Proper 18C
September 6, 2026
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
“The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” The commandments “are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’”
This week when I read these words from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome the first thing that popped into my mind was Dolly Parton.
I was at most a casual Parton fan and admirer. And yet almost two weeks after her death I still find myself reading about her and watching the seemingly never-ending streams of videos of interviews and songs that still fill my social media feeds. And I know that I am not the only one.
What is it about her that has affected so many people who never met her? Why is the reaction to her death so different from the way other celebrity deaths have hit us in the past?
She was an enormously talented singer and songwriter, whose music crossed genres from country to gospel to rock and pop. She was in so many music halls of fame that it’s hard to name them all. She recorded songs with everyone from Kermit the Frog and Kenny Rogers to the biggest names in the entertainment world.
She recorded 50 albums, sold more than 100 million records, won 11 Grammys and 10 Country Music Association awards.
Dolly Parton’s life story was also compelling. She grew up in a two-room log cabin deep in Appalachia to parents who were so poor that her father paid the doctor who delivered her with a bag of corn meal.
Dolly’s talent and past were, of course, a huge part of who she was. But I don’t think they alone are why we have seen such an outpouring of grief and love following her death. I think there’s something more there.
And I think Paul nailed it in his letter to the Romans. Dolly Parton loved her neighbors.
She certainly loved the neighbors who lived in Sevier County, Tennessee. She opened a theme park and resort in Pigeon Forge, not at that time on anyone’s bucket list of places to visit.
But Dollywood, and the hotels and restaurant and tourist shops that grew up around it, transformed the economy of what had been one of Tennessee’s poorest counties.
She didn’t stop there. Any Dollywood employee who needed it was eligible to receive a full scholarship to a state university.
When she realized that the area’s high school dropout rate made college impossible for so many she visited the seventh and eighth grade classes at the local school. She told each student to find a buddy. She promised the kids that if they and their buddy graduated from high school she would personally give each of them $500.
The high school dropout rate fell from 35 percent to six percent.
There’s more, of course. The Imagination Library, started in honor of her illiterate father, that sends one book a month from a child’s birth to age 5. More than 330 million books have reached the hands of children and their parents.
The $10 million she gave to families who lost their homes in the wildfires that swept through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg in 2016.
The millions she gave to fund a hospital in the area she grew up in, an area that was so devoid of medical care that when as a child Dolly stepped on glass and sliced her foot open as a child her mother stitched the wound up herself with a needle and thread.
All this abundant generosity was an outgrowth of her deep faith. Dolly was the granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher, who grew up steeped in scripture and hymns.
She made no attempt to hide her faith or to speak of what motivated her generosity.
“I wake up at 3 a.m. every day to pray,” she told an interviewer. “I wake up and thank God for the night, and ask him to bless the day. And just to guide me and lead me.
“I’m always asking God over and over: How can you use me? What can I do today?”
And then she listened and heeded the answers.
Many of Parton’s songs are rooted in her faith.
One reviewer wrote that she “sang about hope, home, hardscrabble happiness, and the irresistible but absolutely exasperating nature of all men except Jesus.”
But singing about God’s love wasn’t enough for Dolly. She felt she had to share it
Writing in the New Yorker, Casey Cep called Parton “the outlaw Christian, who loved Jesus and refused to hate anyone else.”
She prayed to let God’s love pass through her, to let God’s spark shine in her life.
In an age where many self-professed Christians see empathy as a weakness, favor cruelty over compassion, and hate and ostracize those with whom they disagree, Dolly showed us a different way to be a Christian.
Many commentators on Parton’s life and death have said that one reason she appealed to so many people was that she refused to be political.
And if by political they mean that she refused to say that she was a Republican or a Democrat, then that’s true.
But she never shied away from speaking out on behalf of those who others might cast aside.
After the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, she was asked what she thought of the protests sweeping the country, and of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she said. “Of course Black lives matter. Do we think our lily-white asses are the only ones that matter? No.”
In those awful first months of the Covid pandemic she donated a million dollars to Vanderbilt for vaccine research. When the vaccine was available she got her shot on national television, a sign to all who feared the vaccine more than the disease.
She was a strong advocate for the LGBTQ community as early as the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
“They know that I completely love and accept them,” she said. “I’ve had to go against all kinds of people through the years just to be myself. I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are, and to love who they love.”
It delighted her that she was an icon to drag queens. She once secretly entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest in Hollywood, competing against drag performers. She lost, which greatly amused her.
“For all LGBTQ fans, Dolly was always more than a country music superstar,” one commentator wrote. “She was a safe space wrapped in sequins. A woman whose music, humor, kindness, and unapologetic larger-than-life personality made generations of people feel seen, welcomed, and celebrated.”
More recently Parton made known her support for the transgender community, speaking out against anti-trans legislation, including so-called bathroom bills.
“We’re all God’s children,” she said. “I love and accept people for who they are.”
Dolly Parton may not have espoused a political party, but her actions showed where she stood. She knew that there are times when loving your neighbor is in itself a political act, but that never stopped her from letting God’s love shine through her.
Of all the videos I’ve seen of Parton’s concerts and songs in the last couple of weeks there is one that particularly moved me. The song wasn’t written by her, but she breathed new life into it. You probably know it.
Think of your fellow man
Lend him a helping hand
Put a little love in your heart.
And the world will be a better place,
And the world will be a better place
For you and me
You just wait and see.
Parton explained why she particularly liked this song. “Love is a wonderful thing,” she said. “I believe if we had enough of it we could heal this old world and all the problems in it.
“What do you say we try?”
Amen.
.