Applications of Convenience and Communities of Memory: An Autoethnography of an AI Prayer App

• In Event: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 4. General AI, II

Abstract

This paper examines how AI-powered "faith tech" applications are reshaping the tension between religious individualism and communal life in American religion. Drawing on Bellah et al.'s (1985) framework of "communities of memory" versus "lifestyle enclaves," the author argues that the hyper-personalization enabled by generative AI risks intensifying a long trajectory toward flatter, weaker forms of association — a dynamic already observed in the transition from television (Putnam 2000) to social media (Turkle 2011; boyd 2014; Twenge et al. 2018).

This ongoing study combines interviews with app developers (n=24), religious leaders (n=22), and a six-month autoethnography of the Catholic prayer app Hallow. Three preliminary findings emerge. First, personalization in these apps is legitimated theologically by their funders — predominantly missions organizations — who frame personalized spiritual content as honoring the "sacred uniqueness of every soul". This missional logic, however, sits in tension with the cultivation of religious community, since the same engagement mechanisms that keep users on the app may discourage participation in church life. Second, religious leaders, while acknowledging the apps' effectiveness at encouraging prayer, are anxious that AI will deepen the attention fragmentation and empathy deficits they have already observed in the wake of social media. Third, the author's autoethnographic experience with one particular app reveals how personalization enables users to customize content to mood and ideological preference, avoid uncomfortable spiritual challenges, and engage theological questions anonymously — all in ways that replicate and intensify the mechanism Putnam identified in television: individualized consumption displacing communal bonds.

The paper's takeaway is that AI-powered spiritual formation is simultaneously legitimated by mission, already eroding congregational community life, and cultivating habits of religious engagement that may be structurally incompatible with the demands of meaningful communal belonging.

Author

• Timothy Ahn, University of California-Berkeley