(ANALYSIS) When describing his life, Denzel Washington often notes a mysterious encounter on March 27, 1975, offering it as a parable about his Christian faith and his acting career.

The young Washington was in his mother's Mount Vernon, N.Y., beauty parlor, after horrible grades forced a leave of absence from Fordham University. An elderly woman, Ruth Green, who many believed had unique spiritual gifts, looked him in the eye and asked for a piece of paper.

Scribbling the details, Green announced: “I have a prophecy. ... Boy, you are going to travel the world and speak to millions of people.”

Sharing this story at Dillard University in New Orleans in 2015, Washington added pulpit-friendly advice: “What she told me that day has stayed with me since. I've been protected. I've been directed. I've been corrected. I've kept God in my life.”

The actor stressed these words: “Put. God. First.”

After a press screening of “The Book of Eli” in 2010, he added another wrinkle, pondering the prophecy's implications. At one point, Washington, a member of the giant West Angeles Church of God in Christ, wondered if he was supposed to have been ordained.

Washington said his pastor noted: “Well, aren't you talking to millions of people? Haven't you traveled the world?”

That question recently surfaced once again, when the two-time Oscar winner received a minister's license at the Kelly Temple Church of God in Christ in Harlem, a congregation he attended as a child. During this Dec. 21 baptism rite — broadcast online — Washington rededicated his life to God and moved one step closer from full ordination. As a licensed minister, he can preach, perform weddings and lead some religious services.

“We celebrate the addition of Minister Denzel Washington into the clergy ... in a truly uplifting moment,” Archbishop Christopher Bryant wrote on Facebook.

During the service, Washington described the prophecy 50 years earlier and added, "It took a while, but I'm finally here. ... If [God] can do this for me, there's nothing he can't do for you. The sky literally is the limit, and there's no limit to the sky. God is good all the time. ... Anything and everything I can do, I will do” for God.

Washington and his wife of 41 years, Pauletta, wiped tears from their eyes and described their spiritual journey under the hot lights of Hollywood.

“You are the head of our house,” she said. “You have set a great example for our children, who are now adult children, and who know the difference -- because we have shown them the difference. This step — has taken it the next step.”

The son of a Pentecostal pastor, Washington has increasingly become more open about his faith while being candid about his personal struggles and the pressures on his marriage and family.

During a “The Book of Eli” roundtable interview with religion writers, he described how he began focusing on biblical themes in his movies. The first time he read the script for "Training Day," the searing film for which he won the best actor Oscar, Washington said he wrote, "the wages of sin is death" on the title page. He insisted that his character, the corrupt police detective Alonzo Harris, die “crawling ... like a snake” because of his sins.

During promotional interviews for the new “Gladiator II,” Washington openly described the impact of his faith on his career in an increasingly tense and divided age.

Maturity and experience, he told Esquire magazine, have only made him bolder.

“Things I said about God when I was a little boy, just reciting them in church along with everybody else, I KNOW now. God IS real. God IS love. God IS the only way,” said Washington. “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. I’m free now.”

COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.