IN 1979, BOB DYLAN regaled a Tempe, Arizona, audience with a show
consisting entirely of songs from his two most recent records—the
ill-received Christian albums Slow Train Coming and
Saved. A born-again with an ex-Jew’s wrath complex, Dylan
peppered the set list with snarling sermons that drew the heckles you’d
expect. When some lost soul shouted “rock ‘n’ roll!” he got a memorable
response: “If you want rock ‘n’ roll, you go down and rock ‘n’ roll.
You can go and see KISS and you can rock ‘n’ roll all the way
down to the pit!“

This, frankly, should happen more often. Dylan’s case of
Christianity cleared so quickly his fans tend to regard it as they
would a spate of acne—ugly, brief, meaningless—but in 2005,
when Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois made the modestly Christian
singer/songwriter a cause célèbre, I found myself longing
for Dylan’s sermonizing rage. Atheists/boosters for Stevens hurriedly
forgave his faith: Sufjan was Christian, but that was okay, he
wasn’t one of those Christians. One of what? You know. The ones
who try to save you.

Here’s the thing about being saved. If you think I’m going to Hell,
I’d like to be warned. Stevens, whose reticence doesn’t extend much
beyond his faith, and whose hyperactive ambition eventually won me
over, nevertheless writes such nonjudgmental religious songs (see also:
Bono. Irish, but raised Anglican, which I suppose explains it) that
listening to him refuse to condemn me feels like being sung to by
someone who wouldn’t push me out of the way of a bus. Yes, it’s my
choice to be standing out here, but obviously I’m a moron. Christian
Dylan wrote a song called “When You Gonna Wake Up?” That’s what I’m
talking about.

Christianity and rock ‘n’ roll are famously irritable bedfellows,
but as much as rockers may protest Christians’ uncool “intolerance,”
it’s really mildness that lets us down. Even the exultant praise
blaring from a million interchangeable punky four pieces seems too
satisfied, too insular. We like to be yelled at. Do you like Black
Flag’s first record? Do you also like beer? Henry Rollins is about as
contemptuous of it as Dylan is of Satan. Do you like Johnny Cash? (You
should. Partly because, if you don’t, he’ll rise from the grave, appear
before you, and stare you to death.) Johnny Cash wrote a song
called “The Man Comes Around” in which he drawled a quote from
Revelations before proclaiming that there was “a man goin’ ’round
takin’ names” and that “everybody won’t be treated all the same.”

There’s more to music than confrontation, just as there’s more to
Christianity than fire and brimstone, but Cash’s second line lies
somewhere close to the heart of rock ‘n’ roll, which is ultimately as
exclusive as it is communal—anything that’s been since inception
the Official Music of Youthful Rebellion, anything this idealistic and
dumbly ambitious, is on some level dedicated to separating the
righteous from the unrighteous, the filthy from the clean, even if it
prefers the filthy. There’s more juice and savage artistry in Dylan’s
warnings of a wrathful God than in a thousand U2 songs about grace. So
let’s rock ‘n’ roll all the way somewhere—the pit, wherever. As
long as it’s somewhere.