As I was lecturing earlier this week to a classroom of mostly native Tennesseans, a couple of students suddenly burst aloud: “Dolly Parton is dead!” I was explaining the concept of the “common good” and identifying possible common goods that people share across left and right (in a class pretty evenly split between left and right). My no-electronic-device-policy was apparently no match for the burst of 911 texts and alerts the students were receiving. The class was obviously stunned and, despite priding myself on being able to seamlessly integrate just about any comment or question into a lecture, I found myself at a loss for how to return to the topic at hand. Then one student chimed in: “We can all agree that Dolly Parton was a common good!”
Indeed, judging by the accolades from across the political spectrum, it seems Dolly was one of the few remaining persons in American life who was widely beloved and respected across political and cultural divides. Dolly was something of a goddess in Tennessee. Yet, I confess, it took me a while to grasp the reasons for her cult of personality.
My earliest memory of Dolly Parton is not like that of generations older than Millennials. I wasn’t alive during her early years performing in Knoxville and Nashville. Nor during her national rise to stardom in the ’70s with hits like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” (Indeed, as a ’90s kid, my earliest memory of the latter song was the rendition by Whitney Houston.) And unlike middle-aged and younger Southerners, I didn’t grow up going to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. As a Midwesterner, my earliest recollection of the Dolly phenomenon is probably a family trip I took as a kid to the spinoff Dixie Stampede in Branson, Missouri. While the show has evolved over the years (it has since been rebranded Dolly Parton’s Stampede), its essence remains: a patriotic, family-friendly dinner variety show of singing, dancing, horseback riding, rings of fire, and the age-old conflict of North versus South. I still remember drinking from my little slice of Americana: a novelty Dixie Stampede cowboy boot cup.
Happiness in this world consists not in mammon but the bonds of familial love in a Christian home.
But it wasn’t until I moved to Tennessee that I learned more about Dolly’s life. As charmingly recounted in A Coat of Many Colors, a television movie with just the right amount of schmaltz, she grew up poor in the Smoky Mountains in a one-room cabin, one of twelve children, who slept several to a bed, with a loving mother and father whose Christian faith was central to their lives and upbringing. It was her mother’s deep Christian faith, Dolly recounts, that was the beating heart of their home. In one scene, the clan of Parton children descend upon their parents’ bed in their PJs, and Mama Parton breaks into song: “We got no money. but we’re rich in love . . .” The idea of the movie—encapsulated in the original song of the same name—is that happiness in this world consists not in mammon but the bonds of familial love in a Christian home.
Something of a biopic of her early childhood that Dolly herself produced and narrated, A Coat of Many Colors (which originally aired on NBC) stands out as an extraordinarily unlikely pro-marriage, pro-life, and pro-natal network telecast. It positively portrays rural, big family life in 1950s Tennessee, advocates a Christian vision of faith and forgiveness, and holds out hope for eternal life for children who die before childbirth, including her little brother, Larry.
From her humble beginnings, Dolly rose to become a successful artist, businesswoman, and capitalist, with an estimated worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Unlike many artists, she retained the publishing rights to her songs and reaped the attendant royalties. And her theme parks have only grown in popularity and success, with Dollywood recently surpassing Disney World as Americans’ favorite theme park. America’s favorite theme park includes the Robert F. Thomas chapel, where you can hear gospel music any day of the week and catch a nondenominational service on Sundays.
Dolly showed that it is possible to remain rich in love despite being wealthy. She was a philanthropist, noted for her passion for causes like education, in light of her father’s illiteracy. She believed, in tune with the traditional Christian teaching of the ordo amoris, that charity begins at home, leading efforts to fundraise and help people rebuild their lives after the catastrophic Smoky Mountains wildfires of 2016. And her idea to provide books for children in Sevier County, Tennessee, to combat illiteracy grew into the Imagination Library, which gives a free book every month to children from birth to age five not only in Tennessee but several partner states and counties across the US, and even internationally in Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia.
Despite her wealth and the apparent ability to hire a chef or eat out for all meals, Dolly embraced one the most mundane and yet profound acts of love that animates a Christian home and animated her as a devoted wife, sister, aunt, and friend: cooking. “God, family, music, and food are the staples of my life,” she wrote. She joyfully embraced making mouth-watering Southern breakfasts for her husband Carl, to whom she was married for fifty-nine years.
Indeed, the theme of hunger for food and the friendship that accompanies a blessed meal as the occasion of seeking and finding spiritual nourishment underlies the biblical story of Joseph that Dolly’s movie and song allude to. And, like the bully who Dolly invites to dinner and church, it is hunger that initially motivates the prodigal son’s return to the father, perhaps the most profound parable encapsulating the Gospel message.
The sequel to A Coat of Many Colors portrays another true story from Dolly’s childhood. When Dolly’s family was snowed in by a blizzard and trapped inside their Tennessee mountain home without food, water, or firewood, they prayed for God to save them. Dolly narrates her belief that God answered that prayer by sending a guardian angel. Clearly the Lord had other plans for her. She went to her eternal reward on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.