Skillet vocalist and bassist John Cooper and guitarist and keyboardist Korey Cooper have spoken publicly for the first time about what they describe as spiritual abuse at the church they attended and served for close to thirty years, an experience John says pushed him into one of the darkest stretches of his life and shaped much of the band’s new EP, After the Storm.
The couple told their account in a long conversation with Christian author Alisa Childers. According to the Coopers, they grew increasingly uneasy about teachings and practices they associated with the New Apostolic Reformation and about a leadership structure they felt had become authoritarian. When they raised questions about prophecy, spiritual authority and submission to leaders, they say they were labelled rebellious, accused of being used by the devil to damage the Kingdom, and gradually cut off from the community they had helped build.
The fallout landed hardest on Korey, because the conflict ran straight through her own family. Her brother-in-law held the position of apostle at the church and her father remained an elder. The Coopers say that for roughly two years they were the subject of public insinuations and untruths while members were encouraged to distance themselves from them. “It destroyed our whole family, our friendships, and everything we built over 30 years. It has been absolutely brutal,” John said.
What he describes as the hardest part was not the sense of betrayal itself but losing confidence in his own judgement. When people he had known for three decades kept telling him he was being used by the devil, he began to wonder whether they might be right. He has said the experience made him feel as though he were losing his grip on what was true. In that environment, questioning leadership was framed as questioning God, which he now recognises as a hallmark of high-control groups.
John, who had struggled with anger and depression as a teenager, says those difficulties returned forcefully during this period. Reading scripture and praying became hard. At the lowest point he could not find words of his own, so he turned to historic written prayers from the Puritan, Reformed and Eastern Christian traditions, and narrowed his horizon to a single hour at a time. He would set an alarm for fifty-nine minutes, and when it sounded he would repeat the same prayers and ask for enough grace to get through one more hour.
One of those prayers asked that he be shown his own faults before being consumed by the urge to condemn the people who had hurt him. He has been candid that he wanted them to face everything he felt they deserved, and equally candid about the uncomfortable conclusion he reached: that asking for justice without mercy for others meant accepting the same standard for himself. He credits that realisation with beginning to loosen the resentment.
He has been careful to separate forgiveness from reconciliation. Letting go of the desire for revenge, he says, does not mean pretending nothing happened, automatically restoring trust, or returning to a situation that remains harmful. He still does not consider the leadership of his former congregation safe, and does not want a relationship with them. He has also said the experience changed how he listens to people who begin questioning their faith after being hurt by a church. His own doctrinal convictions have not shifted, but he now hears those stories with more compassion.
All of it fed into the music. After the Storm is a six-track independent EP due on October 9th, 2026, produced by David Cowell and Korey Cooper, with songs including Scream and Lift Me Up. John Cooper has been clear that he does not want listeners to treat the record purely as a statement about his former church. He would rather people bring their own difficult season to it, whatever that happens to be, and his framing of the record is that some pain arrives as a silent scream, and that none of it goes unnoticed.
After the Storm is out October 9th, 2026.
Source: Alisa Childers YouTube channel.
