Bob Dylan and religion

• Main Author: Andreas Häger
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Donner Institute 2009-01-01
• Series: Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
• Subjects: Dylan, Bob, 1941-; Popular culture; Artists; Musicians; Music, Popular; Music trade
• Online Access: https://journal.fi/scripta/article/view/67343

This article, which is located within the field of research on religion and popular culture, is a discussion of the relations of one particular rock artist, Bob Dylan, to religion. Religion can be seen as a recurring topic in Dylan’s work—particularly during a period at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, often referred to as his ‘Christian era’—and also in the discourses around him. This article explores how the topic of religion appears in discourses around Bob Dylan. In this article one particular aspect of the connection between religion and popular culture is looked at: the construction of certain artists or stars as religious figures, and more specifically Bob Dylan as a case. The author does not try to discover whether Dylan is religious or not; or which religion he possibly adheres to. Rather, the author looks at how rock artists and in this case Bob Dylan are ‘constructed’ as religious figures.