Kwok ’n’ Roll

Can artificial intelligence serve Black people — or is it building a future that leaves Black communities behind? Dr. Philip Butler breaks down black transhumanism, AI bias, and his vision for the Seekr Project: a distinctly Black conversational AI designed for mental health and critical Black consciousness.

📖 In this conversation:

• Why AI is not neutral — how bias gets built into the models

• Black Transhuman Liberation Theology, explained

• The Seekr Project: building AI that serves Black communities

• Transhumanism vs. posthumanism — and where faith fits

👤 ABOUT PHILIP BUTLER Dr. Philip Butler is Associate Professor of Theology and Black Post-human Artificial Intelligence Systems and Director of the AI Institute at the Iliff School of Theology. He is the founder of the Seekr Project and the author of Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

📖 Go deeper on Substack: [https://kwokpuilan.substack.com]

"You need to shake the status quo." Rev. Dr. Fadi Diab, Palestinian Anglican priest and co-author of Kairos Palestine II, speaks with postcolonial theologian Kwok Pui Lan about the seismic moment when the Church of England voted to hear Palestinian voices — and why "hearing" is only the beginning.

Six provocations:

•What it meant to sit in the gallery at York Minster as the synod voted.

•Why Kairos Palestine II uses the language of genocide and apartheid?

•How to stay in dialogue when the stakes are existential? •Palestinian liberation theology and reading scripture from the margins

•What ecclesial nakba reveals about the global church's complicity? •Hope as a spiritual practice in a time of loss.

Rev. Dr. Fadi Diab is rector of St. Andrew's Church in Ramallah, Palestine; co-author of Kairos Palestine II: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering; and faculty member of the Palestine-Israeli Theologians Forum.

Deep dive on Substack: https://kwokpuilan.substack.com

Why does Korea embrace AI while the West sounds the alarm? Practical theologian Dr. Boyung Lee reveals how East Asia's communal worldview transforms AI from a threat into an extension of family — and what that means for the future of pastoral care.

In this episode:

▪️ Why Koreans say "our mother" and "our husband" — and why it matters for AI

▪️ How Korea's "I Met You" program reunited grieving parents with VR avatars of their children (40 million viewers watched)

▪️ Grief bots, shamanism, and AI as a medium between worlds

▪️ Pope Francis's AI warnings — and what Boyung wishes he'd done differently

▪️ Practical advice for pastors using AI in ministry

Dr. Boyung Lee teaches practical theology at the Iliff School of Theology. Her research sits at the intersection of AI, East Asian philosophy, and pastoral care.

In the span of two weeks, two major Christian denominations — the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Church of England — took historic stands on Palestine. One used the word "genocide." The other finally decided to listen to Palestinian Christian voices.

Postcolonial theologian Kwok Pui Lan unpacks both decisions, shares her personal experience crossing the border into Jerusalem, and explains why she's editing a new book, The Anglican Church and Palestine.

📖 Go deeper on Substack: https://kwokpuilan.substack.com/p/the-church-of-englands-resolution

AI isn't magic. Behind every chatbot and search result is a hidden chain of human exploitation — and Pope Leo XIV just called it out in the first papal encyclical on artificial intelligence.

In this episode, Dr. Susan Reynolds — Catholic Studies professor at Candler School of Theology, Emory University — breaks down Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV's groundbreaking document on AI and human dignity. We explore why an Augustinian pope named himself after Leo XIII, how the Church's social teaching tradition speaks directly to the AI era, and what a long-overdue papal apology for slavery means for thinking about exploitation today.

Susan explains why the encyclical insists on protecting the human inner life as the boundary between people and machines — and why, if church doctrine can develop in response to the signs of the times, so can women's leadership.

In this July 4th special, U.S. Army veteran, former attorney, and Villanova theologian Byron Wratee shares his journey from a small South Carolina town to the battlefields of Afghanistan — and what he learned about faith, citizenship, and the America worth believing in.

He traces his family's military service back to the Civil War. He recounts the peacebuilding work that doesn't make headlines: building schools, caring for communities, ensuring Afghan girls could go to school. And he asks the question no one wants to answer on Independence Day: what does the Fourth of July mean to the Black soldier who served it?

This conversation covers:

• Growing up in South Carolina — the first state to secede

• Serving as a medic in Afghanistan and the Muslim interpreter who changed his life 

Why he left a seven-year law practice to study theology

• The Red Summer of 1919 — when Black WWI veterans returned home to race riots and lynchings

• Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited and the roots of nonviolent resistance

• Catholic social teaching, human dignity, and American exceptionalism

• A closing spiritual — "Plenty Good Room"

Dr. Byron Wratee teaches Christian ethics at Villanova University. His research centers on Howard Thurman, the Black prophetic tradition, and the theological dimensions of anti-Black violence.

🔗 Join the conversation on my Substack: https://kwokpuilan.substack.com

Most people who talk about AI and theology have read about AI. Alexander Chow actually studied it — he holds a degree in computer science and spent a decade as a software engineer before becoming a theologian.

Last week, he launched the Oxford Handbook of Digital Theology — the most comprehensive academic reference on this field ever assembled. I wanted to know: what does someone who has stood on both sides of that divide actually see?

In this conversation, we explore:

• What happens when AI changes the code you wrote — and what that means for human creativity

• Why Chinese Christians navigate AI and surveillance differently than Western theologians

• How Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism offer a radically different anthropology for AI ethics

• Why the Pope's encyclical on AI is valuable but too human-centric — missing what Alexander calls "magnifica divinitas"

• What theology will look like in 50 years if we keep treating technology as a tool rather than a theological question

Alexander Chow is a theologian based at the University of Edinburgh, co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Theology (Oxford University Press, 2025), and a scholar of Chinese Christianity.

📌 Episode 2 of the AI & Religion series — exploring what faith traditions across the globe bring to the conversation about artificial intelligence.

The Pope issued a sweeping warning about artificial intelligence — but what does it actually say, and was he right? In this first episode of the AI & Theology series, I sit down with Dr. Tracy Trothen, professor of ethics at Queen's University, Canada, to unpack the Vatican's intervention, the rise of grief bots, and what AI means for how we make meaning, face death, and define what it means to be human.

🎙️ AI & THEOLOGY — Episode 1

📖 Topics: Pope Francis's AI encyclical, grief bots and digital afterlife, transhumanism, biohacking, Catholic social teaching, marginalized voices in AI governance.

Tracy J. Trothen and Randall Reed, Understanding Religion and Artificial Intelligence