Ron Carpenter. If you haven’t heard of him, let me introduce you—he’s the typical charismatic blowhard who takes the gospel, twists it into something unrecognizable, and re-sells it for personal gain. And now he’s selling what might be the most ridiculous product to come out of the charismatic industrial complex, a “personal pastor” app.
For $49, this app lets you “call” Carpenter and hear him pray for you or offer advice—except it’s not really him. It’s an AI bot programmed to mimic his voice. He’s calling it your “personal pastor.” Let that sink in for a moment—a personal pastor who isn’t even human.
Here’s the crazy part though. His church reportedly has 21,000 members. If every one of them buys this app, Carpenter stands to make over a million dollars—$1,029,000 to be exact. And that doesn’t even account for the people outside his church who might be gullible enough to believe they’re getting something valuable out of this.
