Korn co-founder and guitarist Brian “Head” Welch has issued a strong condemnation of organized religion, stating in a new video message that it “is corrupting this world” and has been “for countless centuries.”
On Sunday, November 2, Welch posted a two-minute clip to his social media titled: “Religious people will pile guilt on you… But Christ is different.” In the video, the guitarist, who famously left Korn in 2005 after a religious conversion, elaborated on his long-held distinction between religion and a personal relationship with Christ.
Welch characterized organized religion as a “spirit of control” that pushes people away from faith.
“Religion and religious people will pile on you — loads and loads of guilt,” Welch said in the clip. “They tower over you with their self-righteousness to make you feel that you are way beneath them in order to keep you in that spirit of control over your life. I’ve seen it countless times. It’s a cancer to spirituality and chases so many people away from even the thought of a relationship with Christ.”
He then contrasted this by defining his own faith as a “heart-to-heart relationship” based on kindness and empowerment, not control.
“Now, Christ, on the other hand, is a real heart-to-heart relationship,” he explained. “It’s your heart connected spiritually in union with Christ’s heart. He leads you to himself by kindness while acknowledging your flaws. He will definitely ask by leading you spiritually to lay down some things… It’s about getting the things in your life out… so that you can have a healthier form of existence on this planet.”
He added: “Christ empowers us, through his spirit, to live a better life… And that’s what grace is — it’s the empowerment of God through the spirit that gives us the ability to do this.”
This video message expands on themes Welch has discussed for years. In an April interview on the Stand Up Dude podcast, he emphasized that a “personal daily walk with Christ” was essential, stating that just “going to church on Sunday, it’s not enough, in my opinion, for what Jesus died for.”
During that same podcast, Welch spoke on how this personal relationship helped him overcome severe dr*g and alcohol addiction, filling a void that worldly vices could not.
“I was in such a dark place where I wanted my life to be over. I wanted to sleep and never wake up,” Welch admitted. “And meeting God and learning that God is love, it started to fill that place, the empty place in me that the dr*gs and the alcohol were trying to fill. And so it was like — sometimes I describe it as the best high I ever felt. It was God’s love entering, when I opened my heart.”
Welch rejoined Korn in 2013 and has been balancing his roles in the band and as a public figure of faith ever since. He concluded his recent video by noting, “there is a lot of people waking up to the true fact of relationship.”
