Andrew Garfield Says Faith Belongs in the Fight for Justice, and His New Film Asks Why We're Still Searching

Andrew Garfield has spent years playing men who can’t stop asking hard questions. In Silence, a priest watches his faith get tested to the breaking point. In Hacksaw Ridge, a soldier refuses to carry a weapon but still walks into war. In Under the Banner of Heaven, a detective untangles belief gone wrong. His latest film, The Uprising, puts him in 14th-century England as a farmer who has buried his family and joins the Peasants’Revolt. Directed by Paul Greengrass, the movie brings in the radical preaching of John Ball and the old Robin Hood archetype, the outlaw who stands up when the powerful won’t listen.

In a conversation with RELEVANT magazine, Garfield said plainly that spirituality’s rightful place is within social justice. That’s not a throwaway line for him. His mother, Lynn, died of pancreatic cancer in 2019, and he has said that loss deepened his search for meaning. Speaking about the film, he put words to something a lot of us feel but rarely say out loud. There’s something, I’m not alone in this longing for change. That longing runs through small towns and big cities alike, through church pews and kitchen tables, through anybody who has ever looked around and thought, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

The Uprising opens in theaters soon, and it arrives at a moment when plenty of folks are feeling unsettled and unsure who to trust. A story about ordinary people demanding dignity six hundred years ago turns out to be a mirror. Garfield isn’t preaching at anybody. He’s just admitting he’s still searching, and inviting the rest of us to admit it too.

So here’s our question for you: where do you think faith fits when it comes to standing up for what’s right? Tell us in the comments.