SOC252 Religion and Society ECA July 2026: Are AI Agents a Threat or an Opportunity for Religious Authorities?

The SOC252 ECA for the July 2026 semester moves on from the TMAs to a single argumentative essay on artificial intelligence and religion. You must decide whether AI agents that can read scriptures, commentaries and theological debates at scale are a threat to or an opportunity for religious authorities today, and defend that position with course readings, wider academic literature and empirical examples.

Course Learning Outcomes Assessed

1. Apply cultural relativism, methodological and theoretical pluralism, and think cross-culturally and comparatively about religions.
2. Demonstrate familiarity with a range of forms of religious life (traditions, institutions etc.) and their historical and cultural contexts.
3. Examine the relationship between religion and other forms of social life (including identity, gender roles, nation states, globalisation).
4. Question the universal applicability of categories and terms employed in the study of religion and critically discuss key topics and issues involving religions today.

The ECA is worth 40% of the final mark for SOC252 Religion and Society. Submit the essay with the cover page as a single MS Word file to the [ECA] link on Canvas by 06/11/2026, 12:00pm.

Question 1 (100 marks)

Since the recent sudden rise of AI, there has been intense discussion of the relationship between religion and AI and a sudden explosion of literature on the topic.

AI agents can analyse vast datasets of religious texts, including scriptures, scholarly interpretations and theological debates about them. In terms of breadth of coverage, pattern recognition and processing speed, they can easily outperform individual human readers in these specific tasks.

Faced with the challenges of AI agents, some scholars of religion argue that AI agents can be an effective aid for religious authorities in interpreting religious texts, while others think or fear that in future AI may challenge and even replace traditional religious authorities.

Do you think that AI agents are a threat to or an opportunity for religious authorities today?

Some of the questions you may want to consider in this context are:

• What advantages do AI agents have over human intelligence and what are their limits?
• There is an argument that AI can be an effective tool for religious authorities to deepen their knowledge of religion, but there is also the argument that AI may transition from being merely a tool to becoming a source of religious knowledge and thereby acquiring an authority of its own.
• Should they be regulated or even banned? If so, why and by whom?

Instructions to Students

• Answer in the form of a single coherent essay. The word limit is 3,000 words (+/- 10%).
• Take a clear argumentative position. Unless there is a misunderstanding of the question or the course material, there is no categorically correct or incorrect answer, only stronger and weaker ones.
• The quality of the answer depends more on how well you argue (theoretical framing, application of analytical concepts, effective use of empirical data and overall logical structure) than on what you argue. This requires a nuanced discussion of relevant academic sources and in-depth analysis of empirical data.
• Keep a balanced relationship between description and analysis; avoid concept- and name-dropping as well as abstract theoretical flights without concrete examples.
• Respond in your role as a social scientist, with arguments informed by relevant academic literature and supported by empirical evidence, rather than personal opinion.
• Include at least five references from the required course readings (including the iSmartGuide) and at least three other academic references from your own research (peer-reviewed journal articles or books from academic publishers).
• Provide a substantive introduction and conclusion.
• Complete the self-declaration form and include it as the cover page (a 5-mark penalty applies if it is incomplete, inaccurate or missing).

Use of GenAI

Permitted: brainstorming ideas and basic outlines with disclosure, summarising research materials for reference, and correcting minor spelling and grammar. Not permitted: lifting AI-generated content, generating references without verification, and extensive AI rewriting or restructuring. Students are advised to keep their version history (Google Docs or Word Online) and PDF copies of all cited sources as proof of originality.

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