By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter
Practicing Christians are using artificial intelligence in both their work and personal lives more than most Americans, and nearly half of them say they would trust the technology with their spiritual growth, according to a recent survey from Barna Group.
The findings come from a survey of 1,514 U.S. adults conducted in November 2025 and another of 442 Protestant pastors conducted in December 2025. Researchers found that even though practicing Christians already use AI more than their pastors, they still want their guidance on engaging with the technology. Only a minority of pastors, around 12%, feel prepared to give guidance on using AI.
About 44% of practicing Christians say they use AI “very often” or “often” in their personal lives. This share is 13 percentage points higher than the 31% of U.S. adults overall who fall in the category of AI engagement. Only 29% of non-practicing Christians reported the same engagement.
When it comes to AI use on the job, 39% of practicing Christians reported using the technology often compared with just 26% of U.S. adults nationwide.
Only 16% of pastors say they use AI “often” personally and 5% said they engage AI for personal matters “very often.” Some 45% said they used AI “not very much” or “not at all.” About a third said they use AI only “sometimes.” Even for work purposes, 24% of pastors said they used the technology very often compared with 39% of practicing Christians.
Nearly half of practicing Christians say they would trust the technology with their spiritual growth. However, the data shows that spiritual growth isn’t the top priority for engagement.
Most Christians use AI for learning, getting advice or improving their writing much more than for interpreting Scripture or spiritual guidance.
“Ask people yes-or-no whether they use AI, and the average pastor and the average American look about the same,” Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research, said. “It’s frequency of use where the difference actually shows up.”
Research produced by Barna earlier this year suggests that about a third of practicing American Christians say the spiritual advice they get from artificial intelligence is just as good as that from a pastor, with practicing Christians more likely to agree with this notion than non-practicing Christians and non-Christians.
The findings come as advocacy organizations like Tech Justice Law, a public-interest litigation firm, push to ensure that “artificial intelligence products are safe by design, subject to oversight, and transparent to their users.”
“Our work is grounded in a simple, yet important premise: if it would be illegal, exploitative, or dangerous for a human actor to engage in certain conduct, it should not be immunized simply because the harm is mediated through software,” Tech Justice Law states on their website.
“This principle animated why, in fall 2024, we filed the first wrongful death case on behalf of Megan Garcia, against an AI chatbot company, Character.AI, its co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel DeFreitas, and Google.”
On Tuesday, Tech Justice Law was also one of several organizations that sued OpenAI and its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on behalf of former Florida pastor Scott Winters, alleging he nearly died after ChatGPT-4o gave him inaccurate medical advice during several months of what he says were manipulative conversations.
Among other things, Winters’ lawsuit accuses OpenAI of engaging in the unauthorized practice of medicine and exploiting sensitive information about his religious beliefs to increase his engagement with the product. His medical struggles and increased dependence on the technology led him to leave his job as a pastor.