Human Work, the Image of God, and the Church's Frame

In this time of deep change, it is vital to find ways of staying human—and to do so within a constructive story of spiritual and civic renewal. As we recognize the failure of the hyper-liberal philosophy of the past forty years, people are feeling the loss of agency and we are seeing increasingly widespread discontent. With concentrations of money and state power intensifying, the breakdown of trust - and the rapid advance of AI - our political, cultural, and spiritual life is increasingly marked by confusion.

Serious questions lie before us: How can we restore our common life? How can we stay human?

In this episode, Being a Person in the Age of AI, Susannah Black Roberts addresses what it means to be human in terms of personhood - and what can be done at the personal and community level. She explores how we as Christians are called to live at this moment in our history, what kinds of practices we should adopt to live the way of Jesus in a world that threatens to make us obsolete?

Susannah opens up the territory for a vital conversation about upholding the sacred and resisting the dehumanising potential of AI to prompt us to consider what this means for discipleship and Christian witness in the places where we live and work.

Susannah is Senior Editor at Plough Quarterly and an editor at Mere Orthodoxy. Currently she is working on a book on living out the political virtues in our private lives, and several projects related to the development of a Christian humanism for today’s world. Susannah writes for many publications, including First Things, Front Porch Republic, and The American Conservative. A native Manhattanite, she is married to an Englishman and lives between New York and the West Midlands in the UK. She writes on the Substack Anchored in Argosy and can be found on X at @suzania.

Download the text of Susannah’s lecture: Being a Person in the Age of AI

This is the third in our Staying Human series. This event was convened and moderated by Jenny Sinclair, Founder Director of Together for the Common Good, and took place on 21 October 2025 in London before an invited audience.

Learn more about Together for the Common Good at t4cg.substack.com.

Listen to our sister podcast, Leaving Egypt, where we read the signs of the times and explore what it means to be God’s people in these times of unravelling: leavingegypt.com.