In a dimly lit hotel room in Tucson, a man dressed in a structured Oxford shirt, leather jacket, and flared bell bottoms sits on the edge of his bed. Outside, the November air carries the crisp bite of a desert night. In the corner, a guitar leans against the wall, carefully set down after a night of relentless use. He has just poured himself into a grueling set—hours of playing and singing that have left his body aching and his mind drained. But beneath the physical fatigue lies a deeper weariness, a spiritual exhaustion heavier than any chord or lyric could convey.
Only a year has passed since his marriage unraveled. The black clothing, once a signature of his image, now feels like a reflection of his soul—searching, raw, and hollow. This man, Bob Dylan, sits at a crossroads. And it is here, in the stillness of this room, that he encounters Jesus Christ in a moment of profound intensity that changes his life forever.
While the exact details of this encounter and its aftermath remain shrouded in debate, the legacy it left behind is undeniable. From this radical transformation came three full-length albums—Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981)—each a testament to the spiritual journey begun in that quiet, sacred moment.
I say “begun”, but it would in fact be reductionistic to state that Dylan “found religion” in 1978. Instead, we could say that Dylan’s prowess as a storyteller pointed him down a path that led to the greatest story ever told: the Gospel. This essay is not concerned with the state of Dylan’s belief, or lack thereof, but more with his development and the lead up to his experience along with the music he produced during this important time in his life. This both serves as a way to understand Dylan—as an expert storyteller—but also to shed light on the beauty of storytelling as an apologetic.
But why storytelling as the key? The German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, in his recent book The Crisis of Narration states that “narration is a concluding form… [that] creates a closed order that founds meaning and identity.”[1] Han’s point is that everyone is talking about narratives, and, even more so, everyone is searching for a narrative to serve as an anchor to reality. This is why religion, or more specifically the Christian faith, is of such importance in our present time. He states that “religion is a typical narrative with an inner moment of truth. It narrates contingency away. Christian religion is a meta-narrative that reaches into every nook and cranny of life and anchors it in being.”[2]
Bob Dylan’s music was narrative par excellence. He told stories that offered, as Han notes (unrelated to Dylan), “meaning and identity.”[3] Music today has become the quick exchange of information. Songs talk about the feeling of purchasing a new vehicle, or the feeling one experiences when they fall in love or share a first kiss. Dylan was interested in far more than this. Han notes that narration carries sense. And as such it “presupposes close listening and deep attention.”[4] Dylan narrated stories that anchored both life and being. It only makes sense that he was drawn to the ultimate story that not only anchors these things but offers them meaning.
Bob Dylan as Master Storyteller
On October 13, 2016, it was announced that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”[5] To the attentive listener, this makes sense. His music is full of literary prowess. Take his 1965 anti-war ballad “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” as an example. Listen to the poetic prose dipped in imagery and haunting conviction:
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Can make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
But to many, Dylan did not deserve the prestigious award. In a New York Times opinion piece, Anna North began by boldly stating “Bob Dylan does not deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature.”[6] Her further comments are ironic, if not downright antithetical to her main point: “Yes, Mr. Dylan is a brilliant lyricist. Yes, he has written a book of prose poetry and an autobiography…But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music.” Stephen Metcalf wrote in Slate that “Dylan is a genius of almost unparalleled influence, but he shouldn’t have gotten the Nobel.”[7] Metcalf states that “the distinctive thing about literature is that it involves reading silently to oneself. Silence and solitude are inextricably a part of reading, and reading is the exclusive vehicle for literature.” Richard F. Thomas, a professor at Harvard University has offered quite a rebuttal to these statements in his Why Bob Dylan Matters. Thomas writes that “from the beginning of his musical career, Bob Dylan has been working with artistic principles, and attitudes toward composition, revision, and performance, that bear many similarities to those of the ancients.”[8]
Without going into the many details here, we must be cognizant that the definition of literature offered by the likes of Anna North and Stephen Metcalf is peculiarly modern. Certainly, a distinctive feature of literature is that it is written down, but this is simply not the same thing as being either enjoyed in solitude or necessarily separable from music or performance. For one thing, this would rule out Shakespeare. Or consider Homer, who has endured as a great literary figure because the Iliad and Odyssey made the leap from oral storytelling to the written word, but the most common way people would have encountered these great works prior to Gutenberg’s printing press and the advent of mass literacy (both very recent phenomena) would have been through being read aloud in a group.
While Dylan’s literary qualities can be debated, one thing can be agreed upon: he excels at storytelling. Dylan was of course following a long line of storytellers the likes of Woody Guthrie (of whom he wrote “Song to Woody” as a tribute), Lead Belly (you are perhaps familiar with his “House of the Rising Sun” as made famous by The Animals), and Blind Willie McTell (his “Dark Was the Night” not only influenced Bob Dylan, but also shaped “The Lord Is In This Place” by Fairport Convention). Dylan’s storytelling abilities can be traced to African American spirituals which sought to tell stories of deliverance and retribution through song. He channels this ability most clearly through “Gospel Plow” (1962), in which he writes “Mary wore three links of chain, every link was Jesus’s name, keep your hand on that plow, hold on.”
One of the best examples of Dylan’s prowess as a storyteller is his Witmark Demo song “The Death of Emmett Till” (also known as “The Ballad of Emmett Till”) which, over the course of seven stanzas, manages to tell the horrific story of one of America’s most infamous lynchings. Having told the account, Dylan shifts in stanza six to a clear call to his listener: “If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust, your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust.” Dylan’s storytelling was not idle; it was a call to action, to change.
“The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” is perhaps a less cut and dry example. An extensive eleven verses, it is by far the longest track on John Welsey Harding. The song is the story of two friends, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. Frankie Lee takes a loan from Judas Priest and uses the money in a brothel for sixteen days. He ends up dying of thirst in Priest’s arms. While some have viewed this song as referring to Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman,[9] it is hard to escape the Christian themes: the betrayal of Christ by Judas, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, the devil disguised as an angel. The song closes with the following lesson:
...one should never be
Where one does not belong.
So when you see your neighbor carryin’ somethin’
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
Bob Dylan as Social Critic
Bob Dylan is a master storyteller, but he was also keenly aware of social political events perspiring around him.
In 1964 enough happened to fill a century, let alone a year. The Beatles took America by storm. The Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Cassius Clay, an 8:1 underdog, defeated Sonny Liston in one of the most controversial fights in boxing history. Cyprus was ripped apart by a civil war between Turks and Greeks, Lyndon Johnson escalated US involvement in Vietnam. The world was on fire.
By the end of 1964, President Johnson had authorized an increase in “ground advisors” (a term used to get around a declaration of war) to upwards of 23,310 alongside a South Vietnamese force of half a million. Americans were, in the words of Barry McGuire in the following year, on the “eve of destruction.”
It is during this contentious time that Dylan released his third album, The Times They Are A-Changin’. He was just twenty-two years old. Each track captured the American spirit in a unique way. “One Too Many Mornings” for instance, begins with soft fingerpicking in the key of C. An uplifting tune, yet a somber and solemn track. One can envision a young American soldier in Saigon listening in on his radio, pondering what is to come.
The title track is now canonical. Though Dylan described this song as “what the people want to hear” it was far more than this.[10] It was the song that imbibed the protests of millions who were concerned about America being ripped apart along racial lines at home and brought even further into a war abroad in a far-off place with cities they can’t even pronounce, let alone point to on a map.
As protests heated up, coffins draped in American flags came back home, and young, poor Americans—both white and black—continued to find themselves in the heart of humid jungles fighting an invisible enemy. They needed an anthem. A song to get them through this turmoil. Dylan sings “you better start swimmin’, or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times, they are a-changin’.” The only way out, says Dylan, is through. He sings to writers and critics, senators and congressmen, and mothers and fathers. In the final verse Dylan warns those perpetuating war and conflict that “the slow one now will later be fast/As the present now will later be past… and the first one now will later be last.” The biblical allusion warns that younger generations will soon be older generations and they will do differently the things that their parents did. Thus Dylan’s song became an anthem for a young generation trapped under the burden of war, racial conflict, and political upheaval
Dylan’s Encounter with the Greatest Story
A Spiritual Longing in Dylan’s Early Career
Bob Dylan’s conversion did not happen in an instant, and it is not hard to see in his early discography how he was primed to be receptive to Christianity. “Blowin’ in the Wind” from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), Dylan offers a famous spiritual meditation on justice, freedom, and human suffering. The song has clear parallels to Habakkuk 1:2–4, a prophetic oracle. Written in perhaps the late seventh century, the Book of Habakkuk offers a detailed struggle with God’s justice in the face of His peoples suffering under the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. This period was marked by moral decay but also political turmoil and social injustice. Hear the words of Habakkuk:
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
And you will not hear?
Or cry to you “violence!”
And you will not save?
And now Dylan:
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Dylan, like Habakkuk, longed for divine answers in the face of political calamity.
Or consider a later song, “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” from John Wesley Harding (1967). Dylan clearly namechecks the great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo, but there is a catch or two. For one thing, the opening line, “I dreamed I saw St. Augustine, alive as you or me” is a paraphrase of the song “Joe Hill” by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson. Joe Hill was a union organizer who was viewed as a martyr after being executed for a double murder in 1915 in a trial that remains contested and controversial to this day. For another thing, Dylan refers to Augustine being “put out to death,” but Augustine died in his old age, not as a martyr. So, what exactly is Dylan doing in this song? The song closes with a deep sense of guilt and even betrayal. A betrayal of who? This may be the key.
I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
Oh, I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.
My personal assessment of the song is that Dylan is weaving together multiple characters to share a complex and difficult narrative. St. Augustine in verse one is clothed in solid gold and searching for “the very souls whom already have been sold.” Some have interpreted this as a backhanded commentary on the excesses of the Catholic church. Verse two continues the dream, and St. Augustine calls out and tells the singer that there is no martyr to “call your own” but that “you’re not alone.” Thus the third and final verse seems to point to Jesus. Dylan feels a deep sense of guilt and anguish that he could have been among those who put him to death. Perhaps this narrative is a good example of Dylan’s life at this time—the chaos of the world and the heaviness of sin and death.
On September 17, 1974, Dylan recorded multiple takes of the song “Shelter from the Storm.” This song was described by Robert Shelton and Oliver Trager as having a “tempest-tossed mood,”[11] which Shelton likens to W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” Yeats uses the imagery of a falcon and a falconer to point out that as “things fall apart the center cannot hold.” The falcon, or humanity, is detached from its source of guidance, the falconer. Yeats moves on to a vivid and grim description of the ensuing chaos:
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Dylan, like Yeats, notes his separation and disconnection from any guidance when he states “I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail/Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail.” This internalizes personalizes the themes which animated Yeats. Dylan is wrestling with internal strife, a “creature void of form” seeking a place of refuge.
One of Dylan’s lines in the final stanza bears consideration: “If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.” Dylan’s reflection on a better time of innocence or simplicity came at a time of his life filled with turmoil. During the early-to-mid 1970s Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lownds was deteriorating (they would divorce in 1977). Creatively, Dylan had entered a new phase with the releases of Self Portrait (1970), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Dylan (1973), and Planet Waves (1974) (I exclude New Morning, also released in 1970 and strangely coming after Self Portrait as it seems like a continuation of Dylan’s older work). Some have noted the importance of the influence of the painter Norman Raeben on Dylan during this time. In early 1974 Dylan studied painting under Raeben five days a week for two months, saying that Raeben “put my mind and my hand and my eye together.” He also noted that Raeben “didn’t teach you so much how to draw… he looked into you and told you what you were.”[12] Dylan credits Raeben as the one who taught him that storytelling did not have to happen linearly, but that yesterday, today, and tomorrow could all happen in the same room.
While Dylan certainly sounds like Yeats in his assessment of the tempest of life, he differs in its resolution. Yeats is bleak. He wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, and in his eyes there was a collapse of the world order. Instead of hope and salvation arising out of Bethlehem, Yeats anticipates, through heavy irony and unsettling language, a beast to bring in destruction, confusion, and further moral decay.
Throughout “Shelter from the Storm,” Dylan has his own biblical references. Both Christ’s crown of thorns and the gambling for his clothes are mentioned, painting a picture of hardship and turmoil similar to Yeats. And like Yeats, Dylan sees the world ready for a new Bethlehem as he sings of turning back the clock to “when God and her were born.” But where Yeats saw this new Bethlehem to be a dark one, an inversion of the first, Dylan seemingly has a hope of renewal.It is a world of “steel-eyed death and men”, but in it “Beauty walks a razor’s edge.” Thus, the woman in every verse offers him shelter. While some may hear this repeated chorus and think Dylan is referring to his soon to be ex-wife, I think the woman is (perhaps concurrently) a symbolic figure of grace, compassion, and love. In typical Dylan fashion the story is deep but the characters are ambiguous. It is little surprise though that during this season of life he was searching for a place to find shelter. The storm was raging, and Dylan was searching. As we will explore next, he found shelter from the storm in the arms of the savior.
Finding Shelter from the Storm
In a 1985 letter to Denise Worrell, Bob Dylan reflected on his gospel years (1978–81) that “I never felt like I was searching for anything. I always felt that I’ve stumbled into things or drifted into them. But I’ve never felt like I was out on some kind of prospector hunt, looking for the answer or the truth.” During this time Dylan composed the spiritual trilogy of his musical career: Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981). My grandparents became believers in the Assemblies of God Church back in the 80s. Growing up I recall vividly my grandfather singing the lyrics from the title track from Saved: “I’ve been saved, by the blood of the Lamb.” It is worth noting that this was the heyday of Keith Green, prior to his untimely death in 1982.
The late 70s and early 80s in some ways recoiled after the Sexual Revolution of the 60s. While many young people were heavily influenced by the Woodstock mood, many adults and older Americans were soul searching. Where was God in the midst of Vietnam? How could God allow this nation that they loved to be torn apart? One of the more formative gospel preachers of this time was Billy Graham. Dylan credits Graham as a major influence on his conversion. Graham, noted Dylan, was “like rock ‘n’ roll personified.”[13]
While Dylan admits that he was not “searching for anything” it is apparent from his early music that he was heavily impacted by the biblical story, infusing countless references into his songs. We have mentioned already the prophetic longing of his more socially conscious songs, but the same applies to more personal lyrics, when singing of, say, love or death. For instance, “Nobody ‘Cept You” a studio outtake from 1973, begins, “There’s nothing ’round here I believe in/’Cept you, yeah you/And there’s nothing to me that’s sacred/’Cept you, yeah you.” The song is undoubtedly a love song, but its beloved is a stand-in for a God that the singer seems to have lost faith in. This obtains even in the fourth verse, in the face of death:
Used to run in the cemetery
And dance, and run, and sang when I was a child
And it never seemed strange
But now I just pass mournfully
By that place where the bones of life are piled
I know somethin' has changed
I'm a stranger here and no one sees me
Except you, yeah, you
Such lyrics suggest to us why Dylan found himself eventually drawn to the biblical story: it resolves the tensions and questions of life.
In the Slow Train Coming song “Precious Angel” Dylan reflects on how a “precious angel” came along and showed him that he was blind and lost. At a concert in 1980 Bob told the following story: a friend of his was riding in a cab when the cab driver turned to his friend and asked “Did you hear Bob Dylan’s a Christian now?” and this woman responded “How does that make you feel about his new stuff?” The cab driver paused for a second and responded, “I think they’re good but if I could meet the person that brought Bob Dylan to the Lord, I think I might become a Christian too.”[14]
The song has some provocative lines such as “You’re the queen of my flesh” but is also so full of biblical references that it would keep a new seminary student entertained for a while. Dylan’s life up to this point has been marked by uncertainty: a failed marriage, and struggling to find the next musical venture with a surprising amount of experience and albums to his name as he hit his late 30s. But here, channeling his inner Abraham Kuyper, he sings “you either got faith or you got unbelief and there is no neutral ground.” This line is in contrast to Dylan’s “so-called friends” who “have fallen under a spell.” In this song from the first of his gospel trilogy, Dylan reveals this is not an emotional shift, but instead is an adjustment to his worldview. The very same man who wrestled with guilt and sorrow in “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” is now proclaiming the reality of forgiveness and repentance.
On Saved, the second album of his gospel trilogy, “Saving Grace” is a particularly moving track. In his book Bob Dylan: Performing Artist–The Middle Years, 1974–1986, Paul Williams regards “Saving Grace” as the lyrical cousin to “Amazing Grace.” This song, Williams comments, is Dylan “bearing witness” to the reality of living in sin whether that be vanity, narcissism, or more. The song starts “If you find it in your heart can I be forgiven?” and moves next to Dylan’s brush with death:“by this time, I’d thought that I would be sleeping in a pine box for all eternity.” In spite of all of this, the saving grace washes over Dylan. One of the most powerful lines in this song comes when Dylan sings “There’s only one road and it leads to Calvary, it gets discouraging at times, but I know I’ll make it, by the saving grace that’s over me.” In Dylan fashion, he is raw and realistic about his prospects. To be “saved” is not to be taken from the world and removed from the challenges and hardship, but is instead the ability to bear through them knowing that the Lord’s saving grace is over you. The album rightfully closes with “Are You Ready?” which is a song looking to a time when we will be reunited with Jesus (“Are you ready to meet Jesus?”).
We then turn to the last of Dylan’s gospel trilogy, Shot of Love. One track worthy of exploring further is “Property of Jesus.” This album as a whole is not as fully gospel-embracing as the prior two. There are traces of Dylan’s snark buried throughout the album, waiting for those of us with ears to hear it. “Property of Jesus,” according to some, was written in response to some negative comments made about his conversion by Mick Jagger.[15] While some viewed Saved as a somewhat homogenous album with constant themes of salvation and redemption, Shot of Love was seen as a return to some of Dylan’s more classic lyrical abilities, drawing once again from a wider pool of images in service of his newfound subject matter. Dylan opens up the song snarkily rebuffing his doubters: “Go ahead and talk about him because he makes you doubt, because he has denied himself the things you can’t live without.” If the rumor is true, then Dylan is stating that Mick Jagger and others speak poorly of him out of envy. Instead, sings Dylan, “he’s the property of Jesus.”
Of particular importance to an understanding of Dylan’s captivity to the great story ever told is this line: “But you’ve picked up quite a story and you’ve changed since the womb, what happened to the real you? You’ve been captured but by whom?” This is the key to so much of Dylan’s writing: he is keenly aware of narratives at play, whether the pro-war narratives during the Vietnam era, or the racial narratives during the Civil Rights movement and with the killing of Emmett Till. But beyond that, on his gospel albums Dylan is aware of a grand narrative, one that is a cosmic battle between good and evil. Each one of us is captured. The question is, by which side? Do we “have something better” as Dylan says, “a heart of stone”? (Again, note the snark.) Or are we property of Jesus?
Bob Dylan’s Storytelling in a Storyless World
As we have seen, Bob Dylan has always been captured by story and narrative. His work has further been saturated with biblical truth. And for a time, this led him to become wrapped up in the Christian story.
Bob Dylan’s story teaches us a few lessons. First, we must recognize the ability of unbelievers, or those around us who may have some religious background, to see, though veiled, the reality of the existence of a spiritual battle raging around us and God’s invisible qualities in holding these forces back and conquering them (Romans 1:20). What this means is that many are asking questions about narrative and story. Young men are asking “what does it mean to be a man?” Many are asking questions about the prevailing narratives on sexuality and gender. As such, we are as Byung-Chul Han stated earlier in this essay, existing in a time that is not anchored down by narratives. People do not have a grand story that they are a part of. Instead they are floating around on the whims of the latest podcast episode, or YouTube documentary, or Twitch stream.
Second, we need to share the greatest story. Bob Dylan’s gospel trilogy is certainly not his best work, but they represent an immensely significant period when looking at his life as a whole, one too often skipped over by secular listeners and musical historians. The albums are an undeniable fruition of what Dylan had for so long hinted at in his earlier songs. His singing about sadness, loneliness, injustice, hardship, political turmoil, found resolution for a time in his gospel trilogy. Dylan’s wrestling with the travesty of life led him to ask questions, which led to gospel answers. And if it were not for that young lady, or “precious angel” as Dylan called her, he would not have found the answers to his longing. And Christians today must be ready to share the same story Dylan heard with such story seekers today. As the Nicene Creed states “ We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” This is the greatest story ever told. And we must tell it.
Eddie LaRow is Acquisitions Editor at Baker Books and a PhD candidate at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Han, Crisis of Narration (Cambridge: Polity, 2024), ix. ↑
Han, Crisis of Narration, viii. ↑
Han, Crisis of Narration, ix. ↑
Han, Crisis of Narration, x-xi. ↑
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/summary/ ↑
Anna North, “Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel”, The New York Times, October 13, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/opinion/why-bob-dylan-shouldnt-have-gotten-a-nobel.html. ↑
Stephen Metcalf, “Bob Dylan is a Genius of Unparalleled Influence, but He Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel”, Slate, October 13, 2016, https://slate.com/culture/2016/10/why-bob-dylan-shouldnt-have-gotten-the-nobel-prize-for-literature.html. ↑
Richard F. Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters (New York: Dey Street Books, 2017), 2. ↑
Ralph Gleason, “Bob Dylan: poet to a generation,” August 18, 1969, The San Francisco Examiner. ↑
Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (London: Harper Collins, 2003), 126. ↑
Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1985), eBook, 409. ↑
Jeff Slate, “Bob Dylan’s First Day with ‘Tangled Up in Blue’”, The New Yorker, October 31, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/bob-dylans-first-day-with-tangled-up-in-blue ↑
Czarina Ong, “Bob Dylan shares how he was inspired by Rev. Billy Graham, Christian Today, 9 April, 2015, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/bob-dylan-shares-how-he-was-inspired-by-rev-billy-graham/51141.htm. ↑
Oliver Trager, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (New York: Billboard Books, 2004), 497. ↑
Trager, Keys to the Rain, 503. ↑