The Protestant Reformation in the Age of ChatGPT (July 2, 2025)

 

    A few months ago I was in a lecture hall listening to a presentation about using artificial intelligence in classrooms, and the presenter prompted us to pull out our phones and anonymously submit lessons we routinely teach that could incorporate AI. While other teachers were submitting lessons about robotics or life on Mars, I punched in “The Protestant Reformation”, and hit send. When my response appeared on the board, the presenter read it in with a sense of bewilderment - and then mimed as if she was about to vomit. Oh well.

The events of the beginning of the sixteenth century in Central Europe might cause most people - even the well educated - to start thinking about their weekend plans as their eyes glaze over, but it matters. My students could explain how it forever divided Christendom, or what we now refer to as “The West”, how it defined Europe’s political boundaries, and how it led to centuries of wars and lasting impacts on the developments of American and British democracies - but it matters in deeper and less expected ways. About ten percent of the planet identifies as Protestant - and it is growing in Brazil, Africa, South Korea, and, despite restrictions, China, where up to one hundred million people identify as Protestant - more than the total membership of the Chinese Communist Party. Shigeru Ishiba, the current Prime Minister of Japan, is a Protestant, as have been all but a few United States presidents.

But the Reformation’s impact is felt far beyond its own believers and beliefs. Modern Catholicism is largely shaped by the Counter Reformation, which responded to Martin Luther’s criticisms, and by Vatican II, which reoriented the Church to the modern world. Reform Judaism also follows a reformation tradition, challenging institutional power structures while giving more agency to individuals. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was commonly argued that Islam needed its own reformation.

And yet I would argue that this still only scratches the surface of the import of the Protestant Reformation, which was surely the most significant inflection point of the last millennium - rivaled only by the two hundred year process we know as the “Industrial Revolution”. The term “catholic” derives from the Greek katholikos, meaning “whole” or “universal”. Protestantism, to contrast, centres the individual; Luther believed that when one reads the Bible, the Holy Spirit descends upon them, and gives them a hardline connection to God, without the need for a priest to act as an intermediary. In an age where we can ask life’s most pressing questions to ChatGPT, Luther’s idea that we can bypass traditional sources of truth remains ever potent. 

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