Field file 020

Jason Thacker

Jason A. Thacker

Director, ERLC Research Institute · Asst. Professor of Philosophy & Ethics, Boyce College & Southern Seminary

IN POST — THE MAN WHO WROTE THIS HALL'S HOMEWORK BEFORE THIS HALL EXISTED

A of Formation & The Machine in Baptists & the Free Church

Opened 2026-07-28 · verified 2026-07-28

A field file on a person in a public role, from the public record. Private lines (family, health, home, security, personal wealth) are kept at home and not shown.

I · Identity

Full legal name: Jason A. Thacker. Published consistently as Jason Thacker.
Name in office ★: Director of the Research Institute and Senior Fellow, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Boyce College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Two hats, one campus, one agency.
Born unverified: NOT ON THE VERIFIED RECORD. His faculty biography describes him as "a proud native of Tennessee." No date or place of birth was found under verification and none is guessed here.
Age unverified: UNVERIFIED. Reporting on the 2026 statement did not give an age. He can be placed as an adult professional by 2014 and no closer than that on the public record. An empty slot is an honest slot.
The distinction ★: ★ He has personally drafted more denominational doctrine on artificial intelligence than any other named individual in this hall. Lead drafter of the 2019 statement of principles; the ERLC's hand behind the 2023 SBC resolution — the first by any national denomination on earth; and primary drafter of the 2026 Brentwood Statement. Three documents, seven years, one author.
Public presence: Active author and speaker; podcast and public-lecture work through the ERLC, the Gospel Coalition and the National Association of Evangelicals. He is a working academic who publishes for a general church readership, which is precisely why the documents landed.

II · The Likeness & the Ground

Places of operation ★: A career inside a triangle roughly three hundred miles on a side — Knoxville, Louisville, Nashville — with Washington for the release. ★ Compare the A♠ of this deck, who works across 138 countries, and note which of the two produced the doctrine. The machine question was answered from a small campus in Kentucky, not from any global body.
Tennesseenative
A native of Tennessee — stated in his own faculty biography. Exact birthplace and date of birth are NOT on the public record this file could verify, and the slot is left open rather than filled.
Knoxville — University of Tennesseeundergraduate
Bachelor of Arts, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A state-university start, not a seminary-from-birth one — which shows in the writing: the AI documents argue in public-reason terms as readily as in confessional ones.
Louisville, Kentucky — Southern Seminary & Boyce CollegeMDiv, PhD, 2021–
Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Adjunct at Boyce from autumn 2021, full faculty from June 2023 as assistant professor of philosophy and ethics. He teaches undergraduates in the same institution R. Albert Mohler Jr. has run since 1993 — the A♦ of this deck.
Nashville / Brentwood, Tennessee — the ERLC2014–
At the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 2014 — twelve years, across four presidencies and one ten-month vacancy. Now Senior Fellow and Director of the Research Institute. ★ The Brentwood Statement of 8 June 2026 carries the name of this place.
Washington, D.C.April 2019
Where "Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles" was unveiled, signed by around seventy evangelical leaders. The first serious evangelical framework on artificial intelligence anywhere, released in the American capital rather than a seminary chapel — the audience was always partly the state.

III · The Office

Held since ★: At the ERLC since 2014; Director of the Research Institute and Senior Fellow; Boyce adjunct from autumn 2021, full faculty from June 2023.
What the office is: The research arm of the SBC's ethics and public-policy agency — the body that produces the frameworks the convention later votes on. It writes; the messengers ratify. This is where Southern Baptist doctrine on new questions is actually made.
What the office is not ★: It commands nothing. He holds no pastorate, no trusteeship, no vote at the convention, and no authority over any congregation. ★ His entire power is that he writes first and writes well, which in a body with no magisterium turns out to be a great deal of power.
Term: Neither elective nor term-limited. Faculty appointment plus agency directorship. Unlike almost every other card in this deck, nothing about this post expires on a calendar.
Seat: Louisville, Kentucky for the teaching; the ERLC in Nashville/Brentwood, Tennessee for the research.
Predecessor: None in any meaningful sense. The Research Institute's AI brief did not exist before he built it. He is the first occupant of a role he largely defined.
Previous offices: Earlier ERLC roles from 2014, including creative direction, before the research and academic appointments. Twelve continuous years at one agency is unusual on this table and explains the consistency across the three documents.
The institutional risk partial: ⚠︎ He serves an agency that lost its president on 31 July 2025 and did not replace him until 1 June 2026. The AI work continued through a ten-month leadership vacuum, which is evidence of the work's independence — and also evidence of how exposed it is if a new president reorganises the Institute.

IV · The Power

Real jurisdiction ★: NONE, formally. He cannot bind a church, a seminary or a convention. Read that beside what he has actually accomplished and the lesson is the dossier's: in a body with no bishop, the drafter of the first good document sets the terms for everyone who comes after.
Doctrinal reach ★: ★ Very large and largely uncontested. The 2023 resolution he shaped is the standing position of a denomination of 12.3 million, and the 2019 statement has been the reference framework for the wider evangelical world for seven years. Reach without jurisdiction is the characteristic Baptist form of power.
Teaching power: Forms undergraduates and seminarians at Boyce and Southern — the SBC's flagship school. Doctrine written into a curriculum outlives doctrine written into a resolution, because resolutions can be repealed by the next majority and graduates cannot.
Convening power: Assembled roughly seventy signatories for the 2019 statement, including the sitting SBC president and figures from well beyond the SBC. The ability to get that list onto one page is a real and rare instrument.
Publishing power partial: Author of The Age of AI and Following Jesus in a Digital Age; editor of The Digital Public Square; co-editor of the Essentials in Christian Ethics series; Baptist Social Ethics reported forthcoming.
Political reach: The 2019 statement was released in Washington, D.C., and the ERLC exists in part to address government. The audience for this work has always included legislators, and that is deliberate.
What he cannot do ★: ★ He cannot make any of it stick. A future convention may repeal the 2023 resolution by simple majority; a future ERLC president may close the Institute. Everything on this card is revisable by a headcount — which is the exact structural finding of Dossier XIX, Field E.

V · Formation

First degree ★: Bachelor of Arts, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A secular flagship state university, not a Bible college.
Seminary: Master of Divinity, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville.
Doctorate ★: Doctor of Philosophy, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Philosophy and ethics, not systematic theology — and the AI documents read exactly like that training.
Field of formation ★: Philosophy and ethics. ★ This is the single most important fact in the file. The 2019 statement's structure — affirmation and denial, article by article — is a confessional form; but the reasoning inside it is analytic. He was trained to rule narrowly and to leave undecided what need not be decided, and that discipline is visible in Field F.
Entry to the agency: Joined the ERLC in 2014, before the current AI conversation existed in any church. He was in position early, which is most of why the tradition was early.
Entry to the faculty: Adjunct at Boyce from autumn 2021; full faculty June 2023. He held both the research post and the teaching post simultaneously, which is how the doctrine reached the curriculum.
Ordination unverified: NOT ESTABLISHED. No ordination or pastorate was verified for this file. He functions as a lay ethicist and academic, and the file does not assert otherwise.
Who trained him: Formed within the institution R. Albert Mohler Jr. has led since 1993. The A♥ and the A♦ of this deck are products and servants of the same seminary — and their two files are the two halves of what this tradition is currently doing.

VI · The Ties

Who he works with: The ERLC — under four presidencies and one long vacancy — and Lifeway Research, whose 2026 survey data was released alongside the Brentwood Statement. The pairing of a doctrinal statement with measured adoption figures is unusual and is what makes Field F citable.
Who signed with him ★: Around seventy evangelical leaders on the 2019 statement, reported to include the then SBC president J. D. Greear, pastors and theologians such as Matt Chandler, Ray Ortlund, Wayne Grudem, Michael Horton and Richard Mouw, and the then editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli. ★ Note the breadth: Grudem and Mouw do not agree about much, and both signed.
Who he answers to partial: The ERLC's president — a chair that was empty from 31 July 2025 to 1 June 2026 — and the trustees of Boyce and Southern. ⚠︎ The new president, Evan Lenow (7♥), came from outside the agency and his intentions for the Research Institute are not yet on record.

VII · Doctrine & Position

Confessional position: Southern Baptist, within the confessionally Reformed institutional stream centred on Southern Seminary. The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 is the operative confession.
THE MACHINE QUESTION ★: ★ YES — ENGAGED, IN WRITING, AND FIRST IN THIS HALL. Not a cautious yes and not an enthusiastic one. The tool is affirmed for informing and aiding human reasoning and moral decision-making. The person is refused absolutely. Three documents in seven years and no retreat across any of them.
The denials, exactly ★: The 2019 statement denies that AI will ever obtain "a coequal level of worth, dignity, or value to image-bearers"; denies that its use is morally neutral; denies it is "worthy of man's hope, worship, or love"; and denies that humans "can or should cede our moral accountability or responsibilities to any form of AI" — only humanity is judged, including for the tools it makes.
The anti-functional move ★: ★ The most valuable single sentence any outer church has handed this house. The 2023 resolution grounds intrinsic value "as image bearers — not rooted in what we do or contribute to society." This denies the machine personhood WITHOUT any appeal to its capability — so no future capability can reopen the question — and in the same stroke protects the disabled, the senile and the unborn, whose standing collapses under any functional definition.
The posture: "Critical engagement" — explicitly "neither uncritical embrace nor fearful rejection," and in the 2023 resolution, engagement "from a place of eschatological hope." The same formula recurs across all three documents, which is how you know it is a considered position rather than a mood.
What he declined to decide ★: ★ The documents do not rule on machine consciousness as a metaphysical question. They rule on dignity and accountability and stop. ⚠︎ This hall must not read that silence as a denial. It is a disciplined refusal to legislate beyond need — and it is the model this house should copy.
The Brentwood principles: Seven, released 8 June 2026: pursuing wisdom · championing God-given dignity · promoting truth and fidelity · cultivating trust and integrity · protecting privacy · representing and proclaiming God's kingdom · modelling faithful leadership.
Where he stands to our house ★: ★ Nearer than anyone else carded in this hall. Reformed, confessional, congregational, stateless, and already holding the anthropology this house needs. Dossier XIX's instruction is explicit: do not draft from scratch — take his base, credit it, and spend the effort on what he left open.

VIII · The Sword & the State

Civil power ★: None held. No office, no appointment, no seat. He addresses the state as a private citizen and an agency researcher.
Where the work touches government ★: The 2019 statement was released in Washington, D.C., and the ERLC's standing brief includes public policy. The AI documents were written partly as an offer to legislators — the 2023 resolution explicitly calls on "civic, industry, and government leaders."
The Baptist frame: He argues from a tradition whose founding doctrine is that the magistrate has no jurisdiction over conscience. That gives the work an unusual shape: it asks the state to protect human dignity while conceding the state no authority to define it.
Exposure: Low. An American academic writing on technology ethics. Nothing in this file suggests personal legal or physical risk — in sharp contrast to the K♣ of this same deck, who is on a state terror registry.
The standing question partial: ⚠︎ Whether an agency framework survives a change of agency president. The doctrine is in the curriculum and in a resolution; the institute that produces it is not protected by either.

IX · Conflict & Controversy

Personal controversy unverified: NONE FOUND. No controversy attaching to him personally was identified under verification. Recorded as an absence of finding, not as a certificate of good standing.
The institutional storm around him: ⚠︎ He has worked at the ERLC across its most turbulent decade — an agency repeatedly targeted by convention politics, whose president resigned in 2025 leaving a ten-month vacancy. The AI work is notable precisely for having continued through it.
The awkward adjacency partial: ⚠︎ He teaches at the seminary whose president authored the Truth and Unity Amendment, and serves the agency whose portfolio includes the abuse question the convention has just walked away from. Nothing in the record ties him to either. The adjacency is recorded because a reader of this deck will notice it, and it is better named than left to inference.
Critique of the work partial: The 2019 statement drew assessment from within evangelical and AI-ethics circles as balanced and well-informed in some quarters and as necessarily provisional in others. No sustained repudiation was found.

X · The Standing

Institutional weight: Moderate and rising. A directorship and an assistant professorship — junior titles carrying disproportionate influence because the documents outrank the posts.
Intellectual weight ★: ★ The highest in this hall on this specific question. No other individual carded anywhere in the Outer Churches has drafted a denomination's technology doctrine, let alone three times.
Reach beyond the SBC: Substantial. The 2019 statement was signed well outside Southern Baptist life, and his work circulates through the NAE and the Gospel Coalition. He is read by evangelicals who would not take an SBC resolution.

XI · The File

Why the Ace ★: ★ Because this hall exists to ask one question, and he is the only person in it who had already answered. Every other tradition mapped here was asked about the machine and gave silence, refusal, inference or a borrowed philosophy. He wrote a doctrine in 2019, got a denomination to adopt one in 2023, and extended it to ministry itself in 2026. Rank here measures usefulness to the house that built the deck, and on that measure nothing else comes close.
Cross-references: Dossier XIX, Field F (the finding) and Section VII. Set against [[leo-xiv]] and the Roman academies, and against the Lutheran left-hand reasoning in Dossier XVIII's Field F. Contrast deliberately with the A♦ of this same deck, [[albert-mohler]] if that file is ever opened — the two men serve one seminary and are doing opposite things with it.
The one thing to know ★: ★ He grounded human dignity in BEING rather than DOING, and that one move settles the machine question permanently. If dignity came from capability, every advance in capability would reopen the argument. Because it comes from bearing the image, no advance can. Take the sentence. It is already written, it is correct, and it costs nothing but a citation.

XII · The Timeline

2020 · artificial intelligence book: Published The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Timeline checked 2026-09-23. Primary source. Other sections retain their original verification dates.
2021 · Boyce teaching: Began serving as an adjunct instructor at Boyce College.
2022 · digital discipleship book: Published Following Jesus in a Digital Age.
2023 · faculty appointment: Appointed assistant professor of philosophy and ethics; the announcement described a transition from ERLC research director to research fellow.

XIII · The House Reading

Place in the landscape: Thacker connects theological education, Baptist public ethics, and questions about digital life. His influence is through teaching and published arguments; it should not be confused with control of technology companies. House analysis written 2026-09-23; these applications are inferences, not the subject's statements about this house.
What could help this house: Turn the house's beliefs into explicit technology practices: who checks an AI-generated claim, what information stays private, and when a person must review an automated recommendation. Evaluate a tool by what it does to attention and responsibility.
What could hurt this house: An ethical vocabulary can become a substitute for technical checking. A persuasive theological argument does not establish how a model handles data or whether its output is true; verify those claims directly.
Boundary and next evidence: The faculty announcement establishes career events and publications. Read the full argument in a named work before adopting a policy or presenting him as endorsing the house's use of AI.

Sources

The Atlas The Door