Skillet’s John and Korey Cooper Open Up About Spiritual Abuse That Left Them ‘Struggling Just To Hold On to Faith’

John and Korey Cooper of the band Skillet are recovering from spiritual abuse they say they experienced in their church of 30 years, which was founded by Korey’s father and was the only church she had ever been a member of. In an emotional conversation with Alisa Childers, the Coopers shared that they were so traumatized they have struggled to pray and to read the Bible. Nevertheless, they are still clinging to Jesus and are slowly healing. “The last couple of years, without exaggeration, our lives have been absolutely devastated,” said John, explaining that his wife typically doesn’t do interviews and that her presence with him on the podcast “carries some weight.” John said that the past couple of years have been the hardest of his life apart from his teen years. “I haven’t dealt with this level of just heartache, depression, confusion,” he said, which resulted from “what I would call [a] church abuse situation, spiritual abuse, church authority abuse.” “The last couple of years, we’ve been struggling just to hold on to faith, you know,” he continued. “I can say I never gave up on Jesus. I never questioned whether Jesus was real, but it has been like, ‘Jesus, I need you to meet me every day because I don’t know where I belong. I don’t know where you are right now. I don’t understand what has happened to us.’” John and Korey Cooper Talk to Alisa Childers About Their Experience With Spiritual Abuse John Cooper is the frontman of the Grammy-nominated, Dove Award-winning rock band Skillet. His wife, Korey Cooper, is the band’s rhythm guitarist and keyboardist. They joined apologist Alisa Childers, of the Christian band ZOEgirl, to speak publicly in-depth about what they describe as spiritual abuse over the past two years. The Coopers experienced this abuse, they said, at the church they attended for 30 years, a church that Korey’s father founded and where he is still an elder. It is also a church the Coopers’ brother-in-law leads as an “apostle.” They did not name him in the interview but generally referred to him as the “apostle.” John said the apostle had been his best friend. The Coopers were so close with the apostle’s family, that their will specified the apostle and his wife would have custody of the Coopers’ kids if John and Korey died suddenly. “He was my best friend for 30 years. And to be discarded and treated the way we have been treated,” said John, “you’re dealing with people that, I love them more than I love anybody in the world. They’ve been so good to me. It’s been the best years of my life. And also, I feel like I’m being discarded and abused in a way that I wouldn’t even imagine an enemy treating me.” “And I don’t know how to reconcile these things,” he said. “And it puts you into a mental place where I had a break with reality.” Part of the reason why the Coopers are sharing their story is out of the hope that it helps others who might be in similar situations. “There’s an epidemic of this happening. It’s happening in all sections of the church,” said John. “So right now, we see it a lot in the Charismatic circles, but it’s not limited to Charismatic circles…it can happen in any sort of situation when you have a pyramidal structure of authority or some sort of chosen leader or anointed leader or something like that.” RELATED: Who Is Apostle Kathryn Krick, and Why Are People Raising Alarms? John and Korey Cooper of the band Skillet are recovering from spiritual abuse they say they experienced in their church of 30 years, which was founded by Korey’s father.Click to Post