09/04/2026
The Gospel of Dolly Parton
She ditched the Christianity she was taught and made up a new one. And the world loved it.
You have to admit, it’s an amazing story. A girl grows up dirt poor in Tennessee, taught an ultra-punishing Christianity, to find a faith of her own. She goes out to preach it to the planet via country music.
As the world has been mourning Dolly Parton’s death, I’ve been thinking about her unusual Christianity. She built it herself after deciding she was done with the God — and the body — she’d been taught to fear.
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Dolly Parton (X; enhanced)
There was something spiritual about her even as a young girl.
“My mama always predicted that someday I would lead a lot of people to the Lord,” she’d say. But the religion they offered her wasn’t one she particularly wanted to lead anybody into.
She was, she explained, “a kid with her own opinions.” And she was very, very interested in cosmetics. That became the visible boundary, if not the holy war she’d fight with her parents. They were determined to win — only to learn they wouldn’t.
“Daddy couldn’t whip it out of me, Mama couldn’t talk it out of me, and Grandpa couldn’t preach it out of me,” she recalled. “I was gonna look the way I looked, and I still do, because that’s how I felt.”
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The Gospel of Dolly Parton She ditched the Christianity she was taught and made up a new one. And the world loved it.
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