The Algorithm Is the New King

The Hebrew Bible from Genesis through Judges is one long argument against concentrated power.

God keeps distributing it. Scatters the builders at Babel. Gives the law to a whole people, not a person. Raises up judges — temporary, regional, problem-specific — rather than installing a dynasty. The system is intentionally distributed. The center keeps refusing to hold power the way power wants to be held.

Then in First Samuel, Israel looks at the nations around them and asks for a king. God says: I will give you what you are asking for. And I want you to hear what you are asking for. The king will take your sons for his army. He will take your daughters for his staff. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards. He will take a tenth of your grain. And on that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you chose for yourselves.

They said: give us a king anyway.

I have been thinking about this text every time someone asks me what I think about artificial intelligence and the church.

The algorithm is a king. It concentrates power in whoever controls the training data, whoever sets the parameters, whoever decides which voices the system amplifies and which it ignores. It promises efficiency. It delivers dependency. The question is not whether AI is useful — it is whether we are building systems that distribute power or concentrate it. Whether we are creating tools that serve people or institutions that serve themselves.

I build with AI. I disclose that I build with AI. I think disclosure is not a disclaimer — it is a commitment. It means the tool is visible. It means the person using it stays responsible for what the tool produces. It means the center does not disappear behind a machine.

The distributed model of power is not naive. Israel found out it is hard. The judges were often terrible. The distributed system is messy and slow and does not produce clean organizational charts. But it produces something else: people who are responsible for each other rather than to a structure that owns them.

The church has a word for this: body. Not machine. Body. Many parts, one body. No part owning the others.

I want to be part of that kind of church. I want to build that kind of technology.

I think those two commitments are the same commitment.

Matt Headley

Founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. Ordained United Methodist. Flower farmer. Builder. I walk with a limp. That is why I can walk with you.

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