Wired Word Lesson of the Week

The Wired Word

Topic for Sunday, September 13, 2026:

Queen of Country Leaves the World a Better Place: In light of the death of country music legend Dolly Parton, we will discuss the theme of the power of good character and good deeds.

In the News

Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the September 13th bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:

Country singer songwriter icon Dolly Parton died on August 25 following a brief battle with cancer. She was 80. Her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, died in March of 2025.

"Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus," her nephew, Bryan Seaver, said in a statement from the family. "Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet. ... Dolly's unconditional love for all people was the guiding force for her lasting impact."

Many have noted the near universal appeal of the best-selling female country music artist of all time, beloved by religious and nonreligious people of all ages, races and political ideologies. She's been called everything from a "Jezebel" to a prophet or a "secular country-pop saint" and the "Jesus of Appalachia." In 2011, photographer Alice Hawkins created a project titled, "Dolly Parton is my religion." Some preachers have made her the subject of sermons, under the heading, "The Gospel According to Dolly."

But in 2020, Dolly wrote, "I'm not that religious, but I'm very, very spiritual." And in 2021 she said, "I don't want to be worshiped, because there's a scripture in my Bible that talks about idol worship."

When someone asked her how she practiced her faith, Dolly said, "I don't practice it. I live it." And she lived it in her own way, supporting LGBTQ+ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement as an outgrowth of her understanding of what God desires from us. She also believed a person did not have to ascribe to Christian theology "to be a decent and worthwhile human being."

"We are all God's children," she told Larry King in 2016. "I just love and accept people where they are for who they are," she said in an Associated Press interview. "I try to love everybody."

Born in 1946, the fourth of 12th children, Dolly grew up in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. She was raised in a Pentecostal church where her grandfather "preached hell so hot that you could feel the heat." She was so frightened that she went to the altar repeatedly to avoid that fate. "I must've got saved 15 times," she said. 

At around 12 years of age, Dolly started visiting an abandoned church where people went to drink and have sex. She would read the Bible verses and look at off-color graffiti on the walls and somehow feel "the presence" and peace of God. Later she said that she found God and herself there.

The next year, she debuted at the Grand Ole Opry. In her seven-decade career, Dolly wrote more than 1,000 songs, sold more than 100 million records, produced 49 top-10 country albums, won 11 Grammys, with 55 nominations, starred in the hit movies, 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias, and created a business empire worth approximately $650 million. Her hits included "I Will Always Love You," "9 to 5," "Family," "Islands in the Stream," "Jolene" and "God Only Knows." A recipient of the Recording Academy's lifetime achievement award, Dolly was inducted into three halls of fame (the Country Music HOF, the Gospel Music Association's Gospel HOF and the Rock & Roll HOF).

Russell Moore wrote that Dolly exhibited a kind of self-respect that Joan Didion described as "a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; ... character ... the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life."

A prodigious philanthropist, Dolly contributed to causes near and dear to her heart: childhood literacy through her Imagination Library, which has gifted more than 300 million books to children around the world; educational grants and scholarships for Dollywood employees and local students enrolled in the Dollywood Foundation's Buddy Program that incentivized at-risk children to finish high school; health care, which helped develop Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine and supported pediatric and women's medical units; hunger relief; emergency and long-term natural disaster relief for victims of wildfires, flooding and Hurricane Helene; and the opening of Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to provide employment, skills training and affordable entertainment for more than three million local residents and visitors every year.

When asked what she thought people saw in her, Dolly responded, "I really like to think it's God spark." 

More on this story can be found at these links:

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