This Issue

When I wrote about faith online about a year ago for Canada Lutheran, I left artificial intelligence (AI) out of the conversation. Though it was already a prevalent force of technological advancement and a hot topic at that point in time, it has grown exponentially since. AI is everywhere, and it is such an integrated part of our daily lives, even if we don’t realize it. Streaming services, like Netflix, use Machine Learning (AI) to curate personalized suggested titles. The Autocorrect feature on our phones operates through AI technology.

Smartwatches also use AI, and Google searches will now display AI-generated answers as the first result when you use the search engine. And then there are the more obvious examples, like the use of AI-generated images and videos, such as in advertisements and on social media.

It is difficult, sometimes, to know what is and what isn’t AI, and it’s even harder to gauge where its use begins and ends.

I think it is extremely important for our church to engage in dialogue surrounding AI. The technology isn’t going anywhere, and we have to equip ourselves with the right tools to navigate it. We also must decide what we want our relationship with the technology to be, both individually and collectively—how we want to engage with it at congregational, synodical, and national levels, both theologically and practically.

Around the world, we see churches starting to engage in conversations about how they want to navigate the world of AI as faith communities and we are seeing churches lay out their principles and bounds regarding AI. I turn to our neighbours, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). They have already started to explore AI considerations as a Lutheran institution as well as ecumenically. We are even seeing various congregations experiment with AI, pushing the limits of what can be done with the technology in faith spaces, which is explored further in our cover story.

While AI and its use can be considered a divisive topic, I believe that it holds true that we must also have these discussions as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, because conversations such as these, where we discuss various ethical, theological and pragmatic considerations of new widespread technologies such as AI, will help guide us in our decision-making, and will also shape and strengthen our identity as a church.

We are starting to have these conversations in Canada—for example, back in October, the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) co-organized a webinar on theology and AI, which can be viewed on the CCCs’ YouTube account.

It is my hope that the cover story of this issue of Canada Lutheran will help further inspire these conversations within our church, in local and national contexts. I would suggest the ELCA’s Journal of Lutheran Ethics’ recent issue on Ethical Considerations on Artificial Intelligence (Volume 24, Number 4) as a starting resource for further reading and discourse on the topic.

On a different note, you might notice a slight change to the magazine this issue. One of the recommendations of the taskforce addressing Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia is to increase our usage of pronouns as a church. In accordance with that recommendation, Canada Lutheran will be starting to make an intentional effort to include the pronouns of contributors in the publication, on a voluntary basis. The Q&A column this issue delves further into why Canada Lutheran is adopting this practice.

I wish you all the best in this new year. Twenty twenty-five will be a year of great change. The future is uncertain, but it is also an exciting opportunity for growth. God is guiding us!

Sarah Malina
Editor