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Some Clergy Are Using ChatGPT to Write Their Sermons

In our third episode, Master of Divinity student Diego Garrido Barreto tells us all about TF 702: Christianity Engaging Modernity

You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

The classes we take can change our perspectives and shape our lives—and we think that’s something worth celebrating. Our new podcast, Today I Learned, is all about the classes at BU that have had a real effect on students in our community; we want to know all about the classroom environment, professor, subject matter, and the cool facts that make a lasting impression.

Our third episode is all about how religion confronts the challenges of modernity. We’ve invited Diego Garrido Barreto (STH’27) to sit down with us and tell us about TF 702: Christianity Engaging Modernity, a School of Theology class and counterpart to TF 701: Introduction to Christian Traditions. Garrido came to STH by way of Bogotá, Colombia, after converting from Catholicism to Methodism. He says this class is fruitful and thought-provoking for people of all denominations and religions—and even atheists, because of its close scrutiny of history and statistical trends and its expansive reading list, which runs the gamut from Nietzsche to Malcolm X. Have a listen and add some spiritual enlightenment to your day.

Want to be our next guest? Tell us about your favorite class here. Undergraduates, graduate students, and recent postgraduates are welcome to submit.

Takeaways

• Modernity both expands and contracts the reach of Christianity: churches have closed as technology provides us answers to the universe’s problems, but technology has also brought religion into people’s homes when they cannot be in a physical house of worship, such as with Zoom services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• For the purposes of class, modernity begins at the so-called “discovery” of America by European colonizers. The clash of their centuries-old beliefs with those they encountered in the new world challenged their what they believed about God and sin.
• For the religious and atheistic alike, it’s not going to be easy to talk about how Christianity played into the rise of fascism in Europe or embedded itself into racist ideology in America, but according to Garrido, the class will be “the starting point to think[ing] more about the variety and the diversity in this society.”

Transcript

Sophie Yarin: Hello everyone and welcome to Today I Learned, a BU Today podcast where we explore fun facts and ideas across a variety of academic disciplines. We interview students about exciting things they learned in their favorite classes at BU. From changing majors to picking career paths, students often find that single classes have a really transformative impact on their future. I’m your host, Sophie Yarin, and I’m investigating how the things we learn in the classroom affect our lives. To do that, we will be speaking directly to BU students, which is why we have Diego Garrido Barreto joining us in the studio today. Diego, thank you so much for being here. 

Diego Garrido Barreto: Sophie, thank you. I am blessed and happy to be here with you.

Yarin: So, Diego, this is your first semester as a Master of Divinity student at the School of Theology. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are you into? 

Garrido: Well, thank you. I am from Colombia, from Bogotá. It is a beautiful city full of crowd noises. We don’t have [a] metro, we don’t have the train, so here, all the weather, the stations, and the crowded noises of Boston—it’s beautiful. I’m studying theology as a Master of Divinity as a first-semester student. I started in spring and am fully engaged with this, giving my soul fully to what is going on here in the US. Thank you.

Yarin: So, the class you’ve chosen to focus on today is TF 702: Christianity Engaging Modernity, with professors Rady Roldán-Figueroa and Wesley Wildman, and that’s a School of Theology class. So, what’s something you’ve learned in this class? A fun fact, maybe, that’s stuck with you?

Garrido: I don’t know if you have read about it, or maybe you will be surprised: Did you know that there are preachers who are writing their sermons with ChatGPT? 

Yarin: I did not know that. I feel like I should be surprised, but it’s everywhere now after, like, three weeks of existence. 

Garrido: I feel like, I don’t know, are they inspired by the Holy Ghost? Are they inspired by their hearts using these technologies? Or how does God, or spirituality, work when you’re working with technology too, you know? 

Yarin: That’s like God in the machine.

[Garrido laughs]

Yarin: Well, after that, I think we can probably just dive right into the questions. So, tell me about what each professor brings to the table. I understand that one of your professors is a School of Theology professor and one is a computing and data science professor. 

Garrido: That’s right, and the things that they have brought to the conversation show how complex modernity is and how diverse, dynamic, and how difficult it is to approach modernity, just by the reading, and they had a lot of things that we’re losing that we need. If I could add myself one year more just studying this class, because it is amazing, the quantity of text, the problems—there is a lot of violence—and it also gets you to think, how am I going to respond to these texts? The social problematics of each time, on how people were crazy enough to give their answers to those times. 

Yarin: Can you tell me a little bit about how data and statistics are using this class—and that’s Professor Wildman, correct?

Garrido: So, I remember in the first lecture, the way that he was asking the students, who believes in this, who is an atheist, who comes here to study, but does not belong to any spiritual institution itself, but just comes as a theologian and is not involved in it. And many people were there, their presence, but were not involved with the institutions—Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian Universalist. It’s also a big task; it’s a mission, how is the School of Theology going to open their arms to them? So, these statistics are that not all the students in theology are trying to get ordained or are looking to be preachers. There are also academics, also people that are trying to look for another spirituality. Churches that are closing; there are people who are not fully convinced about how religion can help in their lives, and also people wounded by religion. I really am with them, because we’ve been hurt. But also, I will not deny that religion can make peace, can be one of the last or the biggest tools to help, to build community, to reach for the divine and understand humanity with open eyes.

Yarin: So, what you’re saying is that modernity and technology, that’s sort of a replacement for what religion used to be for people? Sort of an answer to the unknown?

Garrido: Well, there are also ways that preachers and institutions are using technology to spread their messages by either right or wrong—politically, very dangerous—but also to build community. And pandemics have told us a lot of how technology was necessary and also a good tool, because not everyone has a car or has ways to engage with the building itself. So, thinking beyond the building, or the church itself, and how to create community beyond that. 

Yarin: It sounds like this class is very ingrained in American history, like the Great Awakening and the religious revival period—a lot of traveling preachers and community shifting. 

Garrido: And also to see the background of colonization of the Americas, of Latin America and the Spaniards, we read a few texts about it, like Bartolome de las Casas. Also, the way that England was engaging in Anglicanism, sending preachers to [the Americas], and the origins of Methodism and the origins of this institution itself, that it’s founded by Methodists. And how Christianity was getting very confused, getting richer, and also spreading pietism. There is the Revival—with that kind of fire of Jonathan Edwards, of purity. And also we think about liberation theology, like, oh yeah this is very new, this is from Latin America. Actually, there were a lot of preachers thinking in the times of Reformation and the French Revolution, how do we engage with social problems with the gospel? 

Yarin: Modern problems and biblical solutions? 

Garrido: Oh, definitely—that very well can be as beautiful and as problematic as cities. 

Yarin: So, I’m interested to know, because I know that this is a second part of sort of a two-course series—the first being TF 701: Introduction to Christian Traditions—at what point, for the purposes of this class, does modernity start? 

Garrido: Well, one of the first readings was related to the colonization of Latin America, because that was one of the biggest shifts for European thinking, because they were using their own judges, their own wealth, their own ideas, and they were trying to put those ideas in the context of the new things that they found. And they were already there, they were already living there with their own beliefs, but we put the frameworks of religion [on them], we put the frameworks of, this is satanic, this is not Christ, this is just the other. So, modernity itself has started with, or many theories and critics think that it started with, the discovery—in quote marks, because it is not a discovery—of the Americas. And how do we engage with the mystery of the other?

Yarin: I want to get back to what you said about the conflict that modernity creates internally, and kind of turn the spotlight on you and ask you how you experience this class in the framework of your own life and your own beliefs? 

Garrido: Not only with modernity, with being in a new city in a new country, as an international student, if anyone here tries to engage with my story, the acceptance about how new everything is—and it is, still—because I cannot put my frameworks from Latin America into a new context. Also, modernity can teach you that all the conflicts that you create in yourself are created. You can think about how you can also create different conflicts, or how your conflicts are affecting your relation with the community that you’re trying to create. And how the communities that can be grown from your activities in itself are not based in a religion, or, yeah, we believe in this one particular thing. No, the diversity, the colors, the expression of life that we can build [from] every single aspect of these readings, because I am sure, I can swear it [on] a Bible, that we will find a lot of different ideas that enrich this class. 

Yarin: Can I ask you a little bit about why you chose to go to theology school and why you’re coming to BU?

Garrido: This is getting spiritual too, even though it’s modernity and modernity tries to use spirituality as a sell market. In this case, my spirituality was that I was running away from God, and I was running away from the way that Catholicism or the institution was not open enough. And I love the pope that they have, but I do not feel fully Catholic, because now, if you used the word Catholic, it [means] universal, or the roots of the etymology of Catholicism–

Yarin: It’s “variety.”

Garrido: Yeah, so in that sense, I found the Methodists a home, a family community. And the University itself is connected with churches, so I am connected with a church in Medford. And I said to myself, why not? With the help of a friend who studied the Master in Divinity. She told me, you should, and I was like, let’s do it. Let’s take the jump. It is not easy for me to engage [with] all the problems in modernity, accepting that I am also part of an institution, because the Methodists are not saints. They are a bit open, they have more inclusiveness, they have more equality, diversity. And they have their own beauty. But, wow, to be part of an institution and trying to be the good one, or trying to help, knowing that these words are dangerous—because in the name of God, I can hurt. In the name of God, I don’t know if my actions will be good, even if I think they are good. [I’m] getting to know that humility, that I’m here to learn, and to spread love.

Yarin: Going back to what you said about how not everybody in your class wants to become ordained, would you recommend this class to maybe an atheist?

Garrido: A hundred times, yes. And I think…you will get more atheist, but also more engaged on the conflicts, the understanding that this is not an easy topic. This is just not to say, oh, yeah, Catholics are bad. Oh, yes, modernity is terrible. No, it’s to be open about how we engage these ideas, because it is not going to be easy to read some texts about nationalism, about fascism in Europe or the origins of racism. It is not going to be easy, but it is going to be, I assure you, the starting point to think more about the variety and the diversity in this society.

Yarin: Well, Diego, thank you so much for sitting down with us. It was such a pleasure to talk to you—I feel like we got very cosmic.

Garrido: You’re a blessing. This is part of a beautiful space, Boston University. I recommend it 100 times. 

Yarin: It’s wonderful to hear that. Everyone, thank you for tuning in to Today I Learned, a BU Today podcast. Do you have a favorite class you think we should know about? Tell us all about it by filling out the form linked in our description. Today I Learned is produced and engineered by Andrew Hallock and edited and hosted by Sophie Yarin—that’s me. We’ll see you next time!