On 20 September 2026, the Right Reverend Richard Atkinson, Bishop of Bedford, gave a sermon as part of the High Sheriff of Bedfordshire’s Justice Service at St Paul’s Church, Bedford.
The sermon focused on the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence and its profound impact on society, especially children. We felt his words would interest our readers, and the Bishop has kindly allowed us to publish the sermon here.
Isaiah 58:12
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations
In this latter part of the book, the prophet Isaiah begins to paint a picture of flourishing humanity.
Not for the first time, the prophet in the verses before our first reading challenges the oppression and exploitation of the age, and then sets out a different path.
As we heard, do what is right, pursue justice, be agents of peace and healing, and then there will be life.
Recall those beautiful images of the prophet.
You will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail, something topical about that as we recall our parched lawns this summer. Your light shall rise in the darkness, memories maybe of emerging from the Eclipse.
But not just individual flourishing, but the renewal of society. Your ancient ruins will be rebuilt. You will build secure foundations for the generations to come.
Exploitation and oppression
Exploitation and oppression are realities for all generations.
There is much we could say about today’s world, modern-day slavery, inter-nation conflict, discrimination of all sorts, those parts of our world where the law is not a source of safety but a tool of control and repression, and so much more.
We could focus there and on the place of healthy justice and mercy in a flourishing world. But I want to look elsewhere, for as we know there is another serious threat to our well-being.
The King has acknowledged it in the last week, practitioners have raised their fears, the Pope has issued an encyclical, and even the Bishops of the Church of England spent most of our residential meeting this week discussing it.
Read: More than 500 Bedfordshire children linked to crimes mentioning TikTok, data shows
It is, of course, the technical advance that is AI, with all its possibility to do good, and that is great, and all its potential to do harm.
Even, as some suggest, with the potential to destroy humanity. And whether true or not, issues of goodness and harm are real already.
The digital world and children
Read: Media watchdog demands tougher standards for online press
Let’s just take one tiny aspect of this. The interaction of the digital world and children. Where, and you need to believe it, exploitation and oppression are all too real.
If nothing else, see some of the work and words of Baroness Beeban Kidron, who is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment and who spoke to the Bishops this week.
It is not just the addictive nature of the online world, although that is significant. Baroness Kidron reported a group of game designers being asked by a group of children why the online offering was so addictive.
Their answer, “because we designed it like that”.
It is everything from online use, by both parents and children, squeezing out the time for those other essentials of good nurture, family, friends, and the like.
To portraying values that are out of kilter with both experience and what is life-giving, for life is not where get-rich schemes always succeed, where bodies are perfect, where successful lives are all that matter, let alone where truth is so elusive in the world of fake news; to a digital experience that is dangerous and destructive.
YMCA Chiltern Group, which I chair now, includes the Charity Dignify, which carries out research on the impact of pornography on children.
Among their results, over a third of nine- to 13-year-olds have seen pornography, the average age of first seeing pornography is 12, and most go on to look again.
Threats we may not see
Much of this encounter is initially accidental, or passed on from friends, but much is also cynical and exploitative. A current concern is the rise of AI Porn, allowing users to introduce images of people they know into extreme videos.
It is a world foreign, I suspect, to many of my generation, and yet it is all too real.
On a train in seats adjacent to a family travelling to London, I could not but hear the mother instructing her teenage daughter on how to keep herself and her younger brother safe in the city.
The parents were off elsewhere. The son then switched on his phone to watch Japanese cartoons; it was visible through the seats, except that every so often adverts appeared, which were without exception for Samurai swords, Zombie knives and other banned knives.
The parents didn’t see where real threats to safety were to be found.
Read: Boys are being groomed online by manosphere grifters and Ofcom must step up
All this and more, beyond our time today, is part of a wider, crucial question posed by Baroness Kidron: “Is our vision of human flourishing set by AI?
“Or do we have the courage and determination to insist that AI is subject to a greater vision of human flourishing?”
Good law matters
Isaiah’s challenge to exploitation and oppression is as relevant today as it was to ancient Israel. Are we to build firm foundations on which future generations can in turn build, or are we just creating new ruins?
What has this got to do with this Justice Service? Well, here as much as anywhere, good law matters. There is evidence, for instance, that age verification measures are beginning to have a positive impact.
Legislation is a matter for parliament, but as those in the law, you have wisdom and insight to offer. And more important still, all of us are citizens, responsible for our mutual flourishing.
Key to that is holding a shared vision of the good, as Isaiah recognised. At heart, those core principles of love of God and love of neighbour are the essence of fruitful living.
It is that rich and generous love that lies at the heart of our other reading from St Luke.
The love that enables not just friends but foes to flourish; that focuses on forgiveness and not judgement; that is that Golden Rule found in most major faiths: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Can we say that of the current parameters of AI? Is that the guiding principle of designers, creators and exploiters of AI?
The evidence is overwhelming that it is often not, and left unchecked, will be to our common detriment.
The law matters; right boundaries matter; for only then will our light rise in the darkness and the waters never fail. Only then will we play our part in raising up the foundations of many generations.
Or to quote Pope Leo XIV in his Encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas of 25 May 2026: “In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanisation, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.
“We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendour of which no machine can ever replace.”
Words by the Rt Revd Richard Atkinson,
Bishop of Bedford.
