This article examines how digital culture has reshaped religious experience through algorithmic structures and artificial intelligence technologies, employing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological framework as its principal interpretative lens. Drawing on Bonhoeffer’s distinction between ‘costly grace’ and ‘cheap grace’, it explores the theological character of new forms of spiritual production through digital platforms. The central argument is that algorithmic systems, operating through the logic of speed, visibility and interaction, tend to transform religious experience from a process centred on ethical responsibility and existential transformation into a consumable and performative form. The study is grounded in the concept of ‘costly grace’ developed in The Cost of Discipleship and analyses digital religiosity, social media spirituality and AI-generated religious content in this light. It highlights how algorithms personalise religious content while simultaneously trivialising it and embedding it within the visibility economy. The article further considers whether emerging forms of ‘algorithmic spirituality’ can generate genuine ethical and existential transformation. It argues that, although digital technologies expand modes of religious expression, they risk detaching grace from ethical responsibility and reducing it to an experience shaped by visibility, consumption and algorithmic mediation. This development suggests that Bonhoeffer’s concept of ‘cheap grace’ is being reproduced in a contemporary digital form.
