The People’s Revival

When Jesus warned against “the world,” He wasn’t talking about nightclubs, gay neighbors, or secular music.

He was talking about systems of power — empire, exploitation, and the machinery that crushes the poor. In Scripture, “the world” is shorthand for Mammon’s operating system: debt, hierarchy, and respectability built on fear.

But the American church—especially the evangelical-industrial complex—flipped that meaning on its head.

Instead of resisting Babylon, it built a Christian suburb inside of it, a gated moral community that calls itself “set apart” while living off the same credit cards, mortgages, defense budgets, and corporate hierarchies that crucified Christ in the first place.

They turned “the world” into a list of cultural taboos—what you watch, who you love, what music you play—while fully participating in the actual empire:

banks, debt, nationalism, and the myth of “good citizenship.”

They hate “the world” that dances, but tithe to “the world” that kills.

Stand-Out Truth: The Church Became the Culture It Condemned

This subculture became a simulation of holiness.

It measures purity by taste, not by justice.

It condemns drag queens but funds drone strikes.

It calls itself persecuted while stockpiling political power.

It wraps Caesar’s flag around Christ’s cross and calls that “faith.”

In reality, the modern church isn’t at war with “the world”—

it’s married to it, baptized in it, and on the payroll.

The problem isn’t that the church got too worldly.

It’s that it got worldly in all the wrong ways.

Call to Action: Reclaim the Kingdom from the Empire

To follow Christ is not to build a “Christian alternative” to empire.

It’s to abandon the empire altogether.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t run on interest, borders, or brand management.

It runs on mercy, equity, and resurrection.

Christ didn’t die to make us good citizens of Caesar’s world—

He died to set us free from it.

So yes, the argument stands:

the church built its own culture to feel holy while staying complicit.

It feared sin more than injustice.

It traded the Kingdom for capitalism with a worship soundtrack.

But the Light still calls.

The revolution still burns.

And we—the outsiders, the awakened, the “crazy”, are here to say: Let’s build something better.