08/29/2026
More theological thoughts inspired by Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton inherited a theology of hellfire and fear. Somehow, the faith she carried into the world looked a whole lot more like rhinestones and God-light. ✨💎
For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about the default settings of our theology—the beliefs about God and ourselves that get programmed into us so early we hardly realize they’re there.
And this week, I’ve been thinking about Dolly’s.
Dolly grew up in the church. Her grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher who, as she later sang, “preached hell so hot that you could feel the heat.” She remembered being so frightened by the hellfire-and-brimstone preaching that she went forward to be saved again and again. “I must’ve got saved 15 times,” she said, because fear has a way of making you wonder if you’re ever enough.
She also remembered church people criticizing almost everything about her growing up: “They thought that I was going to hell in a handbasket just for being young and dressing the way I did and being the way that I was.”
But fear and condemnation never felt like God to her. Years later, she said, “I think scared religion is no religion.”
Maybe that’s why one of Dolly’s most formative encounters with God happened on her own. Not in a packed sanctuary, but in an old abandoned church with a broken piano and graffiti covering the walls.
“I would go to that old church,” Dolly said, “and I felt the presence.”
What amazes me most about Dolly is that she trusted that divine presence. Of all the voices that had told her who God was—and what God thought of her—she learned to trust the one that sounded like Love.
And once she learned to recognize it, she looked for it everywhere else, too.
"I go right to that God-light," she said, "I don’t care if you’re Black or white or green or alien gray. I go to that, because we’re all pieces of God and we all have that little God-light inside us.”
Maybe that helps explain how Dolly became one of those increasingly rare people beloved across all the different lines that usually divide us. Perhaps it’s because she was so determined to find something worth loving on both sides of them.
Our world is a little less sparkly this week.
But we can honor Dolly's legacy by doing what she spent a lifetime doing: looking for the God-light in ourselves and in one another.
Especially where we’ve been taught not to look for it. Because we’re all pieces of God. ✨🦋
📸: RELEVANT Magazine
