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Jennifer Garner Takes Kids To Church — How Religious Is Hollywood?

By Kalpana Negi
Published on: 07:09 PST, Feb 25, 2016

Jennifer Garner says she takes her kids to church every week. She says she grew up going to church every Sunday, and that that “there was something about doing this film” that made her go back to the Methodist Church.

“I grew up going to church every Sunday of my life, and when I did move to L.A., it wasn’t something that was just part of the culture there in the same way, at least in my life. But it didn’t mean that I lost who I was,” the mom of three said on Good Morning Texas, Fox News has reported.

Garner said that her decision was influenced after she worked in the film Miracles from Heaven, which tells a story of a girl from Texas who is cured of a disease after falling from church.

Garner plays the role of the young girl’s mother, Christy Beam. She said she was greatly influenced by Beam’s memoir, on which the movie is based.

“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,” Garner 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.”

However, there always a lot of talk about how America’s entertainment industry takes to religion. Are they open to it? Or does Hollywood keep its distance from publicly talking about these matters? If one digs up a little, it turns out that Hollywood and religion don’t always work for each other.

Mayim Bialik, the Big Bang Theory star, believes that it is not “trendy” to be religious in Hollywood, the Hollywood Reporter has said.

Bialik is Jewish and she says she got a negative attention after she took a trip to Israel.

“I’ve gotten a lot of negative attention for visiting Israel,” she said about her trip to visit a friend in the Israel Defense Forces. “That’s what’s amazing… simply by going to Israel this summer and saying nothing more than, ‘I’ve gone to Israel,’ I got the same amount of hatred and threats and anti-Semitism for actually making a statement trying to support people whether I like it or not are serving in an army.”

She says she received a lot of flak about being Jewish. Bialik goes on to say that she is very open about her faith and that it’s a part of who she is.

However, there are several celebrities who have talked about the religion they embrace.

Madonna, for instance, said when it was discovered she was into Kabbalah, people accused her of joining a cult. She said she was accused of bing brainwashed, she said in an interview with Harper’sBazaar.

“Now, you would think that studying the mystical interpretation of the Old Testament and trying to understand the secrets of the universe was a harmless thing to do. I wasn’t hurting anybody. Just going to class, taking notes in my spiral notebook, contemplating my future. I was actually trying to become a better person.”

Denzel Washington had told GQ in 2012 that he read from Bible every day, and that he read his Daily Word. “I read something great yesterday. It said, ‘Don’t aspire to make a living. Aspire to make a difference.’ ” It does seem like for Denzel Washington and a host of other stars, religion is an important part of their lives.

Do you think Hollywood is prejudiced about religious people? Do you think Jennifer Garner could have had a change of heart after working on a movie?

[Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images]

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