Rhythm and Algorithm: Preaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence argues that preaching today unfolds within systems designed to sort, predict, and monetize human attention. In an era shaped by digital platforms, surveillance capitalism, and algorithmic control, what becomes of the sermon--and what becomes of the soul?
Drawing from Black homiletics, political economy, womanist theology, and sound studies, Mark Andrew Jefferson argues that preaching is more than just speech; it is an embodied rhythm involving breath, cadence, testimony, and communal timing that challenges enclosure. Tracing a genealogy from the Black cathedral and homiletic canon to kitchens, storefronts, hush harbors, digital platforms, and eucharistic tables, Jefferson shows how respectability, uplift, and optimization disciplined preaching long before artificial intelligence appeared.
Against these forces, the book names rhythm as a counterpractice: Spirit-led improvisation that refuses predictability and restores human depth. Rather than rejecting technology, Rhythm and Algorithm calls preachers and theologians to discern how the Spirit moves within--and against--systems of control, glitching the empire's speech and gathering communities in shared breath.
This is a book for preachers, scholars, and students seeking faithful proclamation in a world governed by code.
Industry Reviews
“In Rhythm and Algorithm, Mark Jefferson has given us the book we need for this generative artificial intelligence moment. It recalibrates our thinking about preaching and how it happens. Fresh and unashamedly Black, it does not fail to instruct, uplift, and excite. Each chapter opens a new door of homiletical approaches and understanding. The range is extensive, the prose is exacting, and the result is a book that preachers will read again and again to soak up every line.”
—Martha Simmons, co-editor of Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons, 1750 to the Present
“For Jefferson, preaching needs to recognize the complex relationships with power in the realms of architecture, economics, race, and the digital. Bringing his own biography, the reader is taken into the world of challenge and invited to find the Spirit’s ‘rhythm against the algorithm.’ Pulsating with originality, written with power, Jefferson in this book becomes a leading voice in homiletics.”
—Ian S. Markham, Dean, Virginia Theological Seminary
“Despite all the towers of Babel vainly erected to repress the Spirit, Jefferson shows us that the wind that blew at Pentecost was the undoing of Babel, and he gives to those of us who preach the confidence that ‘to preach after Pentecost is to trust that revelation moves at the speed of wind, not Wi-Fi.’”
—Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Candler School of Theology
