Bob Dylan Shares Spiritual Views in Rare Interview
Bob Dylan has been in integral part of American culture since he burst onto the scene in early 1960s. Now, at age 85, he is scheduled to perform at Starlight Theatre on July 4.
Many people remember his dramatic conversion to Christianity in the late 1970s. Although his spiritual journey since then has been somewhat murky, he recently opened up about his faith in a rare interview with the “Wall Street Journal.”
“I’m a religious person,” he said. “I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The five books of Moses, Pauline epistles, invocation of the saints, all of it.”
Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 in Hibbing, Minn., and raised Jewish. In the late 1970s, he had a public conversion to evangelical Christianity, releasing three explicitly gospel albums: “Slow Train Coming,” “Saved, and Shot of Love.” The Vineyard School of Discipleship was a significant influence during that period.
READ: Dylan on music and prayer
By the mid-1980s, he pushed back against the “born-again” label and for decades his religious convictions remained ambiguous in public. In 1997, he told a reporter that he finds religiosity in the music itself. “I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that,” he said. “I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon.”
His “Wall Street Journal” comments mark a notable shift in tone. He said his first musical love is “sacred music, church music, ensemble singing.” This helps explain his career arc, including the gospel records, Christmas album and his persistent interest in the language of hymns even in ostensibly secular material.
“Creativity is a mysterious thing,” he said. “It visits who it wants to visit, when it wants to. A great song mutates, makes quantum leaps, turns up again like the prodigal son. It crosses genres. It’s timeless and ageless. It touches you in secret places, strikes your innermost being, and sinks in.”
–Alan Goforth
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