Dolly Parton famously grew up singing in church, her first stage inside a Pentecostal church her grandfather pastored.
Homage to this place is incorporated into the fabric of Dollywood, Parton's family-friendly theme park in Pigeon Forge, with the Robert F. Thomas Chapel, which hosts worship services for guests.
As a business owner and a country music legend, Parton's own faith journey was the subject of written pieces and speculation. She gave hours of interviews on the topic, and yet, as anyone would tell you, someone's faith is personal. She was a public person, but private where she needed to be. Like on the subject of her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, she kept many memories to herself.
Parton died Aug. 25in Nashville at age 80.
Parton’s
faith wasn’t a plaything, a way of getting attention or a way to sell albums. It was real and personal. She prayed. She read daily devotions. She tithed. She tried to live a life worthy of the platform she was given.
“I pray every day that God will lead me, guide me and direct me and he’ll bring all the right things and all the right people into my life, take all the wrong things out,” she told the “Jesus Calling” podcast in 2018.
That faith became her backbone of service, whether starting her Imagination Library, bringing thousands of jobs to Sevier County with Dollywood, Dolly Parton's Stampede and other businesses in her entertainment portfolio, or helping to raise millions for wildfire and flood victims across the region.
Those in a position to help should serve others, and her service, she would say, was the same as anyone’s, just on a larger scale.
“And I ask him to let me every day to do something to uplift mankind and to glorify Him,” she said on the podcast.
There's little doubt she was always spiritual, but over the years as she spoke about her faith, the words only gave clues to her inner thoughts. Sometimes the words were broader, less like those from a sermon.
She spoke frequently about prayer, being a light and uplifting people. She spoke about faith being a “major word, and a major force,” as she told Knox News.
In her 2020 book “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics,” Parton said, “I’m not that religious, but I’m very, very spiritual. I grew up in very religious surroundings. I grew up with a Bible background, and I’m glad I did."
In a 2024 conversation with New Humanist, she went further.
“I’m very creative – what keeps me going is both spiritual and creative energy. I’m not a religious fanatic. I wouldn’t even say I’m religious, though I grew up with that background. But I have a lot of faith in myself and I’ve been so blessed to have been around great people my whole life, my Uncle Bill and my family being supportive, and all the people I met along the way.”
Parton’s faith journey was private. But unlike everyone else, Parton didn’t have the luxury of privacy. Her every word and action were dissected.
If you take her word for it when she said you could learn anything you need to know about her through her music, then she left little doubt about where her faith stood.
A notable recording came in 2019 when she joined Christian artist Zach Williams on “There was Jesus,” a song full of hope and the testimony that in every corner and crevice in life, both the good times and the times she might hide from the public, she was able to put her faith in Jesus:
In the waiting, in the searching, In the healing and the hurting, Like a blessing buried in the broken pieces. Every minute, every moment, Where I've been and where I'm going, Even when I didn't know it or couldn't see it, There was Jesus
Parton’s life was a mirror, she hoped, for the God she believed in.
“I say some people try to make me out to be (an angel) – believe me, I'm not," she said in an interview with Knox News in 2023. "And I always say I'm no angel, I just play one on TV. But I'm just a person that I care about people. I care about everybody. I try to find that God light in everybody, which I think we all have our own little light.”
Knox News reporter Devarrick Turner contributed to this report.
Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Email: tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com; X: @tyler_whetstone.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Dolly Parton lived a life of faith and finding the goodness in others
