Saint Francis, AI, and the Future of Faith
Watch the [very short] story
“What if God doesn’t control the future…because divine love cannot coerce?
“What if creation is still unfinished…and we're invited to co-create it?”
Jonathan Bentley
What People Are Saying
“In Shadowing St. Francis, Jonathan invites readers on a pilgrimage of faith that is at once personal, philosophical, and profoundly hopeful. His narrative embodies the open-and-relational vision of a God who persuades through love rather than control, and his storytelling gives theology a human face.”
Thomas Jay Oord — Author of God Can’t and A Theology of Love
“Jonathan’s pilgrimage is an invitation to those navigating the uncertain space between deconstruction and what comes next. With honesty and grace, he shows us that the erosion of certainty isn’t a loss of faith but an opening toward something more spacious and true. This is a book for question-askers and those who suspect that the gospel might be wider and wilder than we’ve been told.”
Keri Ladouceur — Executive Director Post Evangelical Collective
“This book is what happens when theology steps out of abstraction and onto the road. Jonathan shows how faith can move beyond rivalry, beyond the mimetic pull toward power or certainty, into something freer—a consent to love, to mystery, to one another. It’s thoughtful, disarming, and exactly the kind of story the church needs right now.”
Jonathan Foster — Author of indigo: the color of grief
About the Book
What happens when five decades of evangelical certainty collide with questions that won't stay silent?
Rather than abandoning faith entirely, Shadowing St. Francis chronicles a reconstruction project: What was worth keeping? What still held meaning in the modern world?
Along a 120-mile pilgrimage through Italy, following the footsteps of Saint Francis, a surprising truth emerged: the most important thing about divine power is that it never coerces. God calls but never forces.
In an unexpected twist, artificial intelligence became a valuable companion in this theological exploration—not as guru or oracle, but as an unbiased advisor with no institutional agenda. Free from denominational loyalties, AI could present Christianity's great debates without steering toward predetermined conclusions. It offered what years of church conversations couldn't: a neutral space to examine forbidden questions.
This book offers a coherent reframing of ancient Christian faith—one that takes science seriously, sees truth as discovered rather than created, and centers on a God who values relationship over rules, love over doctrine, and freedom over control.
For anyone who's been told their questions are dangerous. For those who suspect walking away from institutional religion might be walking toward something more real. For every pilgrim still searching for a God worth believing in.
"This pilgrimage is textured with doubt, humor, longing, and faith. The gospel was never a theory but a life shared.”
Samantha Beach Kiley
co-author of Next Sunday
About The Author
Approaching seventy, after fifty years as a committed evangelical — elder, worship musician, Bible study leader — Jonathan Bentley sold his tech company and set out to rethink his faith from the ground up. The path led to a Franciscan pilgrimage across Italy, joined by three friends and, unexpectedly, by ChatGPT. What he found beneath the cracked foundation: a God more generous and more engaged than the tradition he'd inherited could contain.
Lives on the border of Umstead Forest in Raleigh, North Carolina with Judy, his wife of 40 years.