Archbishop of Sydney the Most Rev. Kanishka Raffel has released his Easter 2026 message warning against the use of artificial intelligence for spiritual direction, arguing that Christians already possess what he calls “God’s Authentic Intelligence” in the person of Jesus Christ.
The message, published April 1 on the Sydney Anglicans website and released as a video, opens with Archbisohp Raffel describing a trend he found alarming: “One of the most surprising things I have heard recently is the news that some people are using artificial intelligence to talk to God. At least, they think they are talking to God.”
The Archbishop was precise about what concerned him. “This isn’t just searching an online Bible for answers,” he said. “People are asking AI to generate spiritual guidance for their lives.”
His answer was grounded in the Easter text he chose as his theme — John 20:19-20, in which the risen Christ appears to his disciples behind locked doors and speaks peace to them. “When Jesus appeared to his disciples on the first Easter day, they were ‘locked away’ fearing those who put Jesus to death,” Archbishop Raffel said. “But Jesus appears in the midst of them, speaking ‘Peace’. It was an everyday greeting, but this was not everyday peace. It was the peace that had been bought by his pierced hands and side.”
The contrast between the peace Christ offers and what AI can provide runs through the message. “AI can certainly be useful, though not without risks,” he conceded. “But when it comes to the most important things in life, God has come to us and brought us peace through his Son.”
The phrase at the heart of the message is a deliberate play on the language of technology. “This Easter, remember that for two thousand years we have had God’s Authentic Intelligence,” he said. “Communication from God — in Jesus! You can ‘chat’ with God and hear his voice through the words of Jesus in whom, the Bible says, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
He concluded with a direct challenge: “So, why not use this season to go offline and pick up a Bible. Some questions only God can answer.”
The Sydney Anglicans report by Russell Powell noted that Raffel’s Easter Day address will be delivered at St Andrew’s Cathedral in central Sydney, with hundreds of Anglican services running across the Diocese, the Blue Mountains, and the Illawarra.
The message arrives at a moment when the intersection of AI and Christian practice has drawn comment from church leaders across traditions. Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV advised the priests of Rome to use “their brains more” rather than AI when preparing homilies, and the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document, Antiqua et Nova, on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
Archbishop Raffel’s framing is the most compressed of these interventions — a 110-word pastoral letter rather than a doctrinal treatise — but it addresses the same question from the ground up: not what AI policy the church should adopt, but what a person in spiritual need should actually do. His answer is the same one his diocese has given for two hundred years.