This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
Anna Faris is used to playing characters who say the quiet part out loud, but her latest headline-making moment isn’t from a movie script. It’s from a candid conversation about her 14-year-old son, Jack, and the surprising spiritual path he’s chosen for himself.
During a recent sit-down on Chelsea Handler’s “Dear Chelsea” podcast, the “Scary Movie” star opened up about co-parenting a teenager who has grown deeply religious, even though she herself did not grow up in a religious household.
What could have turned into an awkward, avoided topic instead became the centerpiece of a refreshingly honest interview, one that says a lot about how modern parents are navigating differences with their kids without trying to steamroll them.
Faris, who shares Jack with ex-husband Chris Pratt, didn’t tiptoe around the subject when Handler brought it up.
She described her son in a way that immediately set the tone for the rest of the conversation. “He’s as solid as a tugboat, emotionally,” Faris said. “He just doesn’t get easily jarred. He handles situations really well.”
It’s the kind of description that sounds almost engineered for a teenager who has decided to build his identity around faith while living between two households with very different relationships to religion.
Jack Asked His Mom To Accept Jesus, And She Didn’t Say No
Things got even more personal when Handler asked Faris directly whether she considers herself religious. Her answer was simple and unguarded.
“I didn’t grow up with religion,” she explained. From there, she revealed something many parents in her position might have brushed off or laughed away.
Jack has asked her to accept Jesus Christ as her savior, a request that carries real weight coming from a 14-year-old who has clearly thought hard about his beliefs and wants to share them with the person who raised him.
Rather than shutting the idea down, Faris responded with the kind of patience that takes real effort to maintain. “He’s asked me to accept Jesus Christ,” she said. “I told him that I would do anything for him, including this, but it’s still going to take a whole lot of long conversations.”
That single line captures the entire dynamic between mother and son. She isn’t pretending to convert on command, and she isn’t dismissing his faith either.
She’s treating it the way she’d treat any big, complicated request from her child, with honesty about how hard it actually is to shift a worldview overnight.
What makes this story land differently than a typical celebrity parenting soundbite is what Faris does next. She doesn’t just accept Jack’s beliefs and move on.
She pushes back, gently but persistently, and she’s open about it. “I’ve tried to challenge him,” Faris said, describing an ongoing back-and-forth that sounds less like a lecture and more like a genuine debate between two people who respect each other.
One sharper example she gave involved Jack’s pro-life stance, a position she’s asked him to examine more closely. According to Faris, she’s put it to him directly, asking whether holding that view might be a “luxury,” depending on someone’s circumstances.
She’s Not Trying To Win, She’s Trying To Get Him Thinking
Faris also brought up conversations about religious leaders, specifically high-profile pastors who build massive followings and even bigger bank accounts.
She recalled asking Jack pointed questions about certain figures in that world. “Or I’ll say, ‘What do you think of this mega-pastor that’s kind of a grifter?’” Faris shared.
And according to her, Jack didn’t get defensive. He actually agreed with her. “He’s like, ‘Oh, mega-pastors are the worst,’” she recalled, adding, “So it’s like, ok, we’re getting there.”
That response seems to be exactly what Faris is hoping for, not a wholesale rejection of his faith, but a willingness to look critically at the institutions built around it.
She made it clear she isn’t out to strip her son of his beliefs. Instead, she’s proud of the fact that he’s willing to sit with tough questions instead of retreating into certainty.
“I’m appreciative that he’s examining religion the way he is in terms of recognizing hypocrisy, starting to recognize hypocrisy,” Faris said. “And I’m appreciative that we can have these long conversations.”
It’s a small but meaningful distinction: the difference between raising a kid to parrot a fixed set of beliefs and raising one who can hold a belief while still questioning the people and systems around it.
There’s also a piece of family history that helps explain why faith became such a central part of Jack’s life in the first place, even though it didn’t come from his mother’s side.
Jack was born premature in 2012, arriving weeks early and requiring a stretch in the neonatal intensive care unit before his parents could bring him home.
Pratt has spoken publicly, separately from this podcast appearance, about how frightening that period was and how it reshaped his own relationship with faith.
He has described praying intensely for his newborn son and making what he’s called a deal with God, crediting that experience with cementing his religious beliefs going forward.
It’s not hard to see how that origin story, playing out in a hospital before Jack could even form memories, might have planted the seeds for the faith he’s grown into as a teenager, especially given how open Pratt has continued to be about his own spiritual journey in the years since.
Faris and Pratt were married in 2009 and split in 2017, finalizing their divorce the following year. Despite the split, the two have continued co-parenting Jack together, and both have since moved on to new relationships.
Pratt married Katherine Schwarzenegger, with whom he shares three additional children, while Faris married cinematographer Michael Barrett in 2021.
Even with two very different households and two very different relationships to religion, Jack has apparently found space to build his own belief system, one that his mother is choosing to engage with rather than resist.
Teaching A Kid How To Think Beats Telling Him What To Think
What stands out most about Faris’ comments isn’t really the religious divide itself. Plenty of divorced parents raise kids with beliefs that differ from their own, and plenty of those situations turn tense or get avoided altogether.
What makes this particular story worth paying attention to is the method Faris described using with her son. She isn’t trying to talk him out of his faith, and she also isn’t pretending to agree with every part of it just to keep the peace.
She’s asking him questions, real ones, about pro-life politics and about the leaders who claim to speak for his religion, and she’s letting him sit with those questions instead of handing him easy answers.
That approach requires a level of trust that not every parent-teen relationship can support, and Faris seems to know it. Describing Jack as someone who is “impressive” and hard to rattle isn’t just a compliment; it’s practically an explanation for why she feels comfortable pushing him at all.
A kid who gets defensive or shuts down under scrutiny probably wouldn’t get the same treatment. Instead, Faris has a son secure enough in his own beliefs to hear a hard question, sit with it, and sometimes even come around to agreeing with part of what his mom is saying, all without the relationship falling apart.
For many parents watching from the outside, especially those navigating their own disagreements with teenagers over politics, religion, or just about anything else, Faris’ approach offers a clear takeaway.
The goal isn’t necessarily to get a kid to believe exactly what you believe. It’s to raise someone who can explain why they believe what they believe, and who’s willing to keep examining it as they grow.
Based on what Faris shared with Handler, that’s exactly the kind of teenager she seems to be raising, one long, occasionally uncomfortable conversation at a time.
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