Commentary: Could Dolly Parton help lead our nation to a 21st-century Great Awakening?

In the 18th and 19th centuries, two spiritual “great awakenings” shook up much of our young nation. Ministers stopped reading their sermons — and started preaching directly to the masses via what we now call revivals.

Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz notes that in the aftermath of our revolution, as few as 1 in 10 Americans were active church members, yet by the 1840s as many as 8 in 10 were “churched.” Wilentz credits the awakenings with playing a big part in this transformation.

The impact of churches has waned; social media are today’s “influencers” of choice. For a nation that seems to be sleepwalking through its own decline, we could use a new-fangled “Great Awakening.”

The U.S. has the highest percentage of single-parent households in the world, at nearly one-quarter, with much higher rates in our low-income urban and rural areas than elsewhere. I know some wonderful single parents, yet the statistics are overwhelming — households overall do much better when there are two adults in the home, with marriage being a strong predictor of household success.

American 15-year-olds achieve below the average on math tests among developed nations and way below their counterparts in most Asian nations. When I taught in Shanghai in the early 2000s, youngsters in that city went to school Saturdays until noon and had one more hour of instructional time each weekday than in the U.S. I wonder how parents here would react if their kids had to attend school on Saturday? With 1.4 billion people, China has more honor students than we have students.

At the graduate research level, American science is in “dangerous decline,” according to Saima Iqbal, writing in Scientific American, while Chinese research surges. In the 2000s, China had about 10 million college students, while we had twice that number. Today, China has 40 million in college, as U.S. numbers have declined. Global conflicts will be fought largely by technology, which China’s leaders have made it clear they plan to dominate.

Need I mention our lack of fiscal discipline? Overall, American governmental debt is now 99% of our annual gross domestic product. Politicians revel in doing things for voters (spend money) and resist doing things to them (tax to pay for spending). Debt will grow to unsustainable levels if laws and policies are unchanged.

America could use the equivalent of “a good little war” (there aren’t any) to test our resolve and resilience. Instead, we are in a not-so-polite conflict right now with China, though apparently not alarming enough to arouse the American public. Scarred by the searing humiliation of China’s Dowager Empress and occupation of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven by Western powers in 1900, proud leader Xi Jinping wants to settle scores, and reestablish his nation once again as “the central kingdom” of the world. China uses state planning — a powerful short-term tool — to plot its return, beginning with economic dominance of the world.

Democracies are seldom good at planning for eventualities, yet American culture (learned behavior) can and does change, sometimes for the better: Witness tobacco use and driving under the influence, which have declined dramatically since I grew up in the 1960s. There is also an exciting new movement called the Blue Zones Project, which has seen success by enlisting whole communities to encourage their residents to practice better, life-extending health habits.

We need a 21st-century Great Awakening to shake us out of our torpor and help us build stronger family units, reforge self-esteem, lose weight, pay our bills, demand longer school days and years, and invest more in basic research. America needs to get its act together, or China will walk right over us.

A friend arched his right eyebrow in silent derision as I told him the leaders to awaken us are Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Dolly Parton and Elon Musk. I’m serious. It won’t come from elected officials, who follow rather than lead. These four are followed regularly on social media by hundreds of millions. If these good citizens really want to fundamentally change America, Swift, Winfrey, Parton and Musk — disparate, smart, big-thinking folks all — could join forces and enroll others to awaken us to be better than we are — an American renewal.

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Jim Nowlan has been a participant-observer of American politics for more than six decades. A onetime Illinois state legislator, senior adviser to three of that state’s governors and a campaign manager for U.S. Senate and presidential candidates, he is author or co-author of many books, including ” Politics — The Starter Kit: How to Succeed in Government and Politics.”

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