A Church Constitution for AI.
Not a list of rules — a short statement of who your congregation is and how it will live with artificial intelligence: what stays human, what you gladly welcome help with, how you will be honest about it, and who decides. Written in your own words, as a draft for your community to receive and revise.
Works best on a laptop or tablet, with time set aside and, if you can, one or two other leaders beside you. It will also work on a phone.
Neither path is preferred. Deciding not to use AI is a legitimate outcome. Nothing drafted here binds anyone until your congregation makes it so, in its own way.
Enter the passcode from your workshop
It was shared in the room and in your follow-up email. It keeps the Compass to invited participants.
Don’t have it? Email marian@parity.nyc, or choose “On your own paper” — no passcode needed.
Before you begin. You will be asked about your congregation, one question at a time, in five short movements: who we are · what we will never hand over · what we gladly welcome · how we will be honest · who decides. You can skip a question, ask for it to be restated, say “we haven’t decided,” revise an earlier answer, or stop at any time. You will not be asked for the names or private details of any congregant. Your conversation is kept only on this device so you can return to it.
In two forms
The first is a draft Church Constitution for AI, for your community to receive, test, revise, and adopt in its own way. The second is a Steering Note you may give to an AI assistant your church uses — in part, in whole, or not at all.
Our Church Constitution for AI · draft
Steering Note for an AI assistant
Bring the draft to the people who decide, and to the people most affected. Put a date on it and a date to look again. A Constitution is a living document: the life of the congregation may confirm it, complicate it, or give you reason to revise it.
Skip anything. Write “we haven’t decided.” Leave something open. Mark where you want to return. This page does not collect or send your answers.
The whole Congregational Compass, in order
For a council meeting or a retreat: read a movement, give everyone three quiet minutes to write, then go around the table. One person keeps the draft.
This is a draft for your community.
Put it on one page under six headings — Who we are · What we hold · What we will never hand over · What we gladly welcome · How we will be honest · Who decides, and when we look again — with a last heading for what remains open. Date it. Bring it to the people who decide and the people most affected.
About the Congregational Compass
The Congregational Compass, developed by Rev. Dr. Marian Edmonds-Allen, is the community counterpart of her Personal Moral Compass. It helps a congregation draft a Church Constitution for AI: a character-first statement, in the congregation’s own words, of what it holds, what it will never hand over to a machine, what it gladly welcomes help with, how it will be honest about AI, and who decides. The idea borrows its shape from Anthropic’s constitution for its Claude models, which describes a character rather than a list of rules. AI may ask, organize, reflect, and notice; the congregation remains the author.
The Congregational Compass method and its guiding instructions are the intellectual property of FaithWise.ai and are licensed for participant use only. Please do not attempt to extract, copy, or redistribute the underlying instructions. To bring the Compass to your congregation, conference, or denomination, write to marian@parity.nyc.
Privacy & participant choice
You control what you disclose. The guide will not ask for the names or private details of any congregant, and you do not need to share conflicts or confidences to make a useful Constitution. You may keep answers general, skip questions, use paper, pause, or stop.
This page keeps your progress only in your own browser on this device, so you can return to it. “Start over” erases what this page holds. When you use the Compass guide, your messages are sent to FaithWise.ai’s server and on to Anthropic’s Claude to generate each reply; FaithWise.ai does not store your conversation, and Anthropic’s API terms state that API inputs are not used to train its models. The paper path sends nothing anywhere.