In his words
I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine.
Biography
Jonas Simmerlein is a theologian and philosopher at the University of Vienna who, in his late twenties, became the public face of AI-generated worship. In June 2023 he staged an experiment at Germany’s Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag (Protestant church congress) in Fürth.
A sermon from the machine
More than 300 people packed St. Paul’s Church for a roughly 40-minute service that was almost entirely generated by ChatGPT — the sermon, prayers, hymn choices, and even the AI avatars that delivered it from a screen above the altar. Simmerlein said he simply prompted the model to imagine what a church service at the congress would look like, and it produced what he called a solid liturgy.
He was refreshingly honest about the seams. Reactions were mixed — some worshippers found the experience moving, others said it lacked heart and soul — and Simmerlein agreed the technology has hard limits when it comes to genuine pastoral care.
The pastor is in the congregation, she lives with them, she buries the people, she knows them from the beginning. Artificial intelligence cannot do that.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/jonas-simmerlein