The spiritual-and-maybe-religious Dylan

Bob Dylan is 75 today. He’s not the only one who’s still making records after 50+ years, but it’s hard to think of anyone else with as many good ones.

“Keep it religious,” the Century’s longtime editor liked to say. Many people find this hard to do when talking about Dylan, at least if they want to focus on the good stuff. His brief sojourn as an evangelical Christian is widely considered a weak creative period, the bard reduced to propagandist. You don’t have to be a secularist to sense strongly that “Covenant Woman” is light years dumber than, say, “Like a Rolling Stone.”

But Dylan’s born-again period only scratches the crude surface of the religious themes in his writing. Religious undertones abound throughout the stronger pages of his vast songbook, a songbook that boasts (among many other things) a rich moral vision and a solid biblical vocabulary.