as the technology changes, and the terms call for a wide range of voices to be represented.

Note what that is, and what it is not. Terms of reference set out a mandate and a membership; they are the paperwork before the work, not the guidance itself. No publication date for the principles was given in the Council's highlights. A Canadian Anglican parish that wants something to hand its volunteers this Sunday will not find it in this announcement — yet.

The Catholic bishops: a framework already in hand

The third item is different in kind, and the most useful of the three for a local church right now. Writing on 8 November, Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond — a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Task Force on Preserving Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence — explains the moral framework the task force is working from: Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, in which human dignity runs through section after section, on fundamental human rights, justice and peace, access to education, and employment.

Knestout quotes the encyclical's warning directly: if the human being “is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy” (Magnifica Humanitas 117). The task force, he writes, will offer moral and ethical guidance to the technology field and advocate for legislation and regulation that keeps human dignity at the centre of AI development. He is writing after attending a bishops' forum at which representatives of Google, OpenAI and Anthropic gave an overview of the state of the technology.

Unlike the other two items, this one hands a church something it can use today: a test to apply to any AI use. Not “is it efficient?” or “is it new?” but “what impact will this have on the dignity of all whom God has created in his own image and likeness?” That is Knestout's own closing question, and it is a good one to pin above the church office computer.

What the three have in common

Read together, the three announcements agree on more than their timing. All three treat AI as a theological and moral question first and a technical question second — the Methodists say so outright, the Anglicans frame their task force around faithful engagement, and the Catholic task force starts from human dignity. None of them is anti-technology: Knestout says so explicitly, and the Methodists are building a toolkit, not a ban. And none of them has yet given a local church a finished document to adopt.

That last point is the practical one. Denominational guidance, done well, takes time: it has to be theologically careful, it has to survive committee, conference and synod, and it has to speak to churches of very different sizes in very different places. A single congregation does not have those constraints. It has a pastor, a handful of volunteers, and a decision to make about what goes into a chatbot this week.

What your church can do this weekend

So borrow the denominations' principles and skip their timetable. Three steps, in the order the live policy template on this site sets them out:

Friday, 30 minutes: name an owner. One named person owns AI decisions for the church, with one other person to review them with. Without that, every volunteer makes their own call, and the church ends up with five different tools and no agreed rules.

Saturday, 90 minutes: fill in the one-page template. The only decisions that need real discussion are the blanks: the approved-tools list, the giving-data rule, and what happens when a tool gets something wrong. Apply Knestout's test as you go — does this use respect the dignity of the people whose information it touches? The template's “never enter” list (prayer requests, pastoral conversations, children's details, giving records, anything told in confidence) is that test, written down.

Sunday, one minute: tell the congregation. A single sentence from the front or in the newsletter: AI helps with drafting and organising, it never handles private or pastoral information, and a person always makes the final decision.

Then, when the Methodist toolkit, the Anglican principles, or the Catholic task force's guidance does arrive, revise the policy in light of it. A one-page policy written this weekend is not a rival to denominational guidance; it is a placeholder that does the job until the fuller guidance exists — and it is far easier to revise a short policy you already have than to write a first one under pressure, after something has already gone wrong.

The denominations are moving, slowly and deliberately, as they should. Your church can move now, briefly and honestly, as it can. Start here: A church AI policy in a weekend →