Actress Jennifer Garner revealed how her faith would have impacted her career choice.
In an interview with Allure, Garner, 51, disclosed that she would “have really liked being a minister.”
“My mom thinks I still will be. I grew up in such a lovely church in the United Methodist Church, and the minister was like the den parent. What I like about the study of religion, it reminds me of the study of theater — it’s really a liberal arts education,” she said.
Garner added, “You have to understand history, geography, literature. It’s art, it’s everything. I don’t know anything about Hinduism, Islam, so many other religions, and I wish I did.”
She said learning about different religions apart from her own “feels like a sign of respect.”
Garner stated she wouldn’t mind going back to school to make that happen.
When asked what her life might look like if she hadn’t become one of Hollywood’s favorite actors, #JenniferGarner’s reply was not what we expected. “I would have really liked being a minister,” she said. To learn more about Garner’s spiritual side in her un-fake, unfiltered… pic.twitter.com/VABZ2gqDWA
— Allure (@Allure_magazine) May 9, 2023
She shared:
“I think the more you engage, the more you learn about different ways that people believe and worship, the more you can sit next to anyone and be a neighbor. There’s such value in that to me. I don’t know that I will ever be someone who is writing a sermon Sunday morning, but I like the idea of it. I like the idea of going back to divinity school.”
The Golden Globe winner also recalled a sermon she heard as a child that made a profound impact on her.
“As a kid, my family and I, we always referenced this one beautiful sermon where our minister talked about taking something hard that had happened and imagining yourself going down to the banks of the river and fashioning a beautiful box out of what you find there and placing this hurt carefully in the box and watching it float down the river,” she said.
Garner added, “The power of letting go. Don’t carry it. Just let it go.”
In an interview with “Good Morning Texas” in 2016, Garner spoke about the importance of taking her three children to church while promoting her faith-based movie “Miracles from Heaven.”
“There was something about doing this film and talking to my kids about it and realizing that they were looking for the structure of church every Sunday,” she said. “So it was a great gift of this film that it took us back to finding our local Methodist church and going every Sunday. It’s really sweet.”