Oliver Anthony is still trying to figure things out

'Rich Men North of Richmond' was important, but so are all those verses in his worn-out study Bible

Raise your cyber-hand if you were among the millions of people who visited YouTube — 126 million clicks and rising over the past seven months — to watch the original Oliver Anthony video for “Rich Men North of Richmond.”

This viral blue-collar anthem was, of course, viewed by the chattering classes as a political statement packed with rural symbolism that struck a chord with all of those angry Americans who tend to vote for Orange Man Bad (#ShockedShocked).

Actually, the brand of populism woven into that song was much more complex than that. The opening byte of pain in the lyrics was especially powerful:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

The key for me was that, from the beginning, Anthony started posting personal smartphone videos talking about what was going on in his head and in his life. After working through some of that, I knew that I wanted to write a national “On Religion” column about this phenomenon.

Yes, it’s safe to say that this was a signal from a corner of America that the leaders of mainstream mass culture tend to avoid. At the same time, brand-name organized religion hasn’t been doing a good job reaching blue-collar Americans, either. Here is some of that column:

"The song was immediately politicized, even though there have always been country songs with singers lamenting the state of their lives and the state of America," said David Watson, a theologian and country-music fan. He is academic dean of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, near a Rust Belt poverty zone with historic ties to Appalachia.

"This song is a lament and there's no way around the class element here. He's saying that the rich are living it up and I'm forced to grind it out." …

It would appear … that this hillbilly songwriter is — to use a popular research term — a "nothing in particular" believer, one without ties to organized religion. This is precisely the kind of American that many church leaders are struggling to understand.

"There's a strong spiritual yearning in this music and in his story," said Watson. "While many of our churches today claim that they're trying to be 'seeker friendly,' I'm not sure they're ready to welcome this kind of seeker."

As my former GetReligion colleague Ryan Burge has noted, the press has focused plenty of attention on the niche inside the “nones” (religiously unaffiliated Americans) that offers a white-collar atheist or agnostic worldview.

Meanwhile, Burge believes that the larger “nothing in particular” crowd has received little ink, in part because it is “one of the most educationally and economically disadvantaged groups in the United States today."

This is also a growing slice of the population, with one in 20 Americans becoming "NIPs" during the past decade. While Protestants, at 40%, are the largest flock in American religion, the "nothing in particular" crowd is the second largest, at nearly 20%. Catholics are close behind at 18%.

Is Anthony in that NIP crowd or has he privately found a church home?

In a video posted just before “Rich Men North of Richmond” took over YouTube, Anthony made the first of many insightful comments about his own religious pilgrimage:

"I spent a long time being an angry little agnostic punk. … I had sort of perverted what my vision of God was, because I looked at the religion of man as God and not God Himself. But there is a Divine Creator who loves you and sometimes it takes falling down on your knees and getting ready to call things quits before it becomes obvious that He's there. But He's always there."

Anthony turned out to be the kind of guy who takes his worn-out study Bible with him for support, even during his revealing YouTube visit with legions of Joe Rogan listeners.

Meanwhile, the whole world kept listening to “Rich Men North Of Richmond” (audiences in Ireland shouted the lyrics while singing along during a recent Anthony concert).

But, for those with ears to hear, that wasn’t the only song that opened a window into his soul. Check out the opening of “I Want To Go Home.”

If it weren't for my old dogs and the good Lord
They'd have me strung up in the psych ward
'Cause every day livin' in this new world
Is one too many days to me

Son, we're on the brink of the next world war
And I don't think nobody's praying no more
And I ain't sayin' I know it for sure
I'm just down on my knees

Begging, Lord, take me home
I just wanna go home
I don't know which road to go
It's been so long

The gravel-voiced singer did go home, but not by vanishing in a stairway-to-heaven kind of way.

In the fall, Anthony and his wife, Tiffany, welcomed their third child. Then, in January, he holed up in an old church in Georgia (with old-school microphones and natural echo) and recorded an album before heading out on the road (including overseas gigs). He also signed with a professional agent.

I would argue that religious leaders who are interested in rural and blue-collar America need to keep paying attention to this 30-something troubadour, and not because there is a national election coming up. There are signs that his God-haunted approach to roots music has legs.

Recently, he stuck his smartphone in window in his tour bus and sent another message “to all my friends and family.” Wearing a silicone “Jesus” wristband, he talked about dealing with lawyers, people trying to rip off his songs, having to worry about tour t-shirts and trying to keep his ticket prices close to $25.

More populism, in other words, but also big changes at the personal level.

Anthony is continuing to wrestle with the big question: Why has his music affected so many people? He still worries that American has gone off a cliff and is in some kind of “free fall.”

Why trying to “get in people’s heads,” it’s clear he is also thinking about what is ahead for his family and his children. He noted: "Life is such a short thing. … What kind of legacy are we leaving behind for the people who come after us? It says in Ecclesiastes that even the generations after us will be forgotten by the generations after them. Like, this is just a cycle that we're living in."

Here’s the broader context of that Old Testament reference:

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.

There is no remembrance of earlier things;

And also of the later things which will occur,

There will be for them no remembrance

Among those who will come later still.

If that wasn’t sobering enough, Anthony opened his marked-up New International Version and turned to the Gospel According to St. Matthew, chapter 10. It’s hard not to think of this passage — viewers could read it on screen in the video — as a commentary on the past few months of his suddenly chaotic life.

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 

Anthony then jumped to verse 26:

“So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father …

At that point the smartphone fell over (again) and Anthony signed out — promising to record more messages in the future.

Millions of Americans are listening to this guy. Religious leaders who worry about the hearts and minds of “nothing in particular” believers may want to join them.