What Should Christians Ask of AI Law and Policy?

Christians should ask AI law to do three things government exists to do: honor the dignity of every image-bearer, defend truth against industrialized deception, and protect the weak — children, the poor, the data-poor — from the strong. That agenda is principled rather than partisan, and it is already producing real legislation: a child-safety bill advanced unanimously out of a U.S. Senate committee in April 2026 with evangelical backing (4), a federal deepfake law was signed in May 2025 (5), and Kenya’s Senate is debating an AI bill that would criminalize malicious deepfakes (8). The timing for East African believers is providential and short: Kenya published its National AI Strategy 2025–2030 in March 2025, Rwanda and Uganda are drafting and harmonizing theirs, and the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy runs to 2030 (7)(9) — which means the rules that will govern African AI for a generation are being written in this parliamentary term. The church can shape those rules or inherit them. This article argues for shaping them — boldly, constructively, and with a one-page agenda any believer can carry into a county hall, a submission window, or a member of parliament’s office.

Key Takeaways

• The foundational evangelical text already exists: the ERLC’s “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” signed by more than 70 leaders, grounds AI governance in human dignity and the imago Dei, and Southern Baptists became the first denomination to pass an AI resolution (1)(2).
• Christian advocacy now names specific bills: the ERLC’s 2025–26 agenda endorses the CHATBOT and GUARD Acts to protect minors from AI companions; the GUARD Act — requiring age verification and barring minors from companion chatbots — advanced unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2026 (3)(4).
• Deepfake law is no longer hypothetical: the U.S. TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed in May 2025, criminalizes nonconsensual intimate imagery including AI deepfakes and mandates 48-hour platform takedowns (5).
• East Africa is legislating now: Kenya’s National AI Strategy 2025–2030 launched in March 2025, a Senate AI bill proposes criminalizing deepfakes with fines up to KES 5 million, and Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania all operate GDPR-modelled data protection acts with regulators in place (6)(7)(8).
• The capacity gap is the danger: the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index suggests nearly 80 percent of African nations lack adequate regulatory frameworks and skills for AI risk — a vacuum that will be filled by someone’s values (9).
• The Gates Agenda — four asks and two postures drawn from Amos 5 and Romans 13 — gives believers a portable, non-partisan brief for engaging any parliament on AI.

Why Should Christians Care About AI Law at All?

Because law is one of God’s appointed instruments for restraining evil and commending good — “rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… [the authority] is God’s servant for your good” (Romans 13:3–4) — and AI is now a domain where evil scales and good needs commendation. When deception can be manufactured at machine speed, when a chatbot can groom a child through ten thousand patient messages, when an algorithm can misprice a poor family’s creditworthiness across an entire market, the question is no longer whether AI will be governed but by whose convictions. Christians who sit out the drafting do not keep the law neutral; they merely guarantee it is written by the lobbies that showed up.

The church has been here before, and its record at its best is the strongest argument for engagement. The same theological instinct — every human being an image-bearer whose dignity no economic interest may override — drove the abolition campaigns, child labor laws, and the modern human rights settlement. Providence Magazine’s claim that the imago Dei is “the most stable philosophical anchor for human dignity ever articulated” is not denominational boasting; it is intellectual history (10). AI policy needs that anchor more than most domains, because the technology’s harms concentrate precisely where dignity is cheapest to ignore: children targeted by engagement loops, women violated by synthetic imagery, informal workers scored by models that never saw their context. A Christian voice in AI law is not the church grasping for power. It is the church doing what watchmen do.

Two warnings keep the engagement honest. First, principles over party: the moment Christian AI advocacy becomes a partisan badge, it loses both its credibility and its theology, since the image of God claims protect the children of every voter equally. The bills worth supporting — child safety, deepfake accountability, data protection — have drawn sponsors from across political divides precisely because dignity arguments travel (4)(5). Second, realism over panic: Christians should be the calmest people in the hearing room, because we neither worship the technology nor fear it ultimately. We can say “this tool is useful and this use is wicked” in the same sentence — the same discernment that governs what makes humans distinct from the machines they build governs what we ask the law to do about those machines.

What Has Christian AI Advocacy Achieved So Far?

More than most pastors realize, and the trajectory matters because East African believers can borrow the playbook. The foundation was laid early: in 2019 the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission published “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” signed by more than 70 evangelical leaders, articulating commitments on dignity, work, sexuality, privacy, and war — including the line that lethal action enabled by AI must remain under human oversight (1). Southern Baptists then became the first U.S. denomination to pass a convention resolution on AI, centering human dignity (2). What began as principles has matured into bill-by-bill engagement: the ERLC’s 2025–26 legislative agenda endorses the CHATBOT Act and the GUARD Act to protect minors from AI companion chatbots (3), and has published a practical ministry guide, The Work of Our Hands, to move congregations from anxiety to agency (11).

The legislative results are concrete. The GUARD Act, introduced in October 2025 by Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal, would require age verification for AI companions, bar minors from chatbots that simulate friendship or therapy, and criminalize designs that solicit sexual content from or encourage self-harm in minors, with penalties up to $100,000 — and it advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously in April 2026 (4). A year earlier, the TAKE IT DOWN Act became law in May 2025, criminalizing nonconsensual intimate imagery — explicitly including AI-generated deepfakes — and requiring platforms to remove it within 48 hours (5). Neither is a “Christian bill”; both encode commitments — protect the child, defend the violated, punish the deceiver — that Christian advocates pressed in coalition with survivor networks and child-safety groups. That is what success looks like: not theocracy, but theology made portable as public principle.

Notice the pattern in what was targeted first: children and sexual deception — the points where harm is gravest and consensus widest. That sequencing is wisdom, not timidity. It builds the legislative grammar (age verification, design liability, takedown duties) that later, harder fights — algorithmic credit discrimination, automated dismissal, election deepfakes — will reuse. Believers raising children in the chatbot age have particular standing here, which is why the policy fight and the parenting fight against unsupervised AI companions are the same fight at different altitudes, and why deepfake law is the ninth commandment translated into statute: you shall not bear false witness, now with platform liability attached.

What Is Happening in East African AI Regulation — and Where Is the Church?

The legislative window is open right now. Kenya published its National AI Strategy 2025–2030 in March 2025, aiming to make the country a continental hub for AI research and application with governance, sector adoption, and local ecosystem growth as pillars (6). A Senate AI bill has followed, proposing an AI authority, risk-tiered regulation, regulatory sandboxes, and the criminalization of malicious deepfakes with fines up to KES 5 million or three years’ imprisonment — alongside 2025 amendments to the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act targeting deepfake scams and digital fraud (8). Rwanda and Uganda have national AI strategy processes underway and are coordinating with Kenya and the African Union’s harmonization push (6)(7). Beneath the AI layer, the data protection foundation is already poured: Kenya and Uganda enacted GDPR-modelled data protection acts in 2019, Rwanda in 2021, and Tanzania in 2022, each with a regulator now enforcing (12) — the same statutes that make a church’s member database a legal as well as sacred trust. Over it all sits the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy, adopted July 2024 for 2025–2030, with its five pillars of harnessing benefits, building capability, minimizing risk, stimulating investment, and fostering cooperation (7).

The danger is not bad intentions but thin capacity. The IMF’s AI Preparedness Index indicates nearly 80 percent of African nations lack sufficient regulatory frameworks, skills, and innovation capacity to manage AI risk (9) — and Kenyan civil society has already flagged drafting problems in the Senate bill, including definitions loose enough to chill legitimate political expression (8). Thin-capacity legislating tends toward two failure modes Christians should help parliaments avoid: copy-paste maximalism that crushes the small firms AI could lift — the concern at the heart of how national AI strategies treat East Africa’s small businesses — and symbolic statutes that criminalize headlines while leaving children and data subjects undefended in practice.

And the church? It has, encouragingly, already entered the room. In July, the All Africa Conference of Churches and the Future of Life Institute convened 25 church leaders in Nairobi on AI’s risks and governance; the outcomes included a permanent AACC AI and Faith Working Group, AI curricula for seminaries, an African-centered ethical framework, and — most relevantly here — a commitment to develop policy briefs for governments and the African Union (13). That is the institutional skeleton. What it needs now is muscle: pastors who can explain a deepfake to a parliamentary committee, founders who can testify to what compliance actually costs a five-person firm, and lawyers in the pews who can turn dignity into clause-level drafting. East Africa’s believers are unusually well positioned to supply all three, because the region’s Christian founders are not theorizing about AI — they are deploying it, which makes them the rare witnesses who can tell legislators what the technology actually does on a Kampala balance sheet.

What Should Believers Ask of Their Parliaments? The Gates Agenda

Amos demanded justice “in the gate” — the place where elders sat, cases were heard, and the vulnerable either found protection or learned its price (Amos 5:12–15). The gate is now a committee room with a submissions deadline. Here is the framework I give believers who want to walk into it — the Gates Agenda: four asks and two postures, portable to any parliament, county assembly, or AU consultation.

Ask 1 — Dignity: regulate uses, not persons. Ask for law that protects people from being reduced to their data exhaust: meaningful consent, limits on biometric surveillance, human review of consequential automated decisions (credit, employment, benefits), and explicit prohibition of social-scoring of citizens. The drafting principle: every human being affected by an AI system is an end, never merely a training input or an optimization target (1)(7).

Ask 2 — Truth: make deception costly. Ask for deepfake accountability with teeth — criminal liability for malicious synthetic media of real persons, rapid takedown duties on platforms, and mandatory disclosure when content is AI-generated in political advertising. Kenya’s deepfake provisions and the TAKE IT DOWN Act’s 48-hour rule show both halves: punish the deceiver, burden the distributor (5)(8). The ninth commandment is the oldest information-integrity statute on record; ask your parliament to enforce its civil shadow.

Ask 3 — Protection of the weak: children first, by design. Ask for age verification on companion chatbots, design liability for systems that solicit minors or encourage self-harm, and default-off data collection for children — the GUARD Act grammar, adapted to local context (3)(4). Then extend “the weak” to its full biblical width: data subjects who cannot read a consent screen, informal workers scored by foreign models, and the four-fifths of the continent’s jurisdictions where the IMF finds enforcement capacity thin (9). A law is tested by what it does for the person least able to invoke it.

Ask 4 — Access: keep the gate open for the small. Ask that compliance be tiered by risk and firm size, that sandboxes welcome local startups and not just multinationals, and that national AI investments — compute, data sets, skills — reach beyond capitals. A regulation that only the largest firms can afford is a subsidy to incumbency dressed as safety, and it would lock East Africa’s SMEs out of the very tools that could lift them (6).

Posture 1 — Show up as builders and shepherds, not culture warriors. The most credible Christian witness in an AI hearing is the founder who uses the tools and the pastor who counsels their casualties. Bring case studies, not slogans; propose clause language, not laments. The AACC’s policy-brief commitment gives every national church body a vehicle — feed it (13).

Posture 2 — Bless what is good on the record. Romans 13 cuts both ways: where a strategy funds rural connectivity, protects children, or opens data protection enforcement to ordinary citizens, say so publicly. A church that only objects trains legislators to stop listening; a church that commends good law earns the standing to oppose bad law.

The window is open, the precedents exist, and the theology is ancient. Dignity, truth, protection of the weak, access for the small — carried by builders and shepherds who bless as readily as they warn. That is what Christians should ask of AI law. Ask it this term, in writing, in the gate — because the generation that will live under these statutes is already in your Sunday school.

FAQ

Is there an official Christian position on AI regulation?
No single position, but a maturing consensus: the ERLC’s “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles” (70+ signatories) grounds governance in human dignity, Southern Baptists passed the first denominational AI resolution, and the Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova makes parallel claims — converging on dignity, truth, human oversight, and protection of the vulnerable (1)(2).

What AI laws have Christians actually influenced?
Christian advocates worked in coalition on the U.S. TAKE IT DOWN Act (May 2025), criminalizing AI deepfake intimate imagery with 48-hour takedowns, and the ERLC endorses the GUARD and CHATBOT Acts protecting minors from companion chatbots — the GUARD Act cleared committee unanimously in April 2026 (3)(4)(5).

What AI regulation exists in East Africa right now?
Kenya published its National AI Strategy 2025–2030 and its Senate is debating an AI bill criminalizing malicious deepfakes; Uganda and Rwanda are developing strategies under African Union harmonization. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania all enforce GDPR-modelled data protection acts through national regulators (6)(7)(8)(12).

How can an ordinary believer influence AI policy?
Use the submission windows: parliaments publish bills for public comment. Write as who you are — parent, founder, pastor — naming specific clauses. Support church policy channels like the AACC’s AI and Faith Working Group, and ask your MP two questions: who protects children from chatbots, and who verifies political deepfakes (13)?

Should churches stay out of politics on AI?
Advocating dignity, truth-telling, and child protection is not partisanship; it is public discipleship under Romans 13. The risk to avoid is party capture — tying Christ’s name to one faction’s whole platform. The Gates Agenda deliberately asks for goods that every party can vote for and every image-bearer needs.

Related Reading

• Deepfakes and the Ninth Commandment
• Your Church Database Is a Sacred Trust
• National AI Strategies and East Africa’s Small Firms
• Christian Parenting in the Age of AI Chatbots

Sources and Evidence

1. ERLC — “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles” — The foundational evangelical AI text, signed by 70+ leaders; the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy entity.
2. Baptist Press — “ERLC’s AI statement voices hope, concern” — Denominational news service reporting on the statement and the SBC’s first-of-its-kind AI resolution.
3. ERLC — Bill Endorsements 2025–2026 — Primary source for the ERLC’s endorsement of the CHATBOT and GUARD Acts protecting minors from AI companions.
4. Congress.gov — S.3062, the GUARD Act (119th Congress) — Official bill text; introduced October 2025 by Sens. Hawley and Blumenthal; advanced unanimously by Senate Judiciary in April 2026 per Crowell & Moring’s regulatory analysis.
5. Crowell & Moring LLP — “Federal and State Regulators Target AI Chatbots and Intimate Imagery” — Law-firm client alert documenting the TAKE IT DOWN Act (signed May 2025), its deepfake coverage, and 48-hour takedown mandate.
6. Bowmans — “Kenya: Unveiling of the National AI Strategy 2025–2030” — Leading African law firm’s analysis of Kenya’s strategy, published 27 March 2025.
7. African Union — Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy (July 2024) — Primary continental policy document; five focus areas for 2025–2030.
8. iAfrica / TechPolicy.Press — Kenya’s Senate AI Bill debates — Reporting on the bill’s deepfake criminalization, KES 5M penalties, and regulator design; civil-society critique at TechPolicy.Press.
9. Ecofin Agency — “Deepfake Threat Becomes Alarming in Africa as AI Advances Faster Than Laws” — Pan-African business wire citing the IMF AI Preparedness Index figure that ~80% of African nations lack adequate frameworks.
10. Providence Magazine — “AI, Human Uniqueness, and Public Policy: Why the Image of God Still Matters in a Secular Age” — Christian foreign-policy journal’s argument for imago Dei as the anchor of dignity-based AI policy.
11. ERLC — The Work of Our Hands: Christian Ministry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence — The ERLC’s practical AI guide for churches.
12. Afriwise — “Navigating East Africa’s Data Protection Framework: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania” — Legal-intelligence platform’s comparative guide to the region’s GDPR-modelled statutes and regulators.
13. World Council of Churches — “African church leaders explore artificial intelligence” — Reporting on the AACC–Future of Life Institute Nairobi consultation: 25 leaders, permanent AI and Faith Working Group, seminary curricula, and policy briefs for governments and the AU; corroborated by the AACC’s own communiqué.