The Algorithm Is the New Pastor
Social media as the new preacher — shaping beliefs one post at a time
Every generation has its moral guides — the storytellers who tell us what’s right, what’s wrong, and who we should be.
Once, it was the village elder or the Sunday sermon. Now, it’s the feed.
Each scroll, each swipe, each “recommended for you” moment preaches a subtle gospel — one personalized just for us. The algorithm doesn’t shout from a pulpit. It whispers through repetition. And it knows us better than any preacher ever could.
The pulpit became a platform
Traditional faith institutions once offered people shared stories, rituals, and moral frameworks. Whether comforting or constraining, they gave communities a common rhythm of belief. But in the digital age, that moral center fractured.
The algorithm stepped into the void — not as philosopher, prophet, or priest, but as something more seductive: a mirror. It reflects what we click on, what we fear, what we love, and then feeds it back to us, slightly amplified. Over time, that echo becomes doctrine.
Belief, by design
Algorithms don’t have ethics; they have goals. Their goal is engagement — attention, emotion, retention. Outrage and affirmation keep us scrolling, so outrage and affirmation become the new commandments.
Like any good sermon, the feed rewards conviction and punishes doubt. It trains us to preach certainty, to distrust nuance, to treat opinion as identity. We start evangelizing our own digital tribes, not realizing the machine already wrote the scripture.
The illusion of free will
We tell ourselves we’re choosing what to believe. But every like, share, and watch is also a confession — data that helps the system refine its gospel. The algorithm converts curiosity into commitment, engagement into belief.
And like all belief systems, it promises belonging. Online, we are disciples of our own reflection — a digital faith built from our preferences and passions.
The crisis of authority
When everyone has a pulpit, no one has accountability. The algorithm doesn’t ask whether something is true or just — only whether it works. That’s how disinformation, conspiracy, and polarization become the new liturgies of our time.
It’s not that people have stopped believing — it’s that belief has been industrialized.
Reclaiming our attention as spiritual practice
If the algorithm is the new pastor, maybe mindfulness is the new rebellion. Awareness of how our feeds shape us is the first act of resistance. Curating consciously, pausing before sharing, seeking voices that challenge rather than flatter us — these are the new spiritual disciplines.
Technology will always tell us stories. The question is whether we let those stories own us.
The algorithm may know what keeps us scrolling, but only we can decide what keeps us whole.