A 2008 interview Prince gave to The New Yorker suggests this “clean, simple approach” left the singer a relatively strict social conservative who held the Bible as authoritative.
“So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this,” he told the magazine, pointing to a Bible. He went on:
But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, “You can do whatever you want.” Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right.
He would repeat the point later in the interview.
When asked about his perspective on social issues — gay marriage, abortion — Prince tapped his Bible and said, ‘God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out,’” adding, “He was, like, ‘Enough.’”
As recently as last year, engineer and producer Joshua Welton told Entertainment Weekly that Prince was leading a “God-focused” life at his Paisley Park home and studio complex. Welton recalled when they met, the two “just stood in the kitchen and talked about Scripture for two hours.”