What a new biography of Aaron Rodgers says about his faith

Aaron Rodgers isn’t an easy man to get to know.
The star NFL quarterback, who joined the New York Jets last year after 18 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, is famously careful about what he shares with the media and rarely active on sites like X or Instagram.
Unsurprisingly, Rodgers did not authorize a new book about him, although he did agree to sit with the author, Ian O’Connor, to respond to claims made by family members, old friends and fellow NFL players.
“Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers” explores the quarterback’s childhood, unlikely rise to NFL stardom and off-field controversies, including his ongoing feud with his parents and two brothers (and some aunts, uncles and cousins, apparently.)
Here’s what the biography says about Aaron Rodgers’ religion.
Aaron Rodgers’ parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers, met at college in Chico, California, and that’s where they chose to raise their three sons — Luke, Aaron and Jordan — after bouncing around for a bit as Ed figured out his career.
Darla was raised Presbyterian and Ed was raised Catholic, but an evangelical Christian church called the Neighborhood Church became the center of their family’s life in Chico, according to “Out of the Darkness.”
Darla was a stay-at-home mom in part because of her religious beliefs.
“We just knew that God would honor our decision for me to be the primary caregiver of our children instead of farming them out,” she told O’Connor.
Darla and Ed were supportive of their sons’ dreams, including Aaron Rodgers’ plan to make it to the NFL, but they did have a few nonnegotiable rules: no tattoos, no long hair and no skipping church.
“A commitment to Christianity was at the very least an expectation, if not an outright mandate,” the book said.
Aaron Rodgers’ resisted his parents’ religion in a couple of ways, O’Connor reported.
For one thing, he did not agree with their plan to move back to Chico from Oregon when he was in junior high, even though they said it was religiously inspired.
Darla recalls telling Aaron, “God would not have this be the will of your father’s life without it also being the will of your life. We’re supposed to return to California,” per the new book.
Aaron Rodgers also didn’t feel as at home in the Neighborhood Church as his parents did, so, while in high school, he began spending more time with a ministry group called Young Life.
He ended up going on two short-term mission trips to Mexico with Young Life while he was in high school, during which he helped build houses for underprivileged families. He wanted to go on a third, but his football coach said practice was more important, according to “Out of the Darkness.”
“I went from going to church on Sundays, knowing how important that was to my parents, to a desire to grow deeper in the Lord,” Aaron Rodgers said about his connection to Young Life.
Rodgers continued to identify as a Christian while in college and referenced God after he was finally drafted by the Packers with 24th pick in the 2005 NFL Draft. (At one point in the draft process, he had been expected to be taken first overall.)
“The Lord has been teaching me a lot about humility and patience,” Rodgers said on draft night, per O’Connor, “and He kind of threw both of those in my face today.”
Although the new biography of Aaron Rodgers doesn’t totally resolve the mystery of the quarterback’s years-long conflict with his family, it argues that religion played a role.
O’Connor noted that Darla, in part because of her faith, was uncomfortable with how Rodgers’ one-time girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, talked about her relationship with the quarterback in interviews.
In general, Munn didn’t get along with the family, and Ed and Darla claim their separation from Rodgers stemmed in large part from an argument they had with the actress.
Some family members told O’Connor that the Munn-related conflict may have happened around the same time that Rodgers was shedding the last traces of his childhood faith and growing uncomfortable with his parents’ beliefs.
In 2017, Aaron Rodgers told ESPN’s Mina Kimes that he no longer identified as Christian and had given up on black-and-white religious claims.
He said he had come to prefer a more spiritual approach, one in which he was content with unanswered questions.
O’Connor cited that Kimes interview in “Out of the Darkness,” noting that Rodgers’ decision in his twenties to begin questioning his religious upbringing may connect to his later questioning of political and scientific developments, like COVID-19 vaccines.
The new Aaron Rodgers biography has a pretty serious tone, but there are plenty of amusing moments, such as when O’Connor described Rodgers’ meeting with the principal at Champion Christian, a junior high in Chicago, before he enrolled there.
When the principal asked Aaron how he would contribute to the religious school’s culture, he responded, “I’m going to improve your sports programs,” according to “Out of the Darkness.”