Ethics Initiative at Baylor University

This past week, Baylor was well-represented by both faculty members and students at the 2026 Conference on Medicine and Religion in Houston. Co-hosted by the Ethics Center at Baylor University, the conference brought together health professionals and scholars from across the country for the purpose of cultivating a deeper understanding of how religion relates to the practice of medicine.

This month, Dr. Neil Messer shares two thought-provoking reads.

The first book is The Digitalised Image of God: Artificial Intelligence, Liturgy, and Ethics by Ximian Xu. With the dizzying pace of new advances in AI comes a growing list of ethical concerns about its impact on individuals and society. For Christians, more profound questions lie beneath these practical concerns: will AI entities ever be responsible selves? Could AI bear the image of God? Could an AI sin, and should it be baptized? Xu’s recent book offers a helpful pathway through this maze of questions, drawing on the author’s training in both computer science and theology.

Second, a biography titled Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Christiane Tietz offers a scholarly, well-informed, and accessible introduction to this remarkable Christian and theologian.