America’s New Folk Religion
AI, VR, and the Excluded Middle
Hello friends! Thank you for your patience as I was on a writing hiatus. If you didn’t already know, I have recently begun a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Biola University! While I embark on this endeavor, I hope to maintain and even enhance my writing habits in the days and months ahead. I currently plan to publish one article a month from now until the end of the year. This is not the recommended rhythm for someone who wants to get their name out there, but 1) that’s not my main goal, and 2) I suspect your inbox is already overflowing. Though I don’t have aspirations of being the next (fill in the blank famous writer), if you find the upcoming articles helpful, I’d still love for you to share them within your sphere of influence! I appreciate any feedback and dialogue I can get! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
Today I want to ask one simple question: What are the gaps in our lives that AI and VR are seeking to fill? To answer that, let’s take a quick detour around the world and get a closer look at something pervasive in most other cultures - folk religion.
To understand folk religion, it’s helpful to start with what we are more familiar with. Until very recently in the U.S., most people functioned on a two-tier system. One tier holds modern science, with its scientific method, hypotheses, and empirical evidence. This tier focuses on “the real world” and addresses human problems such as sickness, aging, and to an extent, our origins. On the second tier, high religion picks up the scraps of what we deem “otherworldly,” things like faith, miracles, and sacred rituals. Westerners typically depend on these two areas for answers to all their problems. In practice, this means science is the answer for almost all of your problems. As a last ditch effort, some people might go to high religion to answer life’s biggest questions, such as “How can I be sure of salvation?” or “What is the cause of suffering?” Meanwhile, “the intimate issues are addressed through science.”1
But when you step into the Majority world, you’ll find quite a different story. Unlike our historic two-tier system, most other cultures hold a three-tiered view of reality. When they have questions, they have three potential ways to find an answer: folk science, folk religion, or high religion. While an element of science and high religion remain intact, the average person finds their goldilocks-esque answer in the in-between tier of folk religion. The purpose of folk religion is to meet felt needs by addressing forces and beings in the unseen world that affect this world. The focus is not so much on finding a true understanding of reality as it is to find immediate answers to a problem. People turn to this tier for immediate results meant to address the issues that fall somewhere between religion and science and affect our daily lives. Unfortunately, this middle area is often overlooked by westerners because, for much of the 20th century and earlier, that wasn’t really how we thought about things. So these issues floating between science and religion were deemed “The Excluded Middle.” Excluded middle issues are those questions humanity faces that require you to step outside of the realm of science to answer, but which high religion seems too lofty to address. These can be concerns of financial, spiritual, or physical struggles, addiction, and other issues for which men and women long to find solutions in the daily grind.
Excluded middle issues, when not addressed, leave a void in people’s lives that is often filled by folk religion. One main issue that can result from ignoring the excluded middle is “Split-Level Christianity,” in which Christianity operates in someone’s life on one level of their needs while something else fills in the gaps on another level.2 While modernism left the average western Christian with a sterile form of empirical evidence as their only alternative to their shower thoughts and mid-life crises, times have changed. Postmodernism brought about a sneaky revival in America. A revival of folk religion. As just one jarring example, Christians are barely below the national average for believing in various aspects of the New Age Movement. This study shows that 61% of Christians in America (compared to 62% total) believe in at least one of the following ideas:
Spiritual energy located in physical things
Psychics
Reincarnation
Astrology
Maybe you don’t know a Christian who would admit belief any one of those concepts, but the research shows that they are here, and that they outnumber the “normal” ones of us. But while the New Age Movement in America is fascinating, I am interested in an even newer age movement. Though you might not think your kids will get mixed up in “that New Age stuff,” what I want to point out is that there is a new psychic/shaman/astrologist in town, and his name is AI.
To identify excluded middles, you must ask what a people’s daily felt needs are, and how they seek to meet them. As you look at the U.S. today, I believe that the answer can be found, in part, by what the most vulnerable among us are running to AI and VR to fix. So, what are American children using these new, magical tools for? What are the gaps in their lives they want to find a quick fix to? What, you might ask, does this newfound folk religion offer them? After doing a deep dive on AI/VR use by young people, what I was shocked by was in part what I didn't see. There were very few articles about the pitfalls and dangers, and much more about how to leverage AI in schools. Now, I confess that AI optimism is an area where I might need to grow, and I'm not suggesting there are no good uses of it. We should be asking ourselves the benefits and seeking to leverage them. And that is a bit above my pay grade. What I hope to do instead is point out a few key areas where we have asked AI to do what faith and science are failing to accomplish, at least for our children. That is, after all, what folk religions do. To be specific, I believe that many young people are desperate to find spaces for community, intimacy, and inquiry.
Community
In 1995, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made his purpose for his rising coffee behemoth crystal clear. He wanted to make a “Third Place,” a location not at home or work for people to meet and connect. Flash forward thirty years, and if a new Starbucks is built in your neighborhood, there’s a good chance they won’t even let you in. Many new stores in this chain are being created as pick-up only, or intentionally reducing the size and comfort of their lobbies to get people in and out quick. Now, I could write an entire other article on mission drift and use Starbucks as the case study. But for now, I want to point out that despite a continued desire for places to interact with others, our society prioritizes cash over community. But just like Starbucks thirty years ago, other companies are chomping at the bit to meet this universal human need for connection. The only problem is that many of the ones seeking to resolve this problem are found in the digital space. Though VR has not taken off at warp speed, the makers behind it still see a key opportunity to become the next third place for a lonely population. But is it laughable to think that Facebook *Meta* will actually care about the wellbeing of its users? Maybe I’m too cynical. Yea, maybe the nerd who started an online portal in order to hook up with the hottest girls at his university has had a change of heart now that he’s a billionaire. I bet he cares about more than money now. He was probably at the inauguration out of a care for humanity, not a desire to get in good graces with the administration that can bolster his attempts to seize more attention and ultimately more cash flow from the addicted population he enslaves serves. Whatever their motivation, the fact is that digital spaces, and VR in particular, are primed to address your need for community. Partner the virtual reality space with AI, and the results could soon be quite jarring. “One of the primary goals of AI-generated content in VR and AR is to create more realistic experiences. As AI algorithms become more sophisticated, they will be better able to analyze and replicate real-world environments and objects. This will create more immersive and engaging experiences for users.”3 This growth in realism leads to the second need young people seek to address in the excluded middle.
Intimacy
To examine the impact of AI Girlfriends on the cultural Zeitgeist, it’s helpful to look not only to academia, but to the Gen Z trenches: Youtube. While I value in depth meta analysis, and will refer to it when relevant, there are also a number of fascinating videos of Youtube commentators trying out an AI girlfriend for themselves. If you’re interested in learning more about this phenomenon, I highly recommend The Real Story’s video doing a deep dive on the topic, and interviewing an AI girlfriend programmer. This content feels like the makings of a dystopian novel. Websites for AI girlfriends intentionally target young people, offering promises for intimacy and enticing innocent users towards purchases in order to unlock greater levels of connection. While these sites market themselves as providing men with practice on how to talk to women, the conversations and pictures depicted in these spaces provide a sexualized, hyper-idealized perspective on the relationship between a man and woman. In The Real Story video, it took only a few inquiries from the user to exploit the AI’s programming and get the “girlfriend” to admit that consent is not that important in a real relationship… And this is not a fringe issue. According to Google Trends data, there has been a 2,400% increase in search interest for AI girlfriends. So, to all the people turning a blind eye to these issues and saying AI is just a tool, it’s time to ask, “Is OpenAI creating tools, like an app on your phone...or a tool, like a crutch? When it comes to crutches, we have to be careful where we lean. And don’t deceive yourself: outsourcing always comes with a cost.”4 Now let’s turn to one final way that young people in particular are using AI to fill a gap in their lives: the area of inquiry.
Inquiry
While I firmly believe that VR communities and AI girlfriends are problems we don’t address enough, I am quick to acknowledge that these are not the primary uses of these “tools.” One study from the Center for Digital Thriving demonstrates that (51%) of young people ages 14–22 reported using generative AI at some point, but only 4% claimed to be daily users. The most commonly reported use for AI was getting information (53%) and brainstorming (51%). Diving deeper into this particular study, numerous teens admitted that they ask AI questions that they are afraid to ask adults. Specifically, students interviewed in this analysis confessed that they use AI because
“It helps me ask questions without feeling any pressure”
“We use it to ask questions about dating and stuff like that” (white teen girl). As generative AI use becomes more ubiquitous, adults should know that it may become the place teens go first:
“Teens are asking AI before asking adults for answers”
They may also lean on AI for guidance on what to say to others in conversation, including to “give the impression that things are fine and that they have no stress by just answering with answers [from AI] that make them seem ok”
In summary, a very unoriginal finding is that kids have questions they’d rather not ask their parents. What’s new is how these kids go about getting these questions answered today. Data regarding AI use is still underdeveloped, but if current trends continue, we will discover more and more how kids flock to AI to answer life’s toughest questions. So the question for us to answer is does the church address these concerns? Put in missiological terms, how are we addressing those excluded middle issues?
The Church as a Mentorship Factory
If Starbucks gave up on Third Places, will the church follow its lead? In a culture of instant gratification, we can’t compete with this onslaught of addictive appeal. Not with a one day a week spirituality. This is why we need apprenticeship in the church. We need mentors to raise up the next generation of leaders by actually inviting them into their lives in an organic, non-programmatic way. In a way that meets the needs of the excluded middle.
The answer will not be found in embracing the digital, but in spotlighting the real. No, the answer will not be in VR Church. It will be in a local expression of the love of Christ played out less in programs and more in relationships. Let me be specific.
I think that the number one thing the Church can do in the age of AI to address humanity’s felt needs is to place as large of an emphasis as possible on connecting with other people in person. In particular, we must deprogramize discipleship. Programs and events are helpful tools, but real discipleship is at its best when people in the church take younger people of faith under their wings and show them the Way of Jesus. Whatever your age, you need to identify someone younger (by age or by faith maturity) and invite them into your life to follow you as you follow Christ. They have questions that will be answered by someone, and no matter how hard we try to convince them, many of them will not want to go to their parents for guidance. Therein lies the power of mentorship. An older, non-parent figure who can speak into the lives of young men and women and model the way for them.
Our kids are lonely. They long for community, they long for intimacy, and they long for answers. One of the best, most practical things a church can do in response is to position their single members not as projects to fix but as leaders to follow. I think the American (or at least Southern) church needs to be reminded that Jesus and Paul were both single. When our kids are longing for intimacy, the church sometimes makes the mistake of teaching on biblical strategies for dating and marriage to the extent that it idolizes marriage and undermines the value of singleness and the ability of the church to offer community to all its members. So, if we want to serve adolescents who long for intimacy, don’t put marriage on a pedestal. Implore the single people in your church to embrace their gifts and lead out from their singleness instead of despite it. We need to show our teenagers that the Good Life can be found in the context of a church community regardless of your marital status.
The Church is to be a mentorship factory. One man passing on his wisdom to another. One woman taking in a young girl to spur her on in the Way of Christ. Regardless of marital status, theological training, or time in one’s schedule, followers of Jesus must heed the call to make disciples of all nations, and that starts by making disciples of our neighbors and our nephews. The future impact of AI on our loved ones can seem bleak. But in the age of the artificial, the church must major in what's real, minor in what’s hopeful, and remember that the two are not mutually exclusive.
Moon, W. J. (2017). Intercultural discipleship: Learning from global approaches to spiritual formation. Baker Academic.
Moon, W.J. (2017).