Picture a Christian leader
AI, women in ministry, lots and lots of head coverings, and encouraging unveiled faces
Gentle reader,
I keep thinking about AI generated images as a window into our collective imaginations. A few months ago, I wrote about AI idolatry as a sign of our distorted understandings of God:
Today, Iโm using AI images to encourage us to think about how we imagine Christian leaders and how our imaginations might fall short of remembering that every human is in the image of God and every Christian has been incorporated into the priesthood of all believers.
Even if you donโt read the post, scroll to the end for a collage of women in ministry.
I remember learning, in college, about a study in which people were asked to draw โa mature personโ or โa successful personโ, and they almost invariably drew men.1 AI has been trained in this same society, one in which mature and successful human being are assumed to be masculine. One in which it cannot image-ine women in certain ways.
What does AI imagery reveal about our cultural imagination of Christian leaders?
When I ask for an image of a Christian leader, teacher, pastor, or evangelist, AI always produces a male image. Always. Without exception.
About 70% of the male images are white, but AI does have some sense that black men lead in the church and sometimes produces such an image spontaneously. But it does not produce images of women.
To generate an image of a woman, I have to type โfemaleโ into the prompt. Itโs a specific modifier, one that AI would never image-ine without me insisting on it. Almost all the images of women leaders are of white women. To generate an image of a black woman, I have to add another modifier. AI has not been โtrainedโ to image women and women of color leading in the church.
(Neither have we, folks.)
Some of the male images are odd, but all the female images feel strained, outside of contemporary culture.
AI loves vestments, but it definitely doesnโt understand vestments. (I donโt either, so Iโll leave that to my anglophile friends.) (Winking emoji! ;) )
The pictures below are typical of the results of the unmodified prompts and of the prompts modified with โfemale.โ
Iโm not sure why sheโs not facing the crowd.
AI is circulating some odd communion elements and floating candles.
Iโm interested in their similar books, which donโt seem to be Bibles.
Here, AI reveals how lots of churches are failing at biblical literalism, as AI makes it obvious that literal elders should be advanced in years. (Thatโs another winking emoji, friends ;).)
Props to him if heโs in Scotland, as he seems to be wearing a kilt, and weโre all for contextualization.
I think these two look like siblings.
Maybe a little nod, here, to Ruth Bader Ginsberg? A confusion between vestments and the judiciary?
I do not know what liturgical implement he is wielding. Rolling pin? Sad sceptre?
I have to give it to AI here; that male โChristian professorโ is literally an image of half my friends.
Again, we get an occasional unprompted person of color for the men but not for the women.
AI got a memo about the hats.
We know the title โsenior pastorโ isnโt in scripture, but AI is definitely interpreting in a way similar to โelder.โ
Lots and lots and lots and lots of head coverings.
Itโs hard to say for sure, but is that baby wearing a headcovering? It must be a girl.
AI can tell us about the world as we know it, but it takes human faces and human ministries to witness to the world of Godโs New Creation.
I hope youโll be encouraged by this collage, which shows faces of women in ministry. Iโve known some of these women for years; others Iโve never met. Some were my college and seminary classmates. Some are my students and some have been my teachers; many have been both student and teacher to me. They are Methodist and baptist and Presbyterian and nondenominational and Episcopalian and Nazarene and pentecostal and of denominations Iโm not naming. They serve as professors, superintendents, bishops, preachers, teachers, pastors, evangelists, academic deans, and in many other roles.
Their unveiled faces image Jesus.
(I tried very hard to include every image submitted, but it's possible some got lost in comments, etc. If I didn't include your image, it was NOT intentional.)
Feel free to download and share this image. Posters and other prints are available at my Redbubble site.
Grace & peace,
BFJ
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Thanks to Elesha Coffman, for sharing that the Draw-a-Scientist Test, in the early 1980s, credited Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux with the first version of this experiement. https://kbsgk12project.kbs.msu.edu/.../draw-a-scientist...
All of those were completely creepy. I am pretty sure the "Christian professor" had a mutant hand.
But honestly, while this saddens me, it doesn't surprise me. However the code for AI is written it presumably samples what is on the internet on various topics -- and until the Church does better as a whole, this is what we're going to get.
Icky and weird. I need to go back and linger on your collage to unfreak myself out.