The Great Aw(AI)kening: Could the Drive Towards Digital Efficiency Generate a Rekindling of Religiosity?

America’s thoroughly documented decline in religiosity appears to have hit a plateau. What does this mean for churches?

After nearly two decades of continuous decline, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian appears to have stabilized. According to the 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, 63% of American adults now identify as Christian. While this is down from 78% in 2008, it’s actually a tick more than the 62% who identified as Christian in 2022. After a long period of growth, the percentage of Americans identifying as “nones” also appears to have stabilized. And while people aren’t going to church more than they were in years past, they at least aren’t going less. 33% of Americans say they go to church at least once a month. 

This trend has been thoroughly analyzed across religious and secular media, including both right-leaning and left-leaning outlets. The New York Times, for example, is running a new series of editorials exploring belief in America. Among pundits and commentators, some have pointed to this stabilization as evidence that Americans are moving away from secularism. A few evangelical commentators have celebrated that the New Atheist movement of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens seems to be losing momentum. Other commentators have suggested that the stabilization has less to do with stalled secularism and more to do with the limitations of authenticity. Not finding durable fulfillment and through Soul Cycle, Instagram, or the workplace, it seems that some are turning to more conventional forms of religion as a source of spiritual identity. It’s also entirely possible that slowing rates of secularization don’t have a grand cause, and are simply the natural floor of the downward trend. 

We won’t be able to definitely explain the root causes and top contributors behind these results from the Religious Landscape Study until further research is completed. But in this time of permissible speculation, allow me to posit another potential contributor to slowing rates of secularization. 

The post-pandemic economy has pivoted towards efficiency as an intrinsic good. When rising interest rates rattled markets, notable business leaders (Mark Zuckerberg included) trumpeted a “year of efficiency,” a prolonged period of cutting costs and cranking up outputs. Elon Musk instilled a similar ethos in his “more hardcore” version of Twitter. Investors bought into companies that loudly leaned into efficiency through layoffs, hyper-growth forecasts, and commitments to use generative artificial intelligence across their business. 

As efficiency became virtuous, artificial intelligence equipped us with tools for completing mundane tasks at greater speed. Google Gemini can now summarize the contents of my entire inbox. Microsoft Co-Pilot can build my presentation for next week’s team meeting. ChatGPT can plan my family’s weekly meals and shopping lists, and Anthropic’s Claude can write this blog post. Taken together, we are witnessing the elevation of efficiency as a value, as we are gaining access to tools that (at least in theory) can make us meaningfully more productive. 

But where does that leave us spiritually? 

Some of us may come to recognize that efficiency is a rather unfulfilling objective.I have suggested that working alongside AI in some ways dims the creative spark. When working alongside a chatbot, I can be more efficient, completing more tasks per hour, but I don’t feel as strong a sense of satisfaction when I outsource considerable amounts of work to ChatGPT. 

In a spiritual sense, we may come to recognize that productivity lacks power. Individual efficiency doesn’t leave us feeling more curious, connected, or creative. It doesn’t show us how we are part of a story larger than ourselves, or why our work has meaning. Efficiency doesn’t leave us comforted in times of crisis, nor does it console us in our grief. So while some have looked to social media, technology, and work to provide a sense of rootedness, it’s unsurprising that we might look elsewhere when these domains become over-indexed on getting stuff done. 

We might call this pivot the Great Aw(AI)kening - not because AI awakens some dormant religious impulse, but because our preference for production proves to be somewhat hollow and unfulfilling. If I am efficient, I might rate higher on a performance review or receive a higher grade. But in adeptly wielding these digital tools, I’ll miss out on a connection to a larger whole. I’ll miss out on where I fit within a bigger story. And I’ll lack the connections and community that carry me through times of crisis. 

I believe there is merit to using AI and digital tools for the sake of productivity and efficiency, particularly if these tools offload the monotony and drudgery that are part of digital age work. But I’m also cognizant that these tools cannot be fulfilling ends in and of themselves. In that sense, I’m not surprised that America has slowed in its rate of secularization. Efficiency can be important, but not all that fulfilling. To find fulfillment, perhaps I ought to look to more ancient sources. To find connection, perhaps I ought to seek more traditional forms of community. As the digital age pushes us towards individual productivity, the church, its teachings, sacred texts and sacraments, offer me a necessary counter-weight. 

AI and Accomplishment: Will ChatGPT Take My Job (Satisfaction)?

Why bother with writing?

It's not a particularly lucrative activity, nor does it magnify my "influence." If I wanted steady income or cultural clout I would make reaction videos on TikTok. I don't write because my work makes the world a better place or because society so desperately needs my voice. If I wanted either I would look towards organizations or movements with wider followings than I have (though I am grateful for each and every one of the 13 followers I amassed while still on Twitter).

Truthfully, I write for selfish reasons. I write because doing so gives me a clear sense of satisfaction. Completing a thoughtful paragraph or a clever phrase provides a sense of "job well done" that is difficult to attain elsewhere. Typical of an Enneagram "3," I have a bias for achievement. Writing, blogging, occasionally publishing, are activities that feed my bias and nourish my ego. Putting pen to paper or words to the screen helps me to feel an objective sense of impact and rectitude, scarce sentiments in a culture of speed, and subjectivity. Even the writing projects that ostensibly achieve nothing --- few views, zero re-tweets, certainly no monetization --- have a way of convincing my egotistical self that my work is satisfactory.

Over the last two years, I've added more technology into the creative process. I've increasingly started to work and to write alongside AI. I started slowly at first, apps like Grammarly and ChatGPT serving as high-tech spell-checkers. And then I learned what else LLMs could provide: post titles and content outlines, suggestions for the next paragraph and prompts for the next post, tables of contents, images, translations, and recommendations for further reading. I learned that AI could subtly adjust the tone of voice of an entire essay, reformat a course for a different set of learners, and polish scraps of notation in a message fit for a chief executive.

I've certainly become more efficient after hiring AI as my editor and co-creator. Projects that once took me days are now requiring hours. Tasks that were once tedious are now easy to complete. While I've stopped short of generating entire works from LLMs, I wonder how coherent my words would be if I were to start a project without the support and love of my preferred large language models. I should note that as I type these words, Wix, my site hosting platform, is nudging me to use its own AI to "generate a full-length blog post with a title and images." Do I dare click the magic button and end today's writing session?

Even with this artificially-generated efficiency, I've observed a change in how I feel—in writing, content creation, project development, even in emailing people with important job titles. Something seems off. And I think I know what's missing.

Thanks to AI, thee smug, self-centered satisfaction I used to feel in my writing isn't as strong as it used to be. The sense of accomplishment from a witty phrase or a creative expression isn't as evident since I started using OpenAI.

Our cultural dialogue around AI emphasizes efficiency gains and existential threats, environmental impact and essential regulation. It's a dialogue that is ever-sensitive to career displacement. But lost in this conversation is the topic of AI and achievement. AI might very well take my job. Must it also take my sense of job satisfaction?

We're all on a learning curve with artificial intelligence, but that curve is more complex than we imagine. It's not that we must learn to master ChatGPT or to work alongside these magical technologies. It's that we must also learn to do so in a way that preserves what makes the creative process worthwhile. The real learning curve for AI is to discover how to use these resources in a way that preserves that spark of accomplishment, that glimmer of a job well done, that visceral feeling that comes when I have envisioned, written, or brought to life something both original and useful.

I'm not particularly worried that AI is going to take jobs - mine or yours. But I'm becoming increasingly concerned that AI is going to remove some of the agency and autonomy that fuels so many of us in our creative pursuits.

Will AI make us more productive? Most certainly. Will it diminish the delight we take in our efforts? Perhaps. Will it make the creative process a slog? It remains to be seen. What's at stake is more important than a temporary occupation. What's at stake is our intangible yet foundational sense of purpose and meaning. As AI development accelerates, the very human challenge in front of us is to retain the joy of creativity as AI makes us increasingly productive.

The Church in 2025: A Community of Gracious Uncertainty

In thinking about the year ahead, I was drawn to this quote from Oswald Chambers, a 20th-century Scottish minister:

Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.

If uncertainty is a characteristic of a faithful life, then 2025 is shaping up to be quite a formative year.

Rev. Oswald Chambers, 1874-1914.

As the calendar turns, uncertainty is omnipresent: in global affairs, politics, economics, and business; in education and healthcare; in energy and transportation. In our organizations and families, in our workplaces and our churches, 2025 begins as a year of the unknown. The Economist identified "radical uncertainty” as one of just 3 forces that’ll shape the year ahead. The other 2? Donald Trump, and technology.

If you're an optimist, you might find reasons for positivity in this uncertainty, looking at lower interest rates, decreasing inflation, and the ongoing advancement of AI. On the other hand, if you tend to see the glass as half-empty, you might be concerned about global conflicts, persistently high prices, digital misinformation, and job displacement due to AI. But regardless of your outlook, we can’t possibly imagine where economics, politics, and technology will be in one year's time. In each of these areas, 2025 appears to promise much more volatility than we would normally expect. The situation is like a coin that’s landed upright on its edge. We all wait to see in which direction the coin will decisively tilt.

Moreso than any other community or institution, the church is uniquely situated to help communities navigate a year of uncertainty. And yet we must recognize that our culture is not one that is accustomed to uncertainty. As any TikTok influencer can attest, people crave specificity and certainty, clear and succinct takes and reactions. So how, then, does a faith community navigate a year of uncertainty? How does one live a faithful life when the surrounding us culture forms us to flee the uncertain? And what does it mean to be the church in an uncertainty-filled culture?

First, we might recognize that waiting amidst uncertainty is something the Christian faith has always practiced. We dedicate an entire month of our liturgical calendar, Advent, to anticipation. The very structure of our life together, the liturgy, knits us together in a practice of waiting for God to show up. The liturgy is a tool for those of us who are very uncertain, who acknowledge that we cannot see what is coming next. If we could depend on our certainty, there’d be no need for such practices.

Acknowledging that navigating uncertainty is core to the witness of the church, we might come to regard humility as a spiritual discipline. Humility is the antithesis of certainty, which can often lead to rigidity and a false sense of security. Certitude, with its assertive proclamations, confidently asserts, "I can see what will happen next here." Conversely, humility invites a posture of openness and curiosity. It acknowledges the limitations of human understanding and the vastness of divine mystery. Humility says, "I recognize that there is far more than what meets my eye."

In this light, humility becomes an essential lens through which to view our faith journey. It encourages the faithful to engage with the complexities and the paradoxes of their beliefs, to grapple with doubts and uncertainties, and to seek wisdom from ancient and contemporary sources. Furthermore, humility allows for a deeper engagement with the scriptures, leading us into prayer and contemplation. As we approach the Bible with a humble heart, we become more receptive to the polyvalent meanings and many interpretations within the text. We become more receptive to the subtle voice of God in our midst. We may even be more gracious towards ourselves and towards our neighbor. The spiritual discipline of humility fosters a sense of community where individuals can share their wanderings and wonderings without fear of judgment, creating a safe space for dialogue and exploration. In this light, humility becomes virtuous. Counter-cultural, yes, but virtuous nonetheless.

Fr. Richard Rohr points out that the church is at its best when it leads with a posture of humility. In an essay on "Humble Knowing," he writes:

Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time—when the truth is the exact opposite. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all.

In its commitment to humility, the church holds an alternative voice from those who believe that they alone can keep you safe, fit, and productive.This alternative voice isn't that of argumentation or resistance. It is instead a voice that speaks rather gently. It is the voice of one who is willing to listen, even to stand down. It is the voice of one who recognizes that all of us are beholden to myopia, error, and even sin. While the surrounding culture boasts of it's unique access to certain truth, the faithful recognize that we see through a glass darkly. While the surrounding culture elevates influencers and charismatic experts, the faithful proclaim an anthropology in which we are fully saint - but also fully sinner. As the surrounding culture carries into the new year with overconfidence, let 2025 in the church be a year of humility. Let us begin a year of gracious uncertainty.