Bob Dylan: right-wing Christian? Encore, encore

Thanks to Scott Marshall:

“An angry John Carvill, in his second sentence, asks, “Surely you can’t be taking this guy (Stephen Webb) seriously?”—and then goes on to acknowledge he hasn’t even read Webb’s book. Why should we then take Carvill seriously?

“And to say the author is “fairly obsessed with religion in general and Christianity in particular” is misleading. The guy is a Christian. The guy teaches at a religiously-oriented school. Disagree with someone’s beliefs/convictions, fine, but don’t begrudge them their thing, their cup of tea, so to speak.

“Incidentally, a quick check of Webb’s other published books (he has 8 others) will show that non-religious publishers have published his work (Oxford University Press, State University of New York Press, and Continuum). That says something about his work, it seems. Also, a few of his books include the following topics: the rhetoric of Karl Barth’s theology; a Christian theology of compassion for animals; and one on how American Christians have an obsession with food, which amounts to idolatry. Who knows, this guy might need to be taken seriously.

“More significantly, Carvill has his facts wrong concerning Wenner’s alleged statement in the recent Rolling Stone interview with Dylan. Wenner DID NOT state that “nowhere in the world is religion a force for good.” He just didn’t say it, nor anything like it. (I have the actual magazine right in front of me now)

“These words are actually a twist on Dylan’s words, which were (when asked by Wenner if he was finding himself more a religious person these days): [Dylan]: “A religious person? Religion is supposedly a force for positive good. Where can you look in the world and see that religion has been a force for positive good?”

“One might conclude I’m making Carvill’s point, i.e. Dylan is dissing “religion” via a rhetorical question. But in the context of these comments, Dylan also, significantly, elaborates: “We degrade faith by talking about religion.” So we can conclude, reasonably, that faith (not religion) is something that Dylan deems important.

“If someone argues that Dylan doesn’t have a faith or it is insignificant to him, then he/she also has to ignore this comment from Dylan’s 2007 Rolling Stone interview—not to mention the interviews from 1979 (Bruce Heiman), 1983 (Robert Hilburn), and 1989 (Edna Gundersen), where Dylan also draws a distinction between religion and faith. And chronologically speaking, of course, all of this comes after his Jesus experience of 1978/1979; it seems Dylan’s faith is a personal thing (though publicly we’ve seen its manifestations through song and interview), but he’s never really promoted ‘religion’.”