Abstract

We describe an institutional governance framework for integrating artificial intelligence into religious and monastic organizations by separating AI-performed operational functions from human-reserved ordination and sacramental authority. Each role is decomposed into a function-set (the tasks performed, requiring capacity plus non-standing qualifications: accountability, disclosure that the agent is an AI, confidentiality and delegated scope) and an authority-set (standing within an ordination lineage). AI agents fill the function-set in five operational roles: instruction, pastoral caretaking, daily administration, scholarship and translation, and longitudinal observation of practitioners under consent and privacy review. Humans retain two reserved roles: ordination, and the formal acts a tradition reserves to those with standing, including rites of lineage transmission; instruction is distinguished from the teaching office, which stays human. The boundary is decided by a validity test taken from each tradition's own rule: an act is reserved if the tradition holds it invalid when performed by a person without standing, and where standing is juridical the reservation follows that rule. A tradition-specific oversight body maintains the boundary, reviews proposed integrations, logs violations, reviews adjacent AI actions quarterly for scope creep toward reserved acts, reviews training-data composition, and publishes lists of recognized AI systems with cryptographic verification of authenticity. Adoption is staged, from administration to teaching and caretaking. Preliminary mappings are given for Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Catholic, Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Jewish, Hindu and secular-mindfulness contexts. Stated limits: the test returns no verdict where a tradition has no reserving rule, and the lineage premise is assumed rather than defended.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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