Katy Perry’s experience with Christianity and churches hasn’t been the best one, and Korn’s Brian Welch has responded to it in his own way.
The rocker took to Instagram and reposted a snippet from a Katy Perry interview. “I grew up with a lot of born-again Christian beliefs. It was like, ‘Do as I say,’ no ifs, ands or buts. I have so many questions, I ask all the questions in the world, and [they] have gotten me to where I’m at now. The curiosity sometimes wasn’t allowed because you had to have faith,” Perry says during the interview.
The pop singer also talks about her own experience in the church and explains why she didn’t feel safe. “I used to sing this song in church called ‘Come As You Are,’ and I feel like sometimes the church does more judging than loving. That’s why it doesn’t feel safe for me sometimes. If I was to come as I am, how would I be accepted? Because this is who I am. I think my mom understands that even more so now than ever. Less judgment, more compassion. More come as you are.”
She adds, “I wrote that song ‘By The Grace Of God’ because I do believe in something much bigger than me and I call that god for me. I’ve been given this gift [of music], but I know that God has his hands on me and I know that sometimes I go through things and I think they’re just too intense. I can’t handle them. then he swoops in and he shows me that it’s his grace that brings me through it.”
Welch, however, didn’t criticize Perry but agreed with her instead. “So true about so many churches, but there’s good ones out there, just like everything else in this world, a mixture of good and bad,” he wrote in the caption of his post.
The guitarist was baptized after leaving Korn in 2005, along with around 20 other members of the Valley Bible Fellowship church in Bakersfield, California, where he had spoken earlier. He chose to be baptized in the Jordan River after feeling he received a divine message.
Although he seemed happy with his new life, Welch later said he may have gone too far with his focus on Christianity. In an interview, he shared: “The crazy thing is I had an experience with something from another dimension. And it wasn’t the religion — going to church and being a good boy — it was, like, I felt something come into my house, and I can’t explain it to this day. But I believe that it was Christ doing something in me. So that was real — that was very real.”
“But yes, I think I went too far with it. And I got obsessed with it, just like I was obsessed with the drugs. I believe I did, for sure. And I had to come out of that and find normalcy, because there’s nothing worse than a freakin’ irritating religious person just shoving it down your throat — there’s nothing worse than that,” the guitarist added.
He has also been preaching that people don’t need to wait until their death to determine if experiencing the presence of God is real.
