The Chaplain’s Invisible Companion

Charles Huschle, MFA, MDiv
Principal, Querencia Street Chaplains, LLC

The Chaplain’s Invisible Companion: Generative AI as a Tool for Reflective Practice in Spiritual Care

On November 5, 2026, Charles Huschle presented this talk at the Second Annual Conference on Spirituality, Religion, and Interactive Technology Design (SPIRITED 2026), hosted by the Spirited Collective. Here is the opening of his abstract. Questions are welcome!

Generative artificial intelligence is increasingly discussed in healthcare and spiritual care as a technology that might interact directly with patients: answering questions, offering emotional support, generating spiritual resources, or perhaps performing functions associated with chaplaincy.

This case examines a different possibility. Over approximately eight months of accompanying a person with advanced ovarian cancer, I used a large language model (LLM) not as a substitute for human spiritual care and not as a patient-facing intervention, but as an ongoing reflective partner.

The experience suggests that one potentially important role for generative AI in spiritual care may lie outside the clinical encounter itself: as a reflective space in which the person providing care can reconsider the patient, the self, and the relationship between them.

Read the full paper here (PDF).

Learn more about SPIRITED 2026 here.