This article: Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan and his family were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community, and in May 1954 Dylan had his Bar Mitzvah. Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the New York-based Jewish Defense League. Time magazine quoted him saying about Kahane, "He's a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together." Subsequently, Dylan downplayed the extent of his contact with Kahane.
During the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Christianity. In November 1978, guided by his friend Mary Alice Artes, Dylan made contact with the Vineyard School of Discipleship. Vineyard Pastor Kenn Gulliksen has recalled: "Larry Myers and Paul Emond went over to Bob's house and ministered to him. He responded by saying, 'Yes he did in fact want Christ in his life.' And he prayed that day and received the Lord." From January to March 1979, Dylan attended the Vineyard Bible study classes in Reseda, California.By 1984, Dylan was distancing himself from the "born again" label. He told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone magazine: "I've never said I'm born again. That's just a media term. I don't think I've been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come." In response to Loder's asking whether he belonged to any church or synagogue, Dylan laughingly replied, "Not really. Uh, the Church of the Poison Mind."When it was asked of Dylan in a 1986 press conference in Australia "How much do you feel you are a vessel, a medium for a higher power, for God, that it [the music] flows through you... for Him?" Dylan replied, "Well I feel that way about most of the stuff that I do."In 1997, he told David Gates of Newsweek:
Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't... contains an answer for the question: Who prayed and received the Lord?, what is it ?


Dylan