Report: Prince was conservative Christian said to oppose gay marriage

Special to WorldTribune.com

The provocative, sometimes raunchy music mega-star Prince was also deeply spiritual and reportedly opposed gay marriage, according to a Washington Post commentary piece.

One of the “steamiest pop culture figures in the past quarter-century was a conservative Christian. Religious and spiritual themes ran through a huge amount of his work,” Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein wrote on April 22.

prince-513e084a2fcfbBoorstein cited some of Prince’s lyrics:

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Life” – “Let’s Go Crazy.”

“If God one day struck me blind, your beauty I’ll still see” – “Adore”

“We all have our problems, some are big, some are small. Soon all of our problems, y’all, will be taken by the cross.” – “The Cross”

Prince, who died on April 21 at the age of 57, “even appeared on a lot of playlists created for the U.S. visits of Pope Benedict (2008) and Pope Francis (2015) — yes, playlists for pope trips exist!” Boorstein wrote.

His song “The Pope,” included the line: “You can be the president, I’d rather be the pope. You can be the side effect, I’d rather be the dope.”

The spiritual beliefs of Prince Rogers Nelson, raised a Seventh-day Adventist and later a Jehovah’s Witness — “were rooted in what his biographer Toure called ‘my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ’ as well as a deep fascination with the afterlife and Judeo-Christian scripture, which he was constantly quoting,” Boorstein wrote.

In 2009, Prince noted that he didn’t vote for Barack Obama because “I’m one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And we’ve never voted. That’s not to say I don’t think … President Obama is a very smart individual and he seems like he means well. Prophecy is what we all have to go by now.”

In a 2008 interview with the New Yorker, Prince singled out same-sex marriage as part of the Democratic Party’s notion that “ ‘You can do whatever you want.’ ”

“God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out,” he told the magazine. “He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Boorstein went on to write: “If the idea seems bonkers that the man who shrieked with unbridled sexual energy in the intro of ‘When Doves Cry’ is actually a prude, well, maybe it’s not.”

“Prince intended sexuality to be linked to the worship of God, and he filled his music with classic Christian messages,” the author Toure wrote in 2013 in “I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon,” – “meaning Prince was sexual but, ultimately, very conservative.”