Jennifer Garner: ‘I Didn’t Know I Had That Much Prayer in Me’

Published: January 26, 2026

By India McCarty

For actress Jennifer Garner, regular journaling has become a way to write “a letter to God.”

“I’ve never spoken about this out loud,” she said in conversation with Suleika Jaouad as part of her ongoing “The Journaler’s Routine” interview series. “It makes me emotional, but there is a pervasive theme across all of my journals that I never planned on, and I still don’t plan on, and yet it happens more often than not, which is they turn into prayer.”

Garner continued, “They turn into a prayer of gratitude, almost always. It’s almost always, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ or ‘please hold us,’ or ‘please be with us.’ I didn’t know that I had that much prayer in me…they almost always turn out to be a letter to God.”

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The actress often speaks about the important role faith plays in her life. In a 2023 interview with Allure, Garner said, “I would have really liked being a minister,” joking, “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,” Garner explained. “What I like about the study of religion, it reminds me of the study of theater — it’s really a liberal arts education. You have to understand history, geography, literature. It’s art, it’s everything.”

She added, “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.”

Garner said she’s even considered attending divinity school.

“I don’t know that I will ever be someone who is writing a sermon Sunday morning, but I like the idea of it,” she shared. “I like the idea of going back to divinity school.”

The actress has also spoken about how it was important to her to raise her children in faith. She shares Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 13, with ex-husband Ben Affleck.

“I think I had become complacent in raising my children, almost as though [I thought] they were going to receive the ground beneath their feet that heaven had given me through osmosis,” she said in a 2016 interview with USA Today.

When she brought up the topic with her children, Garner said she was surprised at how excited they were at the idea of attending church.

“I immediately looked up the local United Methodist church. We went there next Sunday, and it turned out to be the perfect environment,” she said. “We’ve gotten so much from it.”

For Garner, her practice of journaling has become a way to express gratitude and deepen her relationship with God.

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