John Cooper of Christian rockers SKILLET, who regularly speaks about his faith in secular spaces and voices his opinions on hot-button social and political issues, recently joined Michael Knowles for a no-holds-barred game of “yes or no” — where the questions are tough, the debates are real, and there’s no room for dodging. Asked if the stereotype “rock star lifestyle” applies to Christian bands, Cooper said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  ”Yeah. Well, it shouldn’t, but unfortunately it does… Everybody does stupid stuff, and a lot of people present as something that they are not, whether it’s hypocrisy or whether it was just a game or whether they fell into sin, whatever may happen, lapse in judgment.”I was naïve when I first got into the scene,” he continued. “I just thought everybody’s gonna be totally like-minded and it’s gonna be whatever. And then you get into it, and then you’re, like, ‘Oh my gosh. I think he’s hitting on my wife. I’m pretty sure he is hitting on my wife.’ Same thing in politics… I honestly haven’t been that much around the whole political world, but in the last few years I have been, and I’m, like, ‘You mean the same guy that keeps talking about God and country is here?’ This kind of seems like a grift to me, and this is just about making money. And so some of that stuff is really disheartening. So I’m sad to say the answer is yes.”John has written in depth about his views in the two books he has released so far, “Awake & Alive to Truth”, which came out in December 2020, and “Wimpy, Weak, And Woke”, which became available in late 2023.In an interview with Baptist News, Cooper said that he is “always an open book” when it comes to the way he speaks to the media. He said: “We are outspoken about Christ because we’re outspoken that he is the only way to heaven, but not just about Christ. We’re also outspoken about moral issues. I speak about the abortion stuff all the time. I speak about the transgender theory being taught in schools. I stand for biblical traditional sexuality. We say them proudly, we say them boldly, we say them with compassion toward people who don’t agree with us, but we do speak the truth.”Cooper told Baptist Press about how his faith directs him to speak out on cultural issues: “If Jesus is the truth, then that means He has something to say about culture, politics, abortion and sexuality. The Bible has something to say about these things.”In various interviews over the years, John has said that he “always had faith in God” and that his mother was a “Jesus fanatic.” He also claimed that he was willing to put his career on the line to take a stand for Christ.In April 2021, Cooper told the “Undaunted.Life: A Man’s Podcast” that it was perfectly fine for Christians to play rock music. “I would say that music is created not by the Devil; [it is] created by the Lord,” he said. “All things were created by God. So instead of thinking that the Devil owns a genre of music, I would say capture that music and bring it back into subjection under the Lordship of Christ.”SKILLET’s latest album, “Revolution”, arrived in November 2024 via the band’s Hear It Loud imprint.[embedded content]