Recently, I came across the website Myreader, which beguiles those who would escape the burden of reading with the invitation: “Upload books, PDFs, documents, article links or YouTube videos. Get instant answers, summaries and convert to audiobook—All powered by AI.”[1] Examples of “substitute reader” AI could be multiplied.[2] While some optimists insist that AI is the next best foothold in scaling the walls of ignorance, I would like to offer an alternative reading of AI’s potential. I hope that I am not piling on with pessimists and lamenters so often accused of technophobia, digital distrust, or even dread of the device. But when AI, with all its super strength, super speed, and mystifying powers of vision and voice, begins to replace our patient reading and analysis, we should notice. We are not simply using a tool to summarize annoying e-mails and verbose legal documents; AI malforms our ability to attend deeply to texts that shape us both culturally and spiritually. The use of AI is quickly spreading culturewide, but I want to briefly consider troubling implications of using AI to read, summarize, and analyze texts in academia and the church.
Education has historically required students from primary school through university to read intensively. Students who did not like to read or who had limited time used various methods to avoid patient, thorough reading, whether skimming or reading shortform versions of texts like CliffsNotes. So, the desire to shortcut patient reading is not a new issue. However, some educational spaces are losing what little patient, sustained reading they once had. According to recent news stories, many schools have shelved the daunting project of teaching whole books. Instead, they use excerpts, short passages, or short digital texts.[3] Meanwhile, the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ (NEAP) 2025 “national report card” notes that reading scores have continued to decline to historic lows, with only 35% of high school seniors reading at or above proficiency and 32% scoring below the basic level.[4] These trends alone should alarm us about our culture’s commitment to developing reading skills.
Into this reading wasteland, AI steps, proposing to “help” students who resist patient reading and thinking through questions and issues. Upload a text into AI, and it gives whatever level of summary a user requests. It answers study questions, writes short or long essays about texts that students have neither read nor considered. Students have found this power so compelling, they will even check AI on their phones in class during Socratic discussion before engaging.[5]
While many students have avoided carefully reading long or difficult texts, at least they might read something like CliffsNotes, and that was damaging enough. AI as substitute reader and thinker, however, offers something new and ominous. Used as substitute reader, AI is not just another version of new tech replacing old tech—bulldozers replacing shovels or cars replacing horses. These changes brought radical dislocations of labor but at least did not intimately damage us like AI does by replacing the patient reading that lets us enter the minds and experiences of others. As C.S. Lewis notes in Experiment in Criticism, when we read, we both transcend ourselves and remain ourselves.[6]
Patient reading does not merely upload information into our brains where we store it till needed on tests and papers; reading lets us vicariously experience history, story, and other wider forms of human experience. Those who resist both the joys and benefits of patient reading literally do not know what they are missing. As Swen Birkerts suggests, digital technology in general puts us in danger of “collectively sacrificing a very precious, indeed a defining part of our experience.”[7] AI in its worst incarnations can rob us of parts of our humanness that we do not even realize are important. Those who love reading, who were formed by early exposure to books and more books tend to value reading almost as much as breathing. For non-readers, finding an AI substitute reader is like getting out of jury duty or a trip to the dentist.
Reader and non-reader categories have defined us since the Renaissance—some people have loved to read and some people haven’t. “What is your problem, then?” they might ask. “Why hate on the amazing powers of substitute reader AI if it merely allows those who have always skipped reading to more successfully do so?” After all, is substitute reading by AI not simply an elegant solution to an existing problem? What if the book is just a technology whose time has passed?
To answer these objections, we must consider the benefits to those who learn to love reading at a young age. Research shows that reading for pleasure is positively linked with becoming a better reader and writer, understanding text and grammar, and enhancing vocabulary. As young readers increase the amounts they read, their ability to read longer texts increases.[8] Of course, the key takeaway here is these benefits of patient reading come to those who are reading for pleasure.
Yes, not everyone loves to read. Yet one of the primary purposes of education should be to establish love for and self-motivation to read. Parents who love to read often by nature and instinct pass along their love of reading by reading to their children and providing them with a wide range of reading material to feed their growing literary hunger. Educators who understand the benefits of reading also help with student growth in this area, because studies indicate that “when students are exposed to reading materials that are engaging, relevant to their interests, and offered in a structured program, they are more likely to develop a love for reading, which can lead to improved academic and personal growth.”[9] This love of reading is not guaranteed and must be nurtured and encouraged.
AI, however, as a substitute reader causes students to miss out on sustained, deep reading. A failure to engage deeply with reading hurts or diminishes the development of critical thinking and engagement with ideas. Because AI can quickly summarize a text and give students the answers to questions about a text, students engage material at a surface level and tend to procrastinate textual engagement. These claims are not just anecdotal. Recent studies have begun to assess AI bomb damage on reading habits and learning.[10]
This problem of AI reading is particularly serious in Christian education where we begin with the assumption that the entire universe was created by God speaking it into existence. Humans, created in God’s image, also create and are shaped by language. God implicitly reveals the power of different genres with the canon of Scripture. By using historical writing, poetry, narrative, parable, epistle, as well as other genres, God has made clear that those created in his image do not merely reflect him by impoverished bearing of simple signifiers. Christians must become a body of skilled readers, writers, historians, and story tellers, depending on the gifts that God has given us.
Moving from the realm of academics to the church, we find a similar set of problems beginning with pastoral use of AI. A 2025 survey has shown that “64% of pastors who preach say they use AI in their sermon preparation process, up significantly from 2024. Many rely on it for research, outline creation, text analysis, and consistency checks. This marks a measurable jump from 2024, when fewer than 50% were willing to use AI in message development.”[11] Again, those who disagree that this survey indicates a problem will say that pastors are busy and any shortening of their time spent doing the heavy lifting of sermon prep is a boon. After all, less time spent with books means more time with people, right?
Not being a pastor myself, I can only ask questions about the process of sermon prep. I wonder if pastoral offloading of reading or textual analysis to AI makes sermon prep more mechanical, less passionate, less, in fact, pastoral? Do these sermons come from a place of textual love and curiosity? Are these pastors growing as they patiently read the scriptures in the way they desire their congregations to grow?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but when I compare the discipline of sermon prep to my own discipline of teaching literary texts, I am troubled, because I know that if I abandon my reading of literary texts to AI, my teaching will die. To teach other people to love texts I must love them myself, and I can’t love them if I don’t take the time to read and reread them. Every reading of a text offers a potential landfall on a new continent, offering new insights, new ways to understand. I can take the excitement of new discovery and old resonances into the classroom, where I hope it will be contagious. I would like to think that the discipline of preaching sermons that come from long incubation carries even greater benefits for pastors and congregations.
As congregants, we are also tempted to use AI. We are challenged and blessed to be able to read the scriptures outside the church walls. If we delegate this task to AI, asking for (even accurate) summaries of the biblical text, what happens to our engagement with the sharp, double-edged word of God that the writer of Hebrews describes (Heb 4:12)? How can we be like the Bereans whom the Apostle Paul praises in Acts 17:10–15? Reading is a fundamental Christian practice that is both challenging and comforting. In our current social context, reading is countercultural. In addition to the spiritual nutrition it offers, it also develops the spiritual disciplines of perseverance and patience as we fight the insistent pull from the Amazonian river of distractions in which our society threatens to drown us.
In Colossians 3:16, the Apostle Paul instructs us to “let the word of Christ dwell in [us] richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in [our] hearts” (ESV). At the very least, Paul means for us to be deep readers of our Bibles. We must also, however, expand our language powers and develop wisdom; we must read well, think well, speak well. We see in the parables of Jesus the power of figurative language and narrative. To be Christians who love scripture and seek wisdom, we must love the God of all language, and we must love and be shaped by his gift of language in all its rich variety. Letting AI read and summarize for us weakens not just our reading skills, but it can also divert us from the pursuit of wisdom.
We find an example about the value of reading and meditating on scripture in Psalm 119. Note well the connection between the form and content of this Psalm. It is both the longest Psalm and a meditation about the value of savoring God’s word. Even looking at a single verse, we see the delight the writer has in God’s word: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps 119:103). The Psalmist models for us the deep love of God that is mediated by the deep love of language. Reading is not optional for Christians and is a task driven by love. When we lose or under-develop the patient reading and deep thinking the Psalmist presses on us, we create deficits that will have serious repercussions.
In response to the bad news about AI and the possible death of deep reading, one can imagine a retelling of the Genesis fall narrative in which Satan tempts Eve with AI—not asking “Has God really said,” but “Why not run his commands through AI and receive a helpful summary! Certainly, he couldn’t have expected you to waste time on memory and meditation!” Perhaps comparing AI to Satanic enticement is a bit overblown, but something about AI begs linkage (by a book lover) to an echo of Edenic loss.
While it would be useless in our current circumstances to suggest students, pastors, teachers, and others completely refrain from using AI, we can at least not let it do our reading for us. We can resist losing our grips on the covers of our books. And what about those voices that say books are a tech whose time has passed? Andrew Piper in his thoughtful work Book Was There muses on an older technological change when books came into being, the time when scrolls, books, and voice were used side by side: “When we think of media death, about the end of certain technologies, we do well to remember this medieval insistence on the need for redundancy, the importance of communicating the same things through different channels.”[12] As we see AI become increasingly integrated into our work and worship spaces, into our communal life together, let’s not surrender the “old” technological practices of deep and patient reading.
References
[1] “Homepage,” Myreader, accessed July 6, 2026, https://www.myreader.ai.
[2] For example, Microsoft Copilot, Chat GPT, Claude, Grok, and other AI systems will all summarize long and short texts.
[3] See for example the following articles: “Do Students in American Schools Read Long Books Anymore?” VOA News, October 8, 2024, https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/do-students-in-american-schools-read-long-books-anymore-/7789204.html; “Not‑so‑Great Expectations: Students Are Reading Fewer Books in English Class,” AP News, September 12, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/books-reading-high-school-english-class-c8d9f39773268a6e8c79cb0b3c78d3c1.
[4] “Reading,” National Center for Education Studies, 2025, https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/.
[5] See the following articles: Johanna Alonso, “How Much Do Students Really Read?” Inside Higher Ed, September 25, 2024, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/deep-dives/2024/09/25/students-turn-ai-do-their-assigned-readings-them; “AI Chatbots Are Reshaping Classroom Debates, Raising Concerns over Homogenized Discussion,” Digital Watch Observatory, April 7, 2026, https://dig.watch/updates/ai-chatbots-are-reshaping-classroom-debates-raising-concerns-over-homogenised-discussion.
[6] C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1961), 140–41.
[7] Swen Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies (Faber and Faber, 1994), 194.
[8] Christina Clark and Kate Rumbold, “Reading for Pleasure: A Research Overview” (National Literacy Trust, 2006), https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496343.pdf.
[9] Alfelia Nugky Permatasari and Wahyu Kartika Wienanda, “Extensive Reading in Improving Reading Motivation: A Student’s Perspective,” Eralingua: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Asing Dan Sastra 7, no. 2 (2023): 220.
[10] See the following articles: Michael Udam, Peter Morah Ita, Monica Thomas Ogar, and Mary Bisong Tony, “Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Reading and Knowledge Retention Among Undergraduate Students in Cross River State, Nigeria: A Mixed Methods Study,” BSU Journal of Education 25, no. 1 (2025): 203–9, https://doi.org/10.60787/bsuje.vol25no1.20; Mohammed Zeinu Hassen, “The Impact of AI on Students’ Reading, Critical Thinking, and Problem-Solving Skills,” American Journal of Education and Information Technology 9, no. 2 (2025): 82–90, https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajeit.20250902.12.
[11] “Pastors Are Turning to AI Faster Than Anyone Expected, Nationwide Survey Shows, Using It to Write Sermons, Counsel Congregants, and Run Their Churches,” PRS Newswire, December 03, 2025, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pastors-are-turning-to-ai-faster-than-anyone-expected-nationwide-survey-shows-using-it-to-write-sermons-counsel-congregants-and-run-their-churches-302631801.html.
[12] Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago University Press, 2012), 7.