In his new Netflix documentary, “Aaron Rodgers: Enigma,” the controversial superstar NFL quarterback opens up about his estranged relationship with his family, including his brother, TV personality Jordan Rodgers. He says that the estrangement is mostly due to lifestyle disagreements, particularly around religion.
The New York Jets quarterback has been open in the media about his embrace of a broad range of spiritual practices and alternative medicines, including the use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca in ritual ceremonies in South America. Rodgers is shown participating in an ayahuasca ceremony in the documentary and talking at length about its mental and spiritual benefits.
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His lifestyle has put him at odds with his conservative Christian family, he says. The tension goes back to his childhood growing up in Chico, Calif., when he questioned what he was taught. “I grew up in a very, like, white, dogmatic church, and that just didn’t really serve me,” he said. “It was very rigid and structured and I’m not a rigid person.” He didn’t like what he felt was a judgmental, “our way or the highway” approach to spirituality.
“Even talking to my parents, it was very black-and-white,” he says. “Somebody has to be wrong, somebody has to be right.”
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Rodgers says that, in high school, he “slowly uncoupled” from the religion he was raised in and started growing apart from members of his family. Then when he went to the University of California, Berkeley for college, he was exposed to a lot of different ideas and types of people he had never been around before.
His spiritual journey started in earnest after the 2011 NFL season, when he won the MVP award after leading the Green Bay Packers to a 15-1 record, but he “desperately wanted to be more than just a football player,” he says. He got into the teachings of Rob Bell, a pastor with a non-traditional take on Christianity, which led to further exploration of many different strains of spirituality and self-help.
“And then I found a courage to speak my feelings better,” he explains. “And so I started to stand up to institutions of my youth, and that was everything from organized religion, my parents, dogma, ideology. That definitely changed the dynamics in my family, because I was just questioning all of it.”
Netflix
Rodgers’ spiritual journey coincided with his ascent to becoming a celebrity beyond football, which also changed his relationship with his family. As he became more outspoken about his beliefs, members of his family expressed discomfort, telling him “your life is too big, we need you to be smaller, don’t talk about your life,” he says. Meanwhile, the proximity to fame was “intoxicating” for some of the people around him.
One of those people, Rodgers implies, was his younger brother, Jordan, a quarterback who played at Vanderbilt in college but never played in an NFL game. In 2016, Jordan went on the reality dating show The Bachelorette, where he, parents Ed and Darla, and older brother Luke revealed their estrangement from Aaron to the world. At the time, the NFL star had not spoken to his family since 2014.
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Rodgers said he was publicly quiet about his strained relationship with his family, because he felt that was the best thing to do. “And what did they do? They go on a bullsh– show and leave two empty chairs” at the dinner table during the family’s appearance, Rodgers says, clearly still angry about it. “They all agreed this was like a good thing to do? To leave two empty chairs at a stupid dating show that my brother just went on to get famous? His words, not mine.” Rodgers does note, with a touch of pride, that his brother did “win” the show by getting engaged to the season’s lead, JoJo Fletcher. They married in 2022, and have hosted several reality shows together. Aaron Rodgers did not attend their wedding.
Rodgers says in the doc that he was not invited to the dinner with his family, not that he would have gone, as it was during football season and it’s just not something he would do.
His family continued to speak to the media about their estrangement, which bothered Rodgers, who declined to discuss the details publicly. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate talking about family stuff publicly,” he told the New York Times in 2017.
There was also the lifestyle issue. “When I started looking into other religions and plant medicine, I also found a lot of resistance,” he says. “Doing things that compared to what I grew up in would be considered an alternative lifestyle.”
In 2020, Rodgers criticized organized religion in an interview, which his family said “dismayed” them, deepening the rift. And even though Rodgers does not currently have a relationship with his parents, he thinks they’re doing their best, and he has “love, respect, and gratitude” for them for raising him to be the man he is today.
“People ask me, Iis there hope for a reconciliation,’ and I say ‘Yeah, of course,’” Rodgers says. “I don’t want them to fail, to struggle, to have any strife or issues, I don’t wish any ill will on them at all. We’re just on different steps of the timeline of our own journeys.”
Rodgers’ family does not participate in the documentary.
Aaron Rodgers: Enigma is now streaming on Netflix.
Related: Aaron Rodgers’ Controversies Explained Ahead of Revealing New Netflix Doc ‘Enigma’
