The challenge of AI, the dignity and integrity of the human person and why faith-based investors must engage

FaithInvest's Dave Zellner and Catherine Devitt look at how faiths are responding to the challenges posed by AI, and offer practical suggestions for faith-based investors on engaging their asset managers. Part One of a two-part series

Few technologies in recent memory have advanced as quickly, or attracted as much theological scrutiny, as artificial intelligence. Religious institutions across traditions have moved from cautious observation to substantive engagement with the issues AI raises, and several have issued formal statements on its implications for human dignity, labour, privacy, and the common good – including Pope Leo in his first encyclical last week.

For faith-based investors, these pronouncements are not abstract. They affect the policies faith-based asset owners must adopt regarding investment in companies that build, deploy and depend on AI.

This post, the first of two, sets out why religious bodies have raised concerns, why they matter to faith-based asset owners, and what investors should ask of their asset managers right now.

Part Two will address the more technical question of how to translate these concerns into practical governance – how AI fits within investment policies, what questions trustees should be asking, and how reporting from asset managers can be structured so that organisations of any size can verify what their managers are doing in their name. Part Two will include a response to Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), released on 25 May 2026 and dedicated to safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.

Why faiths are paying attention

AI touches directly on what every religious tradition treats as central: the dignity and integrity of the human person. AI influences hiring decisions, medical diagnoses, criminal sentencing, and the flow of public information. The pace is fast, the oversight is uneven, and the commercial pressure to deploy at scale is intense. Faith communities have noticed.

Prior to the Pope's encyclical, the most prominent statement was the Rome Call for AI Ethics, signed at the Pontifical Academy for Life on 28 February 2020 by the Vatican, Microsoft, IBM, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, and Italy’s Ministry of Innovation. It sets out six principles for the development and use of AI: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy.

Three years later, on 10 January 2023, Chief Rabbi Eliezer Simha Weisz of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah of the UAE Fatwa Council added their signatures, bringing the three Abrahamic faiths together around the document. In July 2024, leaders from eleven world religions met in Hiroshima to extend the commitment further.

The six principles of the Rome Call for AI Ethics

Other denominations have followed. In January 2025, the Vatican issued Antiqua et Nova, a doctrinal reflection warning against equating human worth with productivity or cognitive output. The World Council of Churches has called for binding regulatory regimes grounded in the precautionary principle. The Church of England’s General Synod endorsed the Rome Call in February 2024. Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has made several statements on AI. 

Among Protestant mainline churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America published its first churchwide report on AI in December 2025, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has policy work underway for its 2026 General Assembly, and the Episcopal Church’s General Convention has authorised a task force on AI to report in 2027.

These concerns are not exclusively religious. Secular governments and local communities are raising similar questions, particularly about the energy and water demands of data centres training large AI models. Moratoriums and restrictions on new data centre construction have been imposed or proposed across Europe, Asia, and the United States.

The thread running through the faith statements is consistent: The design and deployment of AI systems cannot be left to commercial logic alone. The human person is the reference point, and faith communities believe they have something to say about what that means in practice.

A distinctive faith contribution

Many investors now consider AI ethics in their investment decision process. Faith traditions bring something the others do not. They draw on centuries of reflection on human dignity, the common good, the limits of human ambition, and the proper relationship between people, work, and creation. They ask not only 'is this profitable?' but 'is this good?' They answer to communities and missions that measure success in generations rather than quarters.

A huge data centre

Translated into investment practice, that contribution takes several concrete forms. A faith-grounded view might ask whether ecological limits should constrain the scale of new data centre builds. It might ask whether AI serves genuine human benefit or simply reduces costs. It might insist that workers whose jobs AI reshapes have a meaningful voice in how that reshaping happens. And it might invest in formation, equipping faith communities and their staff to use AI deliberately rather than by default.

These principles translate into concrete questions faith-based investors should raise with companies and asset managers: how companies source training data and whether that data embeds discrimination, how they test AI systems for accuracy before release, how they report transparently on high-stakes uses, how they protect privacy, how they manage workforce transitions, and how they keep AI out of autonomous weapons.

Faith-based investors carry these concerns well beyond the portfolio, into denominational bodies, interfaith coalitions, and direct engagement with policymakers.

The tension is real

Setting limits is only half the work. Faith organisations are using AI too, and the benefits are worth naming.

FaithInvest is a small charity with a bold vision and limited resources. We could not do the work we are doing at the pace we are doing it without the assistance of AI. Our recent Good Intentions research, broader in scope and deeper in evidence than anything we have produced to date, was made possible in large part by using AI as a research and analytical tool. In the interest of full disclosure, AI assisted in the drafting of this post as well.

Used carefully, AI can support human endeavours rather than diminish them. It frees human attention for the work that genuinely requires human judgement. Used carelessly, it does the opposite. The distinction matters, and it is one faith traditions are well placed to draw.

We recently spoke with a trustee from a Catholic organisation who is using AI to manage an otherwise overwhelming workload. She is not alone. Across the faith investment community we hear versions of the same story: stretched teams, growing demands, and a technology that genuinely helps. That story captures the tension precisely. Many of us see the costs clearly. The energy and water demands of data centres are real. The emissions are real. The displacement of jobs is real. The questions about how training data is sourced are real.

At the same time, opting out is harder than it sounds, not least, as one could argue, because we are integrating AI into so many facets of life without any application of a precautionary principle or an 'opt in/opt out' option. In a world where we are becoming increasingly surrounded by the integration and use of AI, choosing not to use AI tools increasingly means risking being left behind.

This is the same tension we have worked through on fossil fuels. The work involves choices: where to draw lines, where to engage, where to invest in alternatives, and where to accept trade-offs honestly. Faith-consistent investing is what gives faith organisations the framework to make those choices deliberately, rather than by default. The theological resources are there. The investment tools are increasingly there. What is required is the willingness to use both.

What faith-based investors should do now

The most immediate step is to engage your asset managers on two specific questions.

First, ask how they are voting proxies on AI-related shareholder resolutions. The 2024 and 2025 proxy seasons produced a meaningful set of AI-focused proposals, many of them filed by faith-based investors through the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). Two are worth highlighting.

At Alphabet, faith-based investors including Mercy Investment Services, CommonSpirit Health, and the United Church of Canada Pension Plan (represented by SHARE) filed a 2025 proposal asking the company to publish a Human Rights Impact Assessment of its AI-driven targeted advertising policies and practices. The proposal went to a vote at Alphabet’s 6 June 2025 annual meeting. The faith-based proponents have been engaging Alphabet on AI-driven advertising risks since 2021.

At Microsoft, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, joined by roughly 60 co-filers representing more than USD 80 million in shares, filed a 2025 proposal asking the company to assess whether customers are misusing its AI and cloud technologies in ways that contribute to human rights abuses. The proposal went to a vote at Microsoft’s annual meeting on 5 December 2025.

These are serious, well-documented requests from long-standing faith-based shareholders. Ask your asset manager how they voted, and why.

Second, ask how AI features in your asset manager’s broader engagement with portfolio companies. Are they raising governance, transparency, labour impact, and human rights questions in their dialogues? Are they participating in investor coalitions such as the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Collective Impact Coalition for Ethical AI? Are they reporting clearly on outcomes? Vague answers are themselves an answer.

Religious traditions across the world have spoken with unusual clarity about AI and the human person. The challenge for faith-based investors is to translate that clarity into how we hold our positions, how we instruct our managers, and how we govern our own use of the technology. Part 2 will turn to that work: the governance, oversight, and trustee questions that make this real, grounded in the encyclical released on 25 May.

This is part of FaithInvest's continuing engagement with AI and faith-consistent investing. Our views and use of the technology continue to evolve as AI itself evolves.