Jim Parsons Opened Up About Religion During His Stint as God
The ‘Big Bang Theory’ alum got to play a version of himself inhabited by God on Broadway — and said the experience was “pretty freeing.”
Published May 14 2024, 1:32 p.m. ET
Houston-born actor Jim Parsons certainly has a pious-sounding name — parsons, after all, are members of the clergy — but what do we know about the actor’s own religious views?
The Big Bang Theory alum opened up about his religious upbringing in various interviews in the spring of 2015. Why? Because his body was taken over by God — in a Broadway play, at least.
Jim Parsons discussed his religious background in 2015.
In the 2015 Broadway show An Act of God, written by The Last Testament: A Memoir By God author David Javerbaum, Jim played a version of himself inhabited by God. “Celebrities are my chosen people,” God-as-Jim-Parsons said in the show. “Celebrities are like me. They’re adored, worshipped, tantrum-prone. We live in our own universe, and our public appearances are limited and for promotional purposes only. I get celebrities — I mean not when they die, but before.”
And that divine role had Jim considering his own spirituality, as the actor told the Daily News at the time. He told the newspaper that he grew up going to church “almost every Sunday.”
Lutheranism is “not the strictest” of churches, Jim said.
In that Daily News interview, Jim revealed that he was raised Lutheran. “I don’t go to church anymore. I guess I feel somewhat ill-defined in laying out my beliefs. I feel that there are many forces at work in the world.”
And in a sit-down with Playbill, Jim said that Lutheranism is “not the strictest” of churches. “I mean, they have moral values,” he allowed. “It's just not fire and brimstone.”
Because he went to church so often as a youth, the four-time Emmy winner was “pretty familiar with everything” he had to say in An Act of God.
Well, not quite everything. “I did have to bone up on the difference between the words ‘omnipotent,’ ‘omnipresent,’ and ‘omniscient,’” Jim told Playbill. “I say them a lot in the show and I have to make sure I keep them straight.”
Playing God on stage was “freeing,” Jim said.
Jim hyped up his work in An Act of God in an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon at the time.
“The premise is that God has some things he’d like to say to people, and he thinks a good way to do that is Broadway — he’s got a showman type personality,” Jim said on the talk show (per Playbill). “But if he was just God, you wouldn’t be able to hear him or see him. He has to pluck a human body to interpret him.”
Acting like God’s vessel was a “freeing premise” for Jim, he told the Tonight Show audience. “I get to say all this stuff about religion and God, but it’s not me!” he told Jimmy with a laugh. “It’s just my body.”
And Jim won rave reviews for his performance. “Mr. Parsons’s light Texas drawl makes the Lord seem approachable as opposed to unfathomable, just a nice fellow sitting on the porch … sharing homespun if definitely holier-than-thou wisdom about, well, just about everything to do with his ways and his world,” The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood wrote. (#Blessed!)
