Dylan and the Jesus People

Abstract

It may be interesting to see how the Jesus Movement exemplified Christian anarchism in the 1960s and 1970s but the examination does not mean much for us if we cannot link Bob Dylan to the Jesus Movement. Information about the political thought and practice of the Jesus People is important in a book about the politics of Dylan only to the extent that we can clearly identify Dylan as a Jesus Person. In fact, we can show that Dylan was a latter-day Jesus Person who joined Christianity five or six years after the heyday of the Jesus Movement (1967–73). The movement had dissipated by 1979 but its impact continued and part of its impact was the conversion and discipleship of Bob Dylan.¹