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MDiv Junior Brit Whittle is a New York-based thespian with over 20 years experience. The Georgia native found his love of acting in church plays. Nourished by his mothers love of music, he found a way to thrive in acting and ministry.
Brit playing coach Wallace on the Starz show Ghost: PowerBook II
Brit Whittle possessed a lifelong passion for acting but now feels an equally fervent call to ministry.
For more than 20 years, this New York-based thespian has carved out a successful career in a very fickle industry—on stage, film, and television. However, through it all, he has felt an irresistible pull toward God and faith: one that intersected with his love of acting and began at a very young age for the Georgia native in church theatre productions.
Today, Brit is studying full-time ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary and feels he is finally where he belongs.
“My first experiences in the arts were at churches,” he recalled. “Vacation Bible School and acting out scenes from the Bible lit me up and inspired me, as well as singing in church.” Brit’s family moved around quite a bit during his childhood, and only in church did he feel truly rooted.
Brit’s mother gravitated to the churches with the best music programs, he noted, adding that in middle school and high school, music ministers began mounting productions based on bible stories. From there, he was hooked.
“That’s how I got my first experience being on stage and it was thrilling. At the same time, I started actually listening to the sermons in church. I had favorite preachers that I liked hearing more than others, and around age 16, I wondered if I could be a preacher but was discouraged.”
In college, Brit received an offer to become a youth minister. “I remember thinking, ‘No, I want another life.’ A week later, I was cast in the chorus of Guys and Dolls in the school theater department. The lead, who was a professional actor, dropped out for a better gig, and I was thrown into the lead role. The rest is history.”
“It’s hard to describe the feeling of acting,” Brit explained. “It’s living truthfully under imaginary circumstances in order to tell a story. The back and forth with actors and audience can feel like a spiritual connection when the show is going well. It reminded me of singing in church and the connections we all feel when singing together on Sunday mornings.”
Brit received his Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Georgia College & State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training.
The phrase “struggling actor” resonates deeply with Brit, as he knows the frustration associated with his craft and the commitment necessary to sustain oneself in the midst of persistent disappointment.
“Making your way in the entertainment industry when you don’t have connections can get discouraging over the long haul,” he stressed. However, in those moments, he said God always placed someone in his path to encourage and motivate him.
Possessing an impressive resume that includes appearances on such popular shows as Law and Order: SVU, The Americans, Person of Interest, and Bull, Brit’s first love is the stage. “You get to tell an entire story in front of a live audience, and the feedback is immediate.
“I also love the craft of studying a script with an ensemble, putting it on its feet, and then realizing it enough to put it before an audience. When it’s done, you feel sad, but it’s also cathartic to bring the show to a close and move on to the next thing.”
Faith remained integral to Brit’s life, and he identifies it as the greatest gift he ever received from his parents and grandparents. His mother’s relationship with God was particularly meaningful. “She related to God like you would a family member. So, when she prayed or talked about God or Jesus, there was an intimacy to it—an intimacy that never left me.”
God was always a real presence in his life—and it was a relationship that, outside the confines of family, he always felt discouraged to express. This created a distance between him and God. “It made me deeply lonely. I was in my room one day and started praying. All these emotions welled up in me. All I could say to God was, ‘I miss you. I miss you being in my life.’”
Ironically, as Brit began succeeding as an actor, he felt an even stronger pull toward faith and God. He understood that living in New York City and working in this profession would require grounding and sought out churches he could call home. Over time, the pull toward full-time ministry became intense.
Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he experienced a jarring moment that made him question his life’s purpose.
“My wife Nissa and I were living in Astoria, NY. We had an 18-month-old at the time and were six blocks from one of the worst-hit hospitals. In that first month, we didn’t know what this virus was, how it spread, and if we had it. Every afternoon around 4:30 or 5:00p.m., our whole neighborhood would open up their windows and applaud the health care workers. We joined in every time with our little girl. It was a balm in the middle of a crazy time. It had a profound effect on us and got me thinking again, ‘Is being an actor the best use of my talents?’”
Brit and his family moved to New Jersey and found a home in their local parish that welcomed them with open arms. “Most importantly, we felt spiritually fed. I had not had that kind of formation in many years.” There, Brit’s parish formed a committee to help discern his true vocation. “I spent 10 months doing that, and by the end of that process, I was sure I wanted to move towards ministry full-time.”
Energized by this realization, Brit began investigating seminaries, and while he had a tangential knowledge of Princeton, it wasn’t until he and his family spent a week here that he knew this was where he wanted to study.
We fell in love with the town of Princeton,” he recalled. I visited the campus twice with my family and felt so embraced by the faculty and the students that it was pretty hard to say no.
Brit was raised in the Episcopal Church so his first thought was attending Princeton might not be appropriate. “God opens doors that don’t make sense at first but feel right. That was Princeton Theological Seminary for our family.
“The amazing part is we moved into campus housing almost one year to the date we first visited Princeton the previous summer. My wife and I call those ‘God winks.’”
Brit is a member of the inaugural cohort of the President’s Fellows Program. “Being a President’s Fellow has been a gift for me. To interact with the President’s office, the Board of Trustees, alumni, and donors who have made an investment in this incredible institution has taught me so much.”
He added, The incredible diversity of leadership at Princeton has such a vested interest in our experience here as students. They want to know our unique story, our journey of faith, and what we feel called to do both while we are studying at Princeton Theological Seminary and afterward.
“The faculty, facilities, my fellow students, are all a gift. This new community is bringing out the best in me and challenging me in profound ways. I don’t think you can help but grow within the wonderful, diverse, and spiritual culture that has been fostered. It’s a privilege to call myself a student here.”
While Brit is committed to working in ministry full-time, he does miss acting and wonders aloud if there might be a way to combine the two down the road. “Some of my professors have prodded me on this same question. It makes me wonder if God is behind all this prodding and missing the acting world. Maybe there is a future where both coincide and work together. That would be a dream, but my first commitment is to God in this process and to be available to do whatever work God calls me to do.”
When Brit reflects on his lifelong journey of faith, he thinks of the Hebrew word Hesed, which literally translates to a steadfast love and loyalty that inspires compassionate and merciful behavior. “It is the steadfast love of God and doing for me what I didn’t always know how to do for myself.”
He stressed, “I see my 29-year acting career as spiritual formation now. Being in Seminary at this point in my life feels so natural as if God is saying, ‘I created you to be this, and all that led up to this moment.’
