The Daily Signal - 'REVOLUTION AGAINST GOD': Skillet's John Cooper Explains

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

The lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter for a top Christian rock band is sounding the alarm about the "woke" ideology of critical race theory and transgender identity, insisting that Christians cannot afford to sit on the sidelines as this competing worldview takes over the culture. Skillet's John Cooper will release a new book this month on the topic entitled "Wimpy, Weak, and Woke." "The main premise of my entire book is that there is a revolution against America, to just tear America down," Cooper told The Daily Signal at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. "Some of the Christian people just say, 'Well, you do have to admit there is systemic racism,' and I say to them, 'You don't understand. If you're saying we are structurally racist, we have to tear down the foundations.'" Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for November 6th, 2020, 3. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with the lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter for the top Christian rock band Skillet, a guy by the name of John Cooper, and he has a new book coming out this month entitled Wimpy, Weak, and Woke. And we sat down to talk about this tremendous threat that Christians and America, in particular overall, is facing from a leftist ideology that pushes critical race theory, transgender identity, and many other noxious ideas that are eroding away the Judeo-Christian values at the center of America's strength, America's prosperity. So listen to my interview with John Cooper right after this.

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This is Tyler O'Neill, managing editor at The Daily Signal. I'm joined by the one and only John Cooper, the lead vocalist of the tremendous and award-winning Christian rock band Skillet, and author of a forthcoming book Exposing Woke Ideology. It's an honor to speak with you. Thank you. It's great to be here, man. In fact, I'm not the only one and only John Cooper. I found it was there's a, it's like a mayor in Nashville or something. His name was John Cooper, because when he was running, people were sending me all these things.

Oh, you're running for mayor in Nashville, you know, but he's a liberal, which really, I was like, all right, come on now. It's not me. I also have a former coworker named John Cooper. So it's like, it's a very common name, but also. Yeah, I think so. Thank you. brother. Well, so, yeah, John, as a leader in the CCM world, I was first wondering if you would address this really shocking movement of deconversion that we've been seeing among so many

CCM artists. And it seems as though maybe the spotlight got to them or maybe they just hadn't gotten to read your book. Yeah, it's the latter. I mean, it's such a, travesty. I mean, it really can't be exaggerated. And I don't mean to be like hyper, sky is falling about everything, but it really can't be exaggerated. What you're looking at, I think, personally, is not even so much the spotlight or pride or they're all about themselves and then this, I think it's such a lack of teaching. It's such a lack of worldview. What does it mean to be a Christian? what does it mean to view the world in a Christianly way, you know? And so what you have happening in the world, let's remove Christianity from this.

Let's look at what we have happening in the world. Well, that's what the deconversioners are doing, right? That's exactly right, yes. So let's look at America. When you look at young people, 20-somethings, it's not even, for instance, it's not popular to like America, right? They kind of look at America like, well, it's a, lot of terrible things, you know, they're holding these things in tension between America's the worst place in the world, even though they don't know where is better. You know, it's just,

just random information they've been told. And so even in the world, people are just, they're down. They're down on Western civilization, down on America. They're down on the idea of individual liberties, as we saw even in 2020. Even a lot of wonderful, great meaning Christian, they would have said they were conservative people, are all. for the lockdown. They were all for the Vax mandates. They're all for a lot of things because they just don't understand, right? They haven't been taught.

In Christian music, it's the same thing happening just on the religious side. They just don't value where we came from. They don't value tradition. And they're not into any of it. And they really want a new kind of faith that is progressive.

Because they view progressivism as a good thing and traditionalism as a bad thing. That's my opinion. Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. And that approach to progressivism, you know, even the word sometimes I bristle at it. But your book kind of runs the gamut on those destructive left-wing ideologies from critical race theory to transgenderism, statism, socialism, socialism, Marxism. You trace them all back to an atheistic utopianism, what you call the age-old war between gods, a winner-takes-all battle between the living God,

and the false god of man. What do you mean by that? Yeah, every system is going to have a god, right? So every system of law, every culture, will have an ultimate say. You know, something is ultimate. Could be natural law, could be Darwin's evolution,

so it could be rooted in the goodness of man, which is what, you know, progressivism basically is, right? The goodness of man. We can solve all over own problems and we don't need some sort of, transcendent being or anything like that. We can do it.

Every system is going to have a God. And so what I think we're dealing with now, and what's really weird is that we're dealing with it in Christianity, which makes no sense. But I don't think it's because we haven't thought about it. What you're really dealing with is that we are either going to continue what I consider to be conservatism is conserving the traditions we came from. It's conserving the social order, the moral and religious fiber of where we came from, which is a system of laws and culture morality based on inherited wisdom, right? Based on inherited truths and things like that.

Or we're going to say, actually, all that is bad. Christianity and what we've inherited is actually causing us to be enslaved. is causing us to be sad and depressed and it's evil and God is the Christian God, namely, is enslaving us into sexual mores and traditional thinking. We need him to go away. We need to kill God, you know, which is what Marx wanted to do. We kill God and then we replace God with a new God, which is basically ourselves. And we can find utopia.

We can perfect the world with trans ideology and with trans ideology and with. with LGBTQ ideology, and by unleashing sexuality and children, we will make a new Superman, basically. That's sort of what the book is about, is saying there's two ways to go here. It's the God of Man, or it's the living God, and one of these things is going to lead to a culture of death, and one of these things leads to a culture of life. And can you describe a little bit more about how we know it's a culture of life that the Christian God brings us that Western civilization really enhances.

Well, you could tackle that from several different places. So, you know, as a person of faith, you know, I believe in eternal truth. I believe in eternal values. I believe that, let's just say philosophically, if there is a God, which of course I believe there is, if there is a God, then it just stands to reason that he created the world so he knows how it should run, right? So, you know, from a faith perspective, a theological perspective, then I say, well, God created a moral universe that runs in a certain way. And then God gives us a moral law.

And the moral law coincides with a moral universe. So in other words, here's a good example, right? It would be really weird if God's moral law says sex is only between one man and one woman in marriage. don't have sex outside of marriage, right? But then the universe only gives STDs to people who only have sex with one person their whole life. You see what I'm saying? It would be sort of like God is saying, yeah, I know it's going to harm you, but this is the way I want it to be. So it separates morality from the way the universe works, which is not a thing.

So that's what I would say in terms of, it's good. Now, if I was to take my theology hat off and just, let's just, let's just, talk naturally and logically, there's a lot of proof that, quote, unquote, the living God, his ways are good and beautiful and righteous. But I think that this is where the argument comes down to people that think that Western civilization is good, or is Western civilization really evil? Because Western civilization is built on these Judeo-Christian values. It's inherited wisdom from millennia. And we look at it and we say, well, this is, I mean, America. This is the freest country, the most prosperous country.

It doesn't matter. Of course, we had our incredible sins, obviously. But it doesn't matter where you come from, the color of your skin, how much money you make, what your religion is. You have individual liberties that may not be taken away from the state. That's an amazing thing, right? That's such an incredible thing. You can come here and you can chart your own course. That's the American dream.

You can be born to the poorest family in America. And no one is going to say, no, you can't become the president. It's absolutely amazing. The first country on the planet that puts documents saying all men are created equal, it's absolutely awesome. So it's so weird to see so many people say, no, actually, Western civilization is the biggest imperialistic, perpetuating evil country in the world

and we need to open up our borders because people are coming from evil countries that are, it's just, I can't even wrap my head. I'm not even an intellectual person, but I'm smart enough to know, well, both of those things can't be true. So I would just say, let's take a look. Let's take a look at what's happened

around the world right now in China, enslaving millions of Muslims and other religions. as well, but mainly targeting Muslims. You look in the Middle East. You look in just below us on Venezuela, and you look at places that have been just ravaged by communism, and you say, okay, communism and Western civilization are the antithesis, of course, right?

Communism is built on the power of man, Western civilization on wisdom of the past. Which one of these things do you think produces life, in which one produces debt. I mean, you don't have to be a smart person to see that. Yeah, well, and I think a lot of people, and especially in the young generation, take it kind of for granted the benefits that we have,

and they almost assume that, you know, these aren't something weirdly new in human experience. These aren't like a natural flourishing of a long process, and they think, oh, slavery was, I think there are studies where college students act as though slavery was unique to America and not a universal institution. Do you address some of those issues in your book? You're absolutely right about what college students tend to think.

And I just know this from friends. I know this from Christian musicians that they have this weird, I'm sorry, I'm kind of going off script, but they have this weird Christian musicians and Christians in general these days have this really weird, bizarre thing I can't figure out. They think that it is more Christian to dislike America than to like America. They almost see it as like idolatry. Now, this used to not be the case. Like, I grew up with people that were like God and country.

You know, I mean, yes, of course, you're more loyal to Christ than you are to America. Of course. But these things are not at odds with each other. In fact, loyalty to Christ will make you a better citizen. And that was the idea. Anyway, I don't know when that changed, but it changed. And now what I deal with with talking to Christians all the time is almost like they have a reaction. If I'm like, if I'm pro-America, they have a little bit of, oh, that's a little idolatrous.

Our kingdom is not out of this world. It's almost like they don't understand that this could change tomorrow. Like your grandkids could be, they could be, we could all be speaking. Your grandkids could be speaking Chinese depending on what happens in the near future. We could have been speaking German. You know, it's sort of like, how do you not understand what is happening here? So I don't talk a lot about slavery, but I do talk about critical race theory. But, yeah, basically what you're dealing with are people that are like, America created slavery.

That is what they think. America created the idea that of sin. I mean, I don't even understand, but it's that nuts. And I argue with Christian pastors about this stuff sometimes because they've swallowed some of these critical race theory ideas like of whiteness and things like that. You know, whiteness was this property of Europeans against everybody else. And whiteness is sort of the original sin of critical whiteness studies. That's like the fall in the garden for them. And I'm talking to these pastors.

I'm like, yeah, but there was a real fall in the garden. that happened a long time ago that means that this is sin. This isn't a unique thing to white people. What are you talking about? So that kind of thing really bothers me because I think that we're just squandering our chance to continue to live free, to live in a place where we, I told a pastor this. I said, look, I don't care if you're patriotic. I don't care if you like America.

fine. At the very least, can you admit it's nice to live in a country where you can live out the Bible without incriminations from the state? Is that on its own a good thing? You know what I mean? Because we're on the precipice of losing that. That's a really good thing. Would you rather be in prison for your biblical ethics? Or would you rather not? And if you're like, well, no, I don't want to be in prison, then quit this anti-American crap. It's just so ridiculous. Sorry, it's early. It makes me really, I just, I'm flabbergasted, you know? No, I mean, it really is if you have a rational approach to the world, it is just insane to think that, you know, slavery, which has been documented to have been with us since the very earliest civilizations is a uniquely American sin,

that hatred of the other, which sent millennia of anti-Semitism, and then suddenly, oh, it's only unique to America, and all the benefits of America, which are insanely unique and new, and this freedom you're talking about living according to your faith, this is hard fought throughout the centuries. You barely get it under Persia for the Jews, but that's one example where Persia enslaved other people. And, you know, in the United States, we uphold it for everyone.

Absolutely. People died for this. I can't. Some of the racial hatred I've heard in the last couple of years, granted, most of it is coming from progressive white people towards white people. So who can make this up? The racial hatred I've heard, I'm like, but it's like, I don't remember the numbers. 600,000 people died in Civil War or something like. You're talking about a lot of people giving their lives to change this.

And what you're saying now is that that didn't even matter. They're only doing that for their own, you know, if you study critical race theory, you know, was it an interest convergence theory or whatever, convergence theory, I think is what it called. Part of critical race here basically just says, and I do write about this in the book, whites will never do anything to help blacks because we benefit from the system. The only time we will help is if our interests converge with theirs. So it's not our interest, meaning we think it's unjust that, for instance, we're enslaving people of color.

We're not that kind of interest, only like if, in other words, is it going to help our bottom line? Is there a way that I'm going to make money from marching with Martin Luther King? Is it a way to make me better? And it was kind of based on this thing about the, you know, Brown versus Board, is it Brown versus Board of Education? I'm getting all my stuff confused. It's too early. So it was based on that. What they're basically saying is that the whites that wanted to integrate schools only did so because it would make America look better on the world stage for the Cold War.

So that's the only reason we did it. So it's interest convergence. And so there's, I'm talking about the Civil War. like, but, but, but there's so many white people and black people who died for this. So why can't we celebrate this as a move in the right direction? And so that is why, you know, critical race theory teaches like, they're not against civil rights. They're certainly not against MLK. They're saying, yeah, that's good.

But really, it was a sham. It was a sham. They got it. But all they did was they pushed race. racism underground. And so it's a little bit like a Kafka trap, you know. Anything you say to be used as something good that's happened, they'll say, yeah, but it's proof of the bad thing. You know, and it's just so ugly. It's a really ugly way to live. It's an unchristian way to live. But it's also an anti-Western civilization principle. Yes, we didn't live that for a long time,

but as MLK said, we had a promissory note. We finally got things right where you don't, you don't judge people based on where they come from. Each person is an individual made in the image of God. John Locke did a great job of showing that. I don't know why we hate that now. It's insane. Yet you say it's an unchristian way to live, and I'd like you to expand a little bit on what you mean by that.

Because I think a lot of, as you were mentioning, a lot of Christian leaders, a lot of secularists, like to argue that it is, the Christian way to live that, you know, you should embrace CRT because it's caring for other people. You should embrace LGBT ideology because it's caring for other people. And I mean, you and I know that's not the case, but why are these things unchristian and why is, you know, looking at history and saying these people were just trying to further oppression, why is that unchristian?

The main premise of my entire book is that. there is a revolution against America to just tear America down. Some of the Christian people that say, well, you do have to admit there is systemic racism. And I say to them, you don't understand. If you're saying we are structurally racist, we have to tear down the foundations. I mean, we're talking about the Constitution. And they don't believe me. And that's why I'm so glad to be here at NRB because I'm with people I don't have to convince.

I'm like, that's actually what they mean. You have to tear it down all the way down to the, the floor here. The premise is that it's a revolution against America, but that's actually not what it is. It's a revolution against Christian civilization. It's a revolution against God. And

so everything that they do has a different premise than a Christian premise. The reason it's not Christian is because the Bible specifically says, you don't let the father's sins, you don't visit them upon their kids. You don't hold kids responsible for what their

grandfathers did. That's not right. You're responsible for your own behavior, your own sins, your own standing before the Lord. That is your responsibility. You don't judge a person by some sort of group identity. Like, you know, I see you and you're from the Middle East and you did something bad to me. Therefore, all people from the Middle East do exactly what you do. That's obviously racism, but you don't do that. You judge people this MLK idea from the content of their character. That is a Christian principle. Everybody is responsible for what they do to their fellow man and before the Lord.

So this idea that because people did something in the past, then everybody now is involved in that racism, even though they may or may not know it. This is just such a, that is a religious point of view. You know, because now it's a religious point where you are now looking into the hearts of people and saying, you know, they may not know that they are guilty and that they are this and this and this. But they are because of the group they belong to. I mean, that's, that is just racism. And that's the weird thing about CRT is that it's just racist, it's racist, but it's acceptable racism.

Right? It's just acceptable racism. It is. And I want to ask, you know, kind of moving to conclude, you've been in the Christian music scene and achieving, you know, great results outside of the Christian world as well. But how should Christians, you know, present an alternative worldview with the kind of gentleness and respect that puts their critics to shame? and how should they engage with secular culture, with entertainment, especially in that sphere, that you've been so successful at doing? This is really difficult, and I'm glad you mentioned this, because I do want to say,

I don't just go off in the book. It is leading towards a positive vision for the future, and I think that as I round out the book in my final chapters, it's pertinent to the question you're asking me now, which is saying, it's not just saying, I hate it, I hate it, saying, no, let's have a positive vision. Now, in some ways, that positive vision is a return to conserving where we came from, our religious heritage, things like objective reality. I mean, we don't even believe in objective reality now. If a boy can say, I feel like a girl, therefore I am a girl, and therefore all of society must say that I'm a girl, then really what we were doing, and this is part of what I posit in my book, we are forcing people to, privatize

objective beliefs root in objective reality. Do you know what I say privatize? So we are basically Yes, we are saying you can be a Christian if you want to as long as you privatize it. You can be a Christian at your home. Just don't go around telling

people. But in the public sphere, which we used to be able to talk about religion and objective reality, in the public sphere, we are going to make people's personal subjective feelings the public truth. So if you say I'm a boy, but I know I'm actually a girl and I believe it in my heart, the public has to say your inner feelings are true. But if somebody says, no, I can see

objective reality. You are a boy. They say, well, that's not publicly true, though it can be privately held belief if you want. That's a way to end, that's the way to end all things. That is the destruction of objective reality. So in a way, we are returning to traditional values, family values, and as I round out the book, I'm saying, why don't we trust the eternal word of God? Obviously, I'm coming from a Christian point of view, but the Judeo-Christian outlook has been proven. It works. We know that two-parent families have much better outcomes than one-parent families, from wealth to less depression, to less people in mental, institutes or in prison or drug arrest or committing rapes or committing robberies. I mean,

it just goes on and on and on. The nuclear family actually works, and we've known that for millennia. This new idea that we don't need that anymore is just an absolute catastrophe. So as I'm rounding out the book, I'm saying we Christians, and we traditionalists, whatever, we should be morally confident because we have a lot of history to look at and say it's worked for a really long time. I think it was G.K. Chesterson that said, you know, the difference between the left and the right is somebody walks through a field the first time.

And there's a big fence. And the person on the left walks in and says, why is this fence here? Take it down. And then the person who's on the right walks says, huh, I wonder why this fence is here. We should leave it up until we find out. You know, that's the that's a pretty good reason. That's something. There's a reason. Let's find out what that's for.

I think that's a good thing. To answer your question, this is really difficult. We do want to be loving to the world. But we're in a moment where if I say, as nicely as a human being as ever said to another person, I do not believe that you, John, are a cat. I'm sorry. But I just don't believe. I don't believe that's true.

I still love you. You can be a cat. You can live like a cat. You can meow if you want to. I'm not saying, I won't be your friend. I say this because my daughter's in college and she has furries in her class. And they say they're cats and they meow and things like that. I'm not saying I won't sit next to you in class.

You can say it the nicest you want to. The nicest human being ever on planet Earth. You will be called a hater. You will be seen to be an oppressive Christian that should be shut down. I have a friend who works at a big company, and they've been, they asked him to sign their LGBT form. He's got to sign this thing saying that he believes that trans men are men and trans women are women. He has to sign it or he's going to lose his job. He has just decided, I'm not going to sign it and see what happens.

It's been three months, and every three days he gets a new email saying, you still haven't signed your form. Now they had another training seminar. and part of the training seminar was to explain to co-workers, these are signs of hate and radicalization that you need to be aware of. So they're like white supremacy things. If somebody has a swastika, if somebody does this. One of those is if someone is unwilling to sign the LGBT form, they might be radicalized by white supremacy and need to be reported.

So it doesn't matter that he's probably their best worker. He's their biggest income driver because he's a good salesman and because he treats people fair because he believes in traditional values and he doesn't cheat. It's probably their best worker. But he might just be a radical extremist, hater, white supremac that wants to hurt people because he's unwilling to say one of his coworkers is a cat.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, I think that we have to be loving and know in our hearts before God, if you believe in God as I do. or before whatever your particular moral values are, know for yourself I have done everything in my heart to represent Jesus the best I can, to represent my God, represent my values, and if people hate me, they hate me.

It's a ridiculous way for them to treat me. I'm going to be more tolerant to them than they are to me, but I'm absolutely not going to live in lives. Well, thank you so much, John. I think we probably need to go, but it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you, and I wish you really all the best of luck with your new book. Thank you. It's great chat with you as an honor.

That was John Cooper, who is again the lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter for the top Christian rock band Skillet. If you liked what you hear here, please feel free to give us a five-star rating and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. We read all of your feedback. Be sure to check in here in the afternoon today at 5 p.m. when we cover the top news of the day,

we go over the headlines that are driving the news for your evening commute. Tune back here this afternoon. Thanks again. I'm Tyler O'Neill with the Daily Signal podcast. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop.

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