No More Religious Hard Sell : Heavy metal: Stryper, which built a reputation as a Christian band and plays Sunday at Pacific Amphitheatre, is switching focus from ministry to music.

Amps? Check.

Microphones? Check.

Guitars and strings? Check, double-check.

Box of Bibles? Maybe.

As Stryper gets organized for a fall campaign of touring, guitarist Oz Fox thinks that he probably will bring along that last bit of heretofore standard Stryper equipment. This time, though, the Bibles will stay backstage. The Orange County rock band that gained national attention and impressive album sales by setting Gospel messages to heavy metal music won’t be throwing the Book at its fans anymore.

And the old Stryper custom of tossing Bibles into the audience isn’t all that has changed. Fans who hear the band’s new album, “Against the Law,” will be struck by a tougher sound--and by the complete absence of references to God, Jesus or any element of the born-again theology that previously had dominated the band’s lyrics and message.

With wind chimes gently clinking above their heads, Fox and Stryper’s singer, Michael Sweet, sat last week in a

pleasant back-yard patio at fellow member Robert Sweet’s house in Buena Park, talking about Stryper’s revamped approach (Stryper plays Sunday at the Pacific Amphitheatre, second-billed to Dio on a five-band heavy metal program).

They mentioned several motivations for Stryper’s move toward the secular. After six years as musical preachers, the band members had lost some of their old missionary zeal. What’s more, they were tired of being typecast as a “Christian rock” band and therefore written off by a large segment of the rock-loving population. Most of all, they just felt the need to try something different.

Throwing Bibles to the audience “is just something we feel we’ve done enough of,” Fox said. The big stage lighting displays saying “Jesus” won’t be there anymore, either.

But if Stryper’s music and stage show have changed, its beliefs have not. Fox said he is as ready as ever to promote a Christian message among rock fans. But now he will wait for them to seek it, rather than throw it in their faces, as Stryper did in its old Bible-hurling custom.

“We still have cases of those Bibles that we never threw,” said Fox, 29, an earnest talker with a trim beard, a long cascade of dark hair and a flaming shoulder tattoo that bears the title of Stryper’s million-selling 1986 album, “To Hell With the Devil.”

“If there’s someone I talk to after the show that wants one . . . “

Michael Sweet probably won’t be using between-song breaks to talk about the band’s religious convictions. He said he isn’t sure yet just what he’ll say on stage.

“We’re going to work in some of our old tunes that tell about God and Christ. We’re not going to be ashamed of that and run from that,” said Michael Sweet, a tall, dark-haired 27-year-old who turned up in a T-shirt, shorts and a KNAC baseball cap; like Fox, he dispensed with any hard-rocker show of attitude during the interview. “(Stryper’s fans) know what we stand for,” he added. “If they want to know about God, they can come to us and talk about it.”

When Stryper emerged in 1983, the four members--Fox and Michael Sweet on guitars, Sweet’s older brother Robert on drums, and Tim Gaines on bass--it was most unusual to hear a reverential message coming from a band playing heavy metal, a medium populated mostly by libertines and hell-raisers.

So Stryper got a good deal of attention. It did well with “Soldiers Under Command” from 1985, the platinum-selling “To Hell With the Devil,” and 1988’s “In God We Trust,” which earned a gold record for sales of more than 500,000. But the band still hasn’t broken into the top echelon of arena headliners. When Stryper goes on tour after the Pacific Amphitheatre show, it will begin by headlining clubs, then will hook up with first-billed Ratt and third-billed Vixen as part of a three-month arena-touring package.

“In some ways, (the attention Stryper got as a Christian band) worked to our advantage. In other ways, it was a disadvantage, as far as being labeled the Christian boys of rock ‘n’ roll,” Michael Sweet said. “There were people who might have been into us if they hadn’t heard that term, ‘Christian band.’ But it turned them off.”

During its last tour, in 1988-89, Stryper began to chafe--not against Christian teaching, but against the expectation that its music had to be devoted to spreading the Gospel.

“There were a lot of people who were pressuring us to be that way, to have that same kind of image, to sing about the same kinds of things,” Fox said. “To tell you honestly, we kind of got burned out on it. It got to the point where I, myself, felt that even though we were trying to convey (religious fervor) on stage, it wasn’t (there). I wasn’t happy. I guess I got tired of the same old thing all the time. We (changed) to refresh ourselves, to have something to look forward to.”

Except for some particularly astute politicians, it isn’t easy for people in the public eye to maintain credibility after changing, or at least moving away from, a strongly stated position. And Stryper wasn’t a band to mince words when it came to evangelizing.

Lines like “He is our God, Creator of all/Unless you accept Him, you’ll continue to fall,” from “The Writings on the Wall,” may have been zealous expressions of belief, but most people with different ideas about spiritual matters probably would have found them strident, dogmatic and dismissive of any other concept of the divine.

“We felt that was the right thing to do, and we did it,” Fox said.

(Michael Sweet cut in with a mock-incredulous tone of voice: “Wait a minute--we weren’t brainwashed?”)

Now, as Stryper thinks a different approach is in order, some critics well may charge that the new approach is sheer opportunism and expedience, an abandonment of principles to grab for a wider audience.

“That’s what they may think,” Fox said with a verbal shrug. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with change.”

Michael Sweet said that some of the band’s longtime backers have been put off by its switch to non-religious themes. “I think a lot of Christian people felt abandoned,” including “friends who have helped us spiritually through the years, Christian people who were an influence to us.” In fact, he said, the title song of “Against the Law” is aimed partly at those who wanted to shape the band according to an image, or “law” of their own.

“A lot of Christians get stuck in this little box and have no vision of what’s out there in the world. They feel everyone should dwell in their little box,” Fox said. “But when you’re Christian, you’re free to do whatever you want to do, as long as you continue to follow Christ and stay out of sin.”

It isn’t as if Stryper has flung aside the cross to exploit such typical metal-fantasy topics as easy sex and casual rebellion. Michael Sweet said the band is determined to continue making a “positive” statement. Among the album’s strongest songs are “Not That Kind of Guy,” in which Sweet (a married man, like all the members of Stryper except brother Robert) gives the brushoff to a groupie’s propositions. “Caught in the Middle” is a fast and stormy warning against the emptiness of the hedonistic, materialistic life. “Two Bodies (One Mind One Soul)” focuses on the effort and commitment required to sustain a relationship over the long haul--a refreshing change from the usual hard-rock focus on infatuation at first sight or after-the-breakup melancholy.

Musically, Stryper abandoned the polished, pop-metal approach that often recalled the fussy studio gloss of Boston and went for a tougher, more physical sound.

“It’s more of a simple, rock ‘n’ roll idea,” Fox said. “More along the lines of what we were raised on, what we went through our teens with. We were always real picayunish about things. This album, we just loosened up.”

Along with all the other changes, Stryper now has a new manager--Gold Mountain Management, which is headed by Danny Goldberg, one of the music industry’s leading free-speech advocates. Until about six months ago, the band had been managed by Janice Sweet, Michael and Robert’s mother.

While she had encouraged Stryper’s move into Christian rock, Michael said, she supports the new direction. Now, he said, his mother is devoting herself to a musical career of her own, in a mother-daughter singing duo with his sister, Lisa Sweet.

“She believes in us, she understands and she knows we’re still Christians,” Michael Sweet said of his mother. “She knows what we want to do--get the focus back on us as a band instead of as a ministry.”

The goal, Michael Sweet said, is “to relate to more people than we’ve ever related to. Mainly we want people to open their eyes to us as a band and understand that we are a band first. We’re not freaks, we’re not fanatics, we’re not weirdos. We’re a rock band. Let the focus be music. And if that happens, naturally we’re going to sell a lot more records.”

Dio, Stryper, Love/Hate, Dogs D’Amour and Cold Sweat play Sunday starting at 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $22 to $26.95. Information: (714) 634-1300.