Oliver Anthony calls for personal responsibility, revival: 'We don't need our false idols'
Viral country singer Oliver Anthony is calling on Americans to turn back to their roots and give up false idols.
"I'm just here to remind you that we don't need our false idols," Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, said during a speech Tuesday at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference held in London.
"We should no longer rely on politicians who bow down to money to manage our city or our states. We need to find the real leaders everywhere and empower them," Anthony said.
Anthony, whose 2023 hit song, "Rich Men North of Richmond," reached the No.1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, said that American society has become soft.
"Our modern society is [a] convenient, comfortable, fragile, little existence oftentimes carried on the backs of these self-declared nobodies," he said. "And forgive my generalization, but in the modern world, we are so busy idolizing the genuine nothings of society, the self-centered celebrities, spineless politicians, clickbait, social media influencers."
Anthony added that "it seems from my perspective that oftentimes these people live comfortable little lives while many of our real heroes are drug through the mud and never once given a genuine thank you for it."
Anthony, who announced in an Oct. 29, 2024 YouTube video that he was leaving the music industry to focus on a "traveling ministry," also shared his concern about how social media and the digital age are impacting society.
"What is bad is the lack of control and agency we have over these systems, and without realizing it, we are being programmed, and our culture is becoming commodified," Anthony said. "Therefore, the more time we spend on these digital information systems, the more we revert to the means of one of a fixed set of broad internet cohorts. In other words, the more time we spend online, the more commoditized our culture, the more tribal our psychology, and the more vulnerable we become."
A self-described "nobody," the 32-year-old said that America is addicted to screens.
"We currently exist in an age of rapid digital immersion," he said. "The current average American teenager will have spent something like 30,000 hours by the time they are 30 on social media. The average American spends six to nine hours a day staring at devices."
What does give him hope, the former country singer said, is what he witnessed in western North Carolina in 2024 as the locals responded to the flooding and landslides brought on by Hurricane Helene.
"Volunteer veterans with cadaver dogs that I had met with had pulled 15 bodies out of a single pile of debris near the KOA campground in Swannanoa," Anthony said. "The statewide count at that point had to have been well into the hundreds. I believe the number the governor used that day was 28. In fact, there was a reefer truck that sat for two days full of bodies because the morgues were overflowing."
He said what he saw helped to give him hope for the future of the country.
"Volunteers were working 16 hours a day taking supplies on everything from horses to helicopters. It was humanity there in front of my very eyes," Anthony shared. "And it was in that seven days in North Carolina that changed everything for me. It was people saving people."
His new focus, Anthony said, is bringing revival to "rural America," in a mission called The Rural Revival Project, aimed at bringing renewal to forgotten farming towns and communities.
"Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away, Anthony said.
"Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. And so I'll see you on April the 5th in Spruce Pine, North Carolina for the first official gathering. It is now my life's mission to revive rural America one town at a time."
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