  The morphology of a galaxy is a manifestation of the complex interplay of
physical processes occurring within and around it, and therefore offers
indirect clues to its formation and evolution. We use both visual
classification and computer vision to verify the suspected connection between
galaxy merging activity - as evidenced by a close/merging galaxy pair, or tidal
features surrounding an apparently singular system - and AGN activity. This
study makes use of JADES JWST/NIRCam imagery, along with an unprecedentedly
complete sample of AGN built using JWST/MIRI photometry in the same field. This
0.9-25 micron dataset enables constraints on the host galaxy morphologies of
the broadest possible range of AGN beyond z~1, including heavily obscured
examples missing from previous studies. We consider two AGN samples, one
consisting of lightly to highly obscured X-ray-selected AGN (Lyu et al. 2022),
and the other, presumed Compton-thick mid-infrared-bright/X-ray-faint AGN
recently revealed by MIRI (Lyu et al. 2023). Both samples contain a significant
fraction of host galaxies with disturbed morphologies at all redshifts sampled,
and increasingly so towards higher redshift and AGN bolometric luminosity. The
most obscured systems show the highest fraction of strongly disturbed host
galaxies at $95\pm4$%, followed by the moderately and unobscured/lightly
obscured subsets at $78\pm6$% and $63\pm6.5$%, respectively. From this pattern
of disturbances, we conclude that mergers are common amongst obscured AGN, and
that the obscured AGN phase may mark a period of significant SMBH growth. This
finding presents tension with the leading model on AGN fueling mechanisms
(Hopkins et al. 2014) that needs reconciling.
