Dolly Parton’s Baptism Drew a Crowd of Teenage Boys
Dolly Parton was baptized when she was 12 years old. As a girl, she’d had a hard time wrapping her mind around religion and connecting with God. But when she finally did, she was ecstatic. She found God one day in an abandoned church teenagers used for sex. After that, she couldn’t wait to be baptized. The neighborhood boys couldn’t wait for her to be baptized, either.
Dolly Parton ‘was filled with a sense of awe and reverence’ for her baptism
The “Jolene” singer woke up early on the morning of her baptism to put on the white dress her mother had made for her. She was excited to get to the river and cement her new relationship with God. When she arrived, Parton “was filled with a sense of awe and reverence,” she wrote in her first memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.
“I knew the symbolism of being lowered into the water to signify the death of my old, sinful self, then raised up to be born into a new righteousness,” she wrote.
However, it seemed the symbolism was lost on the boys who’d gathered on the river bank to witness Parton’s baptism.
The ‘Coat of Many Colors’ singer had an audience of boys
The boys weren’t so much interested in the “Coat of Many Colors” singer’s “new righteousness” as they were her see-through dress.
“When I was twelve, those body parts that were destined to become my calling card in life and the reference point for many a joke by late-night talk-show hosts were already well in evidence,” she wrote. “My white cotton dress became somewhat transparent in the rushing water, and the boys on the bank were moved to shout ‘Hallelujah!’”
While some of the women of the church scolded the boys’ attention, Parton had a different attitude about it.
“This seemed inappropriate to some of the attending church biddies who had seen through this sudden groundswell of religion among the boys as surely as the boys had seen through my dress,” she wrote. “I thought it was altogether in keeping with what I had learned in the old chapel and my relationship with my friendly God. He wouldn’t have given them to me if he hadn’t wanted people to notice them.”
Parton begged her mom to be baptized ‘right away’
Once Parton found God in that old abandoned church, she was anxious to get baptized quickly.
“I couldn’t wait to tell Mama that I knew I was saved,” she wrote. “I begged her to let me be baptized right away.”
But some of the women in Parton’s church (probably the same women who scolded the boys for gathering at the “Down From Dover” singer’s baptism) were against the idea.
“They didn’t think a twelve-year-old girl who had found God somewhere other than at the front of the church service knew what she was about,” she wrote.
Parton’s mother knew her daughter was serious about her newfound faith, though. She made her daughter’s baptism happen and she orchestrated it quickly. Parton was baptized by Brother L.D. Smith in the Little Pigeon River.
