Skillet, one of Christian music’s most recognizable bands, is often questioned for touring with secular artists and playing at secular festivals.
In the past, Skillet has appeared alongside bands such as Limp Bizkit, Korn, Metallica, Papa Roach, Rob Zombie, Motionless In White, and Slipknot, to name a few. The Grammy-nominated band is currently finishing up the second leg of its Rock Resurrection Tour, featuring secular bands Theory of a Deadman and Saint Asonia. One of Theory of a Deadman’s most popular songs is titled, “Bad Girlfriend,” and is a sexually explicit song.
“I want to see [Skillet] in concert so bad, but they are touring with other groups that have explicit lyrics in their songs,” one fan recently wrote on social media. “I won’t subject my daughter to that. Hopefully next time they could do a Christian rock tour.”
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So why does a band filled with Christians and whose frontman, John Cooper, just released a book titled, “WIMPY WEAK AND WOKE – How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction,” tour with bands that don’t share its biblical values?
ChurchLeaders was able to witness the answer to that question firsthand while attending a show in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In an arena filled with concertgoers, some holding plastic cups filled with alcoholic beverages and with a faint smell of marijuana popping up from section to section, Skillet took the stage for a little over an hour as they powered through a 15-song set taken from the catalog of albums spanning the band’s 25-year career.
Five songs into the set, before playing the hit song “Hero,” the band paused so that Cooper could tell the audience who his hero is: Jesus Christ.
“I want to dedicate this song to the person who gave me hope when I had no hope at all, gave me a future when I had no future at all,” Cooper said. “You see, even when I was a sinner, he died for me and he took me from death and he resurrected me into life—saved me. I was born again. That is Jesus Christ. My number one hero.”
Cooper’s words were met with a loud applause as the band rifled into the popular 2009 song that has been featured throughout the sports world, including in primetime NFL commercials.
Also during the set, Skillet played a powerful, rock rendition of the traditional hymn “Be Thou My Vision,” singing the verse, “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart / Naught be all else to me, save that thou art / Thou my best thought, by day or by night / Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.”
