Skillet frontman John Cooper warns critical race theory and woke ideology is sparking a civil war in American churches

John Cooper, frontman for the Christian rock band Skillet, issued a dire warning about the damaging effects of critical race theory and woke ideologies have on Christians. Cooper says far-left ideologies are sparking a civil war in the American church.

Cooper noticed that social justice started seeping into the church around 2012, which confused the Christian rocker.

"I knew that I wanted to be a light to the world and I want[ed] to share the Gospel of Christ," Cooper told Fox News. "And I believe a part of that is loving people, and helping the poor, and so on and so forth, but there were things about the social justice movement that gave me a lot of red flags and I didn't quite understand what was happening. That is when I began to really delve into culture, philosophy, and those types of things."

"I think that we had our first fully educated adult group that was totally indoctrinated in academia, into woke ideology, into social justice, into critical race theory, into all of these things – and they basically imported the secular definitions of these words into Christianity," Cooper said. "So, people like myself and most normal people … your average person going to church didn't realize that we were talking about two different things."

Cooper explained that progressives alter the language and definitions of words, such as "anti-racism."

"What kind of Christian isn't against racism? I mean, that would be a very strange thing to not be against racism," the Skillet lead singer said. "But I need to know what you mean when you say [you oppose racism] so that I know what I am marching for or what I am standing up for … Can we have a definition of terms? That would be really nice."

"They were going along with the terminology without understanding what they were going into, and now I think that's becoming very clear," Cooper said of the woke language. "We're having a bit of a church split because a lot of people really believe one way and a lot of people believe another way. I think we're seeing a civil war in the American church – over social justice."

"Critical race theory has become this bogeyman term and some people get really mad when you bring [it] up," he continued. "So, let's not say what critical race theory is. Let me just say what it does … CRT is responsible for a new Christian book … that is a book of prayers, including a prayer that says 'God please help me to hate white people.'"

"A conclusion of CRT is that ... majority-white churches that don't have black leadership are racist," Cooper said, explaining the complexities of critical race theory, and the hypocrisy of the ideology. "But if they do have black leadership, they may be racist because they're tokenizing blacks. But if they have a black man that they believe is gifted, and they want to send him to a Bible college – after that man gets done with Bible college, if he comes back to the white-majority church and the white-majority church keeps him for their own, then they could be guilty of racism for holding talent in the white community and not sending it out to the black community. But if that black man comes back afterwards, and they send him back to the black community, it's proof of racism because they don't want to be under black leadership."

As another example of CRT, Cooper cited when left-wing author Ibram Kendi, author of the book "How to Be An Antiracist," said that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett adopted two black children to shield her from accusations of being a racist.

The Christian rocker noted that just 10 years ago, Americans rarely talked about skin color, but "we talk about it all of the time now."

"It has made everything in life seen through a monocausality of the color of your skin," he said in the interview. "It's those kinds of things that I see as a completely separate worldview than Christianity. But it is being imported into the Bible, and then people are using Bible scriptures along with that worldview – but they don't actually go together. They're kind of imposing a wrong worldview with the words of Christ. So, now the words of Christ don't mean the same thing as they historically have meant."

He said that his "woke friends" question his Christian faith if he doesn't march for social injustices because they believe it's a "gospel issue."

Cooper called out Black Lives Matter for wanting to "destroy the nuclear family – that's the opposite of what God has said."

The musician also warned against having the "government take care of more people."

"Well, that's the opposite of what God says. It's the parents' job to govern the children," he said. "That is your mandate from God, and you can't buck against the design of God. You buck against the design of God, it bucks back."

Cooper, who is the author of "Awake & Alive to Truth," sees many of the social justice marches and protests as "performative," and aren't providing real solutions. Instead of marching, Cooper advises, "If you apply the wisdom of Proverbs to your life, you will thrive, and there is nothing that can stop you from flourishing because you are acting within the design of God."

The rock star admitted, "American church did not step up as I believe she should have" in regards to condemning racism in the past.

"And we look back at that and say, 'Man the church missed some big opportunities to be a light to the world – to have stood up during Jim Crow laws and during redlining, and during all of these various things,'" Cooper stated. "Because of that, we don't want to be on the wrong side – we don't want to be on the wrong side of history, and so people I think were kind of going along with a lot of the terminology."

Cooper lamented that it is really hard to have honest conversations these days because "people are ready to fight," but he counters the negativity by praying. "I'm not suggesting I always do a good job of this – but I always do pray that I could be full of the spirit of God in order to be gracious toward someone that I disagree with," he said.

You can read the entire John Cooper interview on Fox News.