Chicago Church Preaches ‘The Gospel According to Dolly Parton’

Each Sunday’s sermon at Church of the Three Crosses has focused on a different song by Parton, all but one performed by a member of the congregation.

Cox drew inspiration from a sermon series called “The Gospel According to Dolly Parton” at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, from the WNYC podcast “Dolly Parton’s America” and from current events.

A planned sermon on Parton’s song “Coat of Many Colors” — a natural choice, since the lyrics draw upon the biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors — was scrapped the weekend after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.

Instead, Cox preached on “19^th Amendment,” Parton’s contribution to a WNYC project collecting songs inspired by each of the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. She wove together the song about women fighting for the right to vote with the biblical story of a Canaanite women arguing with Jesus to heal her daughter.

Other sermons expounded on “9 to 5,” “Jolene” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home.”

At Sunday’s service — held in the church’s grassy side yard on a warm, if windy almost-summer day — life was as peaceful as a baby’s sigh, as the song goes.

Cox played a recording a church member had made of an upbeat rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” Parton’s 1974 song made most famous by Whitney Houston in the 1990s, and used it as a jumping off point to talk about Jesus’ command in the Gospels to forgive “not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

“I Will Always Love You” is not a love song, but a goodbye song, the pastor explained. Parton had written the song partly as a farewell to her music partner Porter Wagoner when she struck out to pursue a solo career, she said.

“It’s a song about goodbyes, about endings, about forgiveness on both their parts in order for them to be able to move into a new beginning,” she said.

It was a fitting song to end the series as Cox prepares to say her own goodbyes to the congregation, leaving on a proverbial high note as she takes a new appointment.

“Why not Dolly Parton?” longtime Church of the Three Crosses member Dana McKinney said over coffee and cookies after the service .

McKinney isn’t sure she believes “all of the dogmas.” But, she said, “Coming to worship is about changing perspectives, being able to look at something in a way that’s going to help me go out into the world and just be a better person.”

She’ll never hear “I Will Always Love You” again without thinking of forgiveness, she said.

This article originally appeared here.