Sermons

Save us from the Gospel according to Grok

The Rt. Revd. Martyn Snow, the handsome and up-to-date Bishop of Leicester, has decided that it’s OK, even admirable, for clergy to use AI to write their sermons. Bishop Snow was on the radio the other day, proud to share with listeners that in his diocese, they’ve even had an AI expert come to give pointers to the priests. No more painful head-scratching on a Saturday afternoon for the lucky clerics of Leicester. ChatGPT will sort it. Just plug in a Bible verse and a few well-crafted prompts, and you’re off to the cricket, or to Pride, whichever way you swing. It’s one of those many times I wish Michael Wharton was still alive and writing.

gospel

The beauty of medieval bestiaries

How to hunt an elephant. Find a tree and saw most of the way through it without felling it. Sooner or later an unwary elephant is bound to lean up against it. Down comes the tree and down comes the elephant, which, since it has no joints in its legs, will be unable to get up again. Dispatch your elephant with, um, dispatch, lest the herd arrives in answer to its plangent call. In that case, the youngest of them, being lower to the ground, will be able to lift their fallen comrade back on its feet.