by Zaher Alajlani

If you grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s, chances are you may have listened to some of Creed’s songs as a teenager, even if you weren’t a fan of post-grunge. Creed’s hits were all over the radio. Even in Syria, my home country, Creed’s music was very popular. Many boys and girls in my high school loved Scott Stapp and knew his lyrics by heart.

When the band split up in 2004, Stapp continued as a successful solo artist while his bandmates and a new frontman formed Alter Bridge, another successful band. Despite the breakup, Creed’s music managed to endure. To this day, radio stations worldwide continue to play their hits very often.

Over his many years in the public eye, Stapp had his fair share of controversy—from substance abuse problems to on-stage drama and public meltdowns. In his autobiography Sinner’s Creed, he offers a candid account of his struggle. He walks the reader through his life, beginning with a traumatic incident in 2006, when Stapp was suicidal and sucked into a whirlpool of past trauma, addiction, self-doubt, and alcoholism.

Stapp narrates the childhood and adulthood experiences that inspired his art and writing, most of which are unfortunately heartbreaking. He depicts the harrowing universe he once inhabited, one that abandonment, uncertainty, guilt, and untreated depression maimed.

The religious and spiritual imagery in the band’s lyrics is pretty pronounced, and Sinner’s Creed explains why such thematic motifs are integral to Stapp’s artistic approach. This all boils down to his inner turmoil and spiritual struggle. The latter is about finding God as an adult, the same loving God he’d adored as a little boy and was deprived of by a religious fanatic as a teenager.

Stapp’s biological father left the family when he was a child, throwing him, his sisters, and his mother into the callous hands of poverty. That was until his future stepfather—a dentist and a Pentecostal minister—came into his life, first acting as a caring father figure and then becoming a religious fanatic who tormented the young, impressionable Stapp in the name of God. Such anguish, as the book explains, is what inspired some of the greatest rock lyrics ever to be written.

Of his biological father, Stapp says that his “memories of the man are few, but [he] cherish[es] them” (2). In all honesty, the same could be said of Creed’s music. With only four studio albums, Creed may not be one of the most voluminous bands, but it is one whose gripping music and moving lyrics are still dearly cherished by millions of fans.

While Sinner’s Creed is not a sensationalist autobiography with raunchy details about the exploits of an iconic rock star, it is still a forthcoming book. Stapp exhibits remarkable courage in admitting his mistakes and reflecting upon his role in “creating [his] own prison,” to borrow from his lyrics. But there is one fact that Stapp makes clear above all else: His Christian faith was, is, and will always be his anchor. He writes:

In every stage of my journey, [my] passion [for the God of love] never died. I did compromise my principles through acts that were destructive to myself and harmful to others, but I never lost my faith. (viii)

On the one hand, if you are a Creed fan, the book will satisfy your curiosity by telling you the touching stories behind timeless musical masterpieces like “With Arms Wide Open” and “My Own Prison.” On the other, if you are struggling with your faith, Stapp’s memoir will surely offer you a stirring “story of [a] walk with Christ” (vii). In both cases, Sinner’s Creed is guaranteed to leave a strong impression on you, quite like Stapp’s lyrics and baritone voice.

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Zaher Alajlani is a Pushcart-nominated Syrian short-story author, editor, researcher, and translator living between Romania and Greece. His work has been featured in various publications, including Agape Review, Ariel Chart, Bandit Fiction, Active Muse, Altered Reality, Revista Echinox, The Way Back to Ourselves, and The Journal of Romanian Literary Studies.

In addition to being the Prose Editor at Agape Review, he is a contributor to The Way Back to Ourselves and a proofreader for Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory. Zaher has a Ph.D. from the Comparative Literature Department of Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. His research focuses on early modern horror fiction, the relationship between science and religion, morality and meaning, and the 19^th-century mad scientist prototype. He speaks English, Arabic, Romanian, and Greek. Zaher is a member of the Panhellenic Association of Translators and the Association of Fiction Creators in Romania.

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