An inkling, from a Telegraph piece about the Paris launch of the Boss' latest album, "Wrecking Ball," which highlights "the distance between American reality and the American Dream.

The album shifts towards the spiritual uplift of gospel music in its rousing finale, evoking Jesus and the risen dead. I got brainwashed as a child with Catholicism, joked Springsteen, who says biblical imagery increasingly creeps into his songs almost unbidden. Its like Al Pacino in The Godfather: I try to get out but they pull you back in! Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

New Jersey rocks.

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

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