Denzel Washington Gets Baptized and Earns Minister’s License

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Denzel Washington has taken more steps on his faith walk. The veteran actor, who turns 70 this week, has been baptized and received his minister’s license in a recent ceremony in New York. Years after starring in The Preacher’s Wife with Whitney Houston, Washington has taken the step in real life.

He was baptized at the Kelly Church of God in Christ in Harlem in a ceremony that was livestreamed earlier this month. Though Washington has often talked about Christian values and starred in The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic drama with a religious storyline, he told Esquire that it “wasn’t sexy” to openly talk about your faith in Hollywood.

“Things I said about God when I was a little boy, just reciting them in church along with everybody else, I know now,” Washington told Esquire. “God is real. God is love. God is the only way. God is the true way. God blesses. It’s my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me. When you see me, you see the best I could do with what I’ve been given by my Lord and savior. I’m unafraid. I don’t care what anyone thinks. See, talking about the fear part of it—you can’t talk like that and win Oscars. You can’t talk like that and party. You can’t say that in this town.”

A minister’s license is the step before becoming ordained. Though Washington has not publicly revealed if that is his goal, several other celebrities have minister’s licenses including Adele, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cardi B, Kathy Griffin, Whoopi Goldberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Tom Hanks. Most have not expressed any desire to be in the pulpit and have used a minister’s license only to perform wedding ceremonies.

Washington says signs of his faith show up in the characters that he’s played in more than 50 movie and TV roles.

“I’ve always been led by God, and most of my performances are faith-filled. Even if I was playing the devil. I still have my shooting script from Training Day, and I wrote on the cover: ‘The wages of sin is death.’ The wages of sin is death. And now all these years later in Gladiator II, I play another bad guy in another great movie. Even in the darkest stories, I’m looking for the light.”

After a decade of sobriety and a new fitness regime that he says his “little brother” Lenny Kravitz helped him with, Washington seems set on another chapter in his life on the eve of 70. He will continue producing August Wilson films but not acting in them. The latest, a Netflix movie adaptation of Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson,  was directed by Washington’s son Malcolm and starred his son John David. Washington says he’s committed to two more Equalizer films. And he’ll be onstage again in Othello, which will also have a movie version.

At the ceremony, attended by his wife of 41 years, Pauletta Washington, he expressed his gratitude at reaching the moment.

“It took a while but I’m here,” Washington said. “If [God] can do this for me, there’s nothing He can’t do for you. The sky literally is the limit.”