Date: September 18, 2026
Last Tuesday, I preached about the dangers of AI. I continue to believe that this sector needs regulation. I also invited us to become AI literate. This can be done in many ways: for some it might be reading a good book or article on AI. For me, it was to learn how to use the technology.
Vibe coding is when you use regular language to ask Generative AI to create a platform or a book or an app. These are five things that a person without any coding skills can build. First, I invented a game called Histle. Each day it poses a historical prompt — a battle, a council, an invention — and players guess the year, the continent, and an associated figure, competing in leagues with friends. I am not a software engineer. Ten years ago the idea would have stayed an idea. You can play the game here.
Then our family has for years played a game called “Town Country and County”. With the help of Claude Code I made it into an app available on the Apple App Store. You will need to search for the LongDunnGame in the App Store. I built a devotional app for a friend recovering from a fall, when recovery was proving hard. It offers one meditation a day, paired with sacred art. It exists because someone I love needed it, and because I could make it in an afternoon rather than a year. You can find it here. And most recently, I needed to provide a website that enabled people to find my publications and even book me to speak (so far, my son invited me to Sunday dinner and my wife asked me to speak in Peru next week!). You can find it here.
And with her father’s blessing, I wrote a short story for my friend Ellen Hawkins, who has Down syndrome, composing it a chapter at a time and publishing it. Ellen has loved seeing herself as the hero of a book. And here is the link.
This technology has its problems. But it is not all bad. Learning how to use this technology for good is also part of our moment.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary.