"If we are ever to have a world fit and pleasant for little children, we are surely going to have to draw the line where it is not easily drawn. We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to 'need'."
I believe the very first person to be granted a religious exemption from using AI at work is a Unitarian Universalist from North Carolina named Erin Maus. Erin, a 34 year old software engineer, works for a large, progressive tech-entertainment company and last April claimed that using AI raised ethical and environmental concerns that went against her religious beliefs. She worked with an employment lawyer and a local minister to build her case under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was granted the religious accommodation in mid-May 2026. (She beat out Pope Leo XIV who also issued warnings about the impact of AI on human dignity in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas”, which came out the same month.)
Following in Erin’s footsteps, David Durman is the first Humanist to apply for a religious exemption with help from the American Humanist Association. Durman, a 45 year old who works at the University of Kentucky as a research administrator, felt like being asked to use tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot at work went against his conscience, due to AI’s environmental costs, its “interference with people’s ability to earn a living”, “supplanting human creativity”, and his conviction that moral development depends on thinking for oneself.
Durman wrote, “The process and work involved in thinking through situations, through my work, through my ethics, through the way I handle other people, is a key component in being able to develop myself as a moral person. And offloading that labor, regardless of whether it’s taxing or not, is undercutting my ability to be a moral actor.” “Substituting automated machine processing for human presence, authentic listening, and personal responsibility in my work directly conflicts with my obligation to uphold human dignity and flourishing as primary.”
Unitarian Universalism has long been a religion that is open to and compatible with science as a source of inspiration, which you’ll hear more about this Sunday from a few of the scientists among us. It is so important that our children learn and know this! We also know that scientific advances can be used for moral or immoral ends, and that there can be a lot of moral questions to parse through when it comes to technology. I recently made up the term “eco/nscientious objectors” as a potential name for people who refuse to engage in activities that irreversibly damage the earth. I think Erin Maus and David Durman qualify. Who knows? Maybe one day the term- and such practices- will catch on.
With hopes and gratitude for the scientists among us,
Rev. Lee