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According to Teri VanHorn of Addicted to Noise, an online rock magazine, the members of p.o.d. once found themselves recording in a studio next to Marilyn Manson, the self-dubbed Antichrist Superstar. Did the day-and-night bands get along? "We got to hang out with [Manson] and meet the rest of [his] band," Wuv said. "That was pretty neat."

Though many Christians might not find it "neat" to hang out with Marilyn Manson, the famous 19th-century missionary C. T. Studd probably would approve: "Some wish to live within the sound of church and chapel bell. I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell."

The lyrics to "My Own Prison" ("I hear a thunder in the distance / See a vision of a cross / I feel the pain that was given / On that sad day of loss") quickly made fans ask, "Is Creed a Christian band?" Lead vocalist and co-lyricist Scott Stapp disavows that label on the band's Web site (www.creednet.com): "No, we are not a Christian band. A Christian band has an agenda to lead others to believe in their specific religious beliefs. We have no agenda!"

Still, Spin magazine declares that all four members of Creed are Christians. (Bassist Brian Marshall left the band since that interview.) And the band's lyrics drip with biblical imagery: "golden streets," "step inside the light," "souls are lost." Creed's songs tackle serious themes such as sin and forgiveness; they avoid violence, sexual degradation, and obscenity (except for one "God d—"). On the road, band members chide each other for using the F-word. Open Creed's CDs, and under "The band would like to thank," the first name you read is "God." Lead vocalist Scott Stapp's arm sports a large, tattooed cross, and the singer named his son Jagger—not after the Rolling Stones' front man but for its definition in a book of baby names: "One who carries a message sent by God."

Stapp grew up in a conservative Florida Pentecostal home (no rock records, other than those by Elvis, allowed) and left home at 17. Stapp explains that he has not "abandoned those [childhood Christian] beliefs, [but is] just searching for where they fit into my life."

That searching apparently has led to universalism, evidenced in this quote from creednet.com: "Who are we to say that being a Christian is the only way to heaven?" One popular Creed song, "Higher," sounds like it celebrates heaven ("Can you take me higher? / To the place where blind men see") but really refers to lucid dreaming, an altered state learned from Hindu monks. Nor would most evangelicals rejoice that Creed lent songs to the soundtracks of the horror films Halloween H2O and Scream 3.

View Creed, then, not as a Christian band but as a God-haunted band.

"I am haunted by my past," Stapp says on CreedOnline.com. "I'm haunted by God. … I believe in God because it's what I've been told my entire life. So there's a conflict in me … I'm not preaching; I'm not trying to get people to believe in Christianity. And a lot of the songs are me trying to figure out if I believe in it at all."

Creed's sound is reminiscent of (some say a clone of) Pearl Jam, and its stage show boasts Metallica-style pyrotechnics. But Creed's lyrics stand far apart from those of, say, Limp Bizkit, which recorded a song that features the F-word 46 times. Stapp explained to Alternative Press: "I've learned how to write and got the poetic mind from Psalms and Proverbs. And that's where a lot of my songwriting references come from—so when I'm trying to relate a point to someone, when I'm trying to paint a picture with words, it's biblical although I'm not even thinking about it."

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January 8 2001, Vol. 45, No. 1