John Cooper, frontman of Christian rock band Skillet, opened up about experiencing spiritual abuse within his church of 30 years, according to comments shared on Alisa Childers.
Cooper explained that he and his wife and bandmate, Korey Cooper, have spent the last two years struggling with the fallout from what he described as church authority abuse at the congregation founded by Korey’s father, where the couple had worshipped for three decades.
“The last couple of years without exaggeration our lives have been absolutely devastated and that sounds very dramatic and we’re going to get into it,” Cooper said. “It has been the hardest years of our lives for me outside of my teenage years. My mom passed away and I’ve talked about those things, but I haven’t dealt with this level of just heartache, depression, confusion after this church, what I would call 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 went on to describe how his faith in Jesus remained intact even as his trust in the church community was shaken.
“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.’ And the reason we wanted to come on and share that now is because there’s an epidemic of this happening. It’s happening in all sections of the church. So right now we see it a lot in the charismatic circles.”
Cooper said he had tried for more than two years to resolve the situation privately before deciding to speak publicly.
“I just want those people to understand this is the last thing we wanted to do. We have waited… it’s been over two years. And we’ll get into this later, but I have begged and pleaded my former church to please do a few things to cause us not to have to do this. And the bar got very low. It has ended with upwards of a hundred people who are claiming they have been spiritually abused from this church struggling to find faith.”
He referenced a third-party investigation into the church’s leadership that was commissioned but never publicly addressed.
“There even was a third party investigation eventually. It was hired by the leader of this group of churches. They call him an apostle. So it’s an apostle. I put that in quotes. The apostles, they hired the third party company. The third party did the investigation, came out six months ago with their findings, said this has been a pattern, a longstanding pattern of abuse, recommended that the apostles step down permanently, recommended he go to therapy and said, ‘You guys have got to do work for reconciliation from all these people hurt.'”
According to Cooper, the church leadership has not acted on the investigation’s findings and has instead accused him and his wife of being influenced by malicious forces.
“And it’s been six months and the churches have said nothing. They’ve acted as if it didn’t even happen. So, we’ve done everything that we could do to try to say, ‘Please don’t do this.’ And I will just note for anybody that that is saying, ‘Why are you doing this? It’s so divisive.’ I also want them to know that while we have not said anything publicly, this apostle has publicly from the platform spoken about us as being used by Satan. That our criticisms of his doctrine derived from the enemy from the devil himself.”
Cooper also spoke about the deeply personal nature of the situation, given his close relationship with the church’s leadership.
“We loved our church. We were there for 30 years. Actually, Korey’s been there her whole life. Korey’s dad founded the church. Is still an elder at the church. The apostle is Korey’s brother-in-law. He was my best friend for 30 years. And to be discarded and treated the way we have been treated, you’re dealing with people that you I love them more than I love anybody in the world. They’ve been so good to me. They’ve been the 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 I wouldn’t even imagine an enemy treating me this way. And I don’t know how to reconcile these things.”
Cooper’s account touches on issues that extend well beyond his own congregation. It points to patterns of authority and control that have drawn scrutiny across broader charismatic church networks in recent years.
The church Cooper described operates within a structure tied to the New Apostolic Reformation. This loosely organized movement within charismatic Christianity emphasizes modern-day apostles and prophets holding governing authority over networks of churches. Critics of the movement argue that this model concentrates spiritual power in the hands of a small number of leaders. This often leaves little room for internal checks or accountability when allegations of misconduct surface.
Cooper painted a picture of an authoritarian environment where members were discouraged from questioning leadership decisions. He described the culture as one in which dissent was not tolerated. Those who eventually chose to leave, including his own family, faced public backlash and social isolation from the community they had once considered home.
This pattern is not unique to Cooper’s former congregation. Similar concerns have surfaced in other charismatic and apostolic-led churches in recent months. Former members of these churches have raised comparable allegations of leaders wielding outsized spiritual authority with limited oversight. The recurring theme in these cases centers on a structure where a single leader’s declarations carry near-unquestionable weight. This makes it difficult for congregants to challenge behavior even when independent investigations substantiate their concerns.
The six-month silence following the third-party investigation into Cooper’s church fits into this broader pattern. The report’s findings pointed to a longstanding pattern of abuse and recommended leadership changes. Yet the church’s apparent inaction underscores a recurring criticism of the apostolic governance model: without external checks, even substantiated findings of misconduct may not translate into meaningful institutional change.
