La Roche University in Pittsburgh, PA, is pleased to announce its conference on Artificial Intelligence and Faith, to be held on campus November 6, 2026. The conference will feature keynote speaker Dr. Noreen Herzfeld, Professor Emerita and Director of the Program in Benedictine Spirituality and the Environment at Saint John's School of Theology and Seminary, and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies (ZRS) in Koper, Slovenia. Dr. Herzfeld is a member of the AI Research Group for the Centre for Digital Culture of the Vatican Dicastery of Culture and Education and the author of several foundational works at the intersection of technology and theology, including The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic World (Fortress, 2023), In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit (Fortress, 2002), and Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World (Templeton, 2009), as well as co-editor of Encountering AI: Ethical and Anthropological Explorations (Pickwick, 2024).

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how human beings understand relationship, authority, embodiment, and meaning — questions that sit at the heart of every religious tradition. As generative AI systems increasingly mediate counsel, companionship, worship, and even claims to speak with religious or prophetic authority, communities of faith face urgent new questions about discernment, formation, and the boundaries of the human and the machine.

This one-day conference invites papers, panel proposals, and works-in-progress that explore the encounter between artificial intelligence and religious life — from single-tradition perspectives, interfaith and comparative approaches, philosophical and theological analysis, and practitioner reflection from religious institutions and institutions of higher learning.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Parasocial and pseudo-social relationships with AI companions, chatbots, and “AI friends”
• Loneliness, intimacy, and the outsourcing of pastoral or relational care to AI
• Imago Dei and artificial intelligence: what does it mean to be made in the image of God in a world of machines that mimic the human?
• Is there an “imago hominis” — an image of the human — encoded in AI, and what does that reveal about us?
• AI systems speaking, preaching, or purporting to counsel on behalf of Jesus, the saints, or other religious figures
• The rise of “AI religion” and techno-spiritual movements originating in Silicon Valley (e.g., AI as deity, prophecy, or object of worship)
• Algorithmic authority, chatbot clergy, and questions of religious legitimacy and discernment
• AI-generated scripture, sermons, liturgy, and religious art
• AI in worship, pastoral care, chaplaincy, spiritual direction, and religious education
• AI at seminaries and religious institutions of higher learning: teaching, research, plagiarism, and formation
• Ethical guardrails, best practices, and cautionary tales for religious use of AI
• AI and religious institutions' administrative, communication, and formation work
• What capacities — discernment, wisdom, compassion, conscience — remain distinctly human versus what AI can simulate or augment
• Formation and virtue in an age of outsourced cognition
• Contemplative practice, attention, and technology
• Perspectives from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Indigenous, and other traditions on AI, personhood, and creation
• Interfaith and comparative approaches to AI ethics
• Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (2026) and Catholic social teaching on AI and human dignity
• Points of convergence and divergence across traditions on questions of soul, spirit, agency, and machine
• AI governance, labor, and justice through a theological or faith-based lens
• Environmental and resource costs of AI as a matter of religious ethics
• AI, truth-telling, deception, and trust in religious contexts

Submission Guidelines

We invite proposals for individual papers, panel discussions, and works-in-progress in any of the areas above, or in related areas not listed. Interfaith, comparative, and single-tradition submissions are all welcome, as are submissions from theologians, religious studies scholars, philosophers, computer scientists, ethicists, clergy, and practitioners.

Please submit:

• An abstract of no more than 300–500 words for individual papers, or a panel proposal of up to 750 words describing the panel's theme and each participant's contribution
• A short biographical note (up to 150 words) for each presenter

Proposals are due by September 25, 2026. Please send submissions and inquiries to aifaithconference@laroche.edu  The one-day conference will be held in person at La Roche University in Pittsburgh on November 6, 2026. The organizers will not be able to offer travel assistance.