Jennifer Garner was photographed arriving for church in Santa Monica this Sunday, keeping up a weekly ritual that has anchored her life for nearly a decade.
Sunday church has been a fixed point in Jennifer Garner’s week since 2016, when making a faith-based film pulled her back to the pew she’d grown up in. This weekend she showed up in a floral dress with a drink in hand.
Garner is a practicing United Methodist who was raised going every Sunday in Charleston, West Virginia, in a home so strict about nail polish, makeup, and ear piercings that she’s called it “practically Amish.”
The weekly habit faded after she moved to Los Angeles, then came back around 2015 while she prepared for and promoted “Miracles from Heaven.” Talking about the film with her kids made her realize they wanted the structure of church, and she’s called finding a congregation a “great gift” of the movie. Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel were all baptized in the family’s West Virginia church, and Violet went on to teach Sunday school.
Her Pacific Palisades congregation, Community United Methodist, burned down in the January 2025 Palisades Fire. Garner lost a close friend from the church who didn’t make it out, and later shared that the church sign was found standing in the rubble, reading “UMC is here.” Services moved to other locations around Santa Monica.
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