The People’s Revival

How Being a Traditional Skinhead Shaped My Christianity

Recognition — The Roots Run Deeper Than the Rumors

Let me say it plain, without apology: I came up in the traditional skinhead world — the real one, the working-class one, the anti-racist one, the boots-on-the-ground brotherhood that predates the hijacking of the look by fascists and failures.

I’m not talking about the shaved-head theater kids who discovered hate as a hobby.

I’m talking about the old-line SHARP and trad crews, the ones who knew:

Skinhead is Jamaican first. Skinhead is working class always. Skinhead is unity, reggae, ska, and soul. Skinhead is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with whoever’s got callused hands and a hungry family.

My education wasn’t from seminary halls or megachurch pulpits.

My education was:

Dancehalls, back alleys, union bars. Punks, Rastas, welders, fry cooks, immigrants, and misfits. The gospel as survival, not ceremony.

And that does something to you.

It rewires your Christianity.

It baptizes you in reality, not ritual.

It teaches you early that what most churches call “Christianity” is often nothing more than middle-class comfort dressed up in Bible verses.

But the Christianity I found through the working poor — Black, Brown, White, immigrant, native — was raw, honest, unpolished, and real.

Revelation — The Brotherhood That Saved My Faith

Being a traditional skinhead taught me two things no preacher ever had the guts to say:

1. Racism is a luxury of people who’ve never struggled.

When you’ve worked a line job with Mexicans, broken down cars with Black friends, shared cigarettes behind a warehouse with Eastern Europeans, eaten food cooked by aunties whose names you can’t pronounce — you learn quickly that the enemy is never the man beside you.

It’s the one above you.

The worker’s world is a world of shared burdens, not tribal boundaries.

Rent rises the same for all of us.

Bosses exploit all of us.

Landlords fear none of us.

And the police treat us all like problems first and people second.

2. Solidarity is holy.

Not poetic.

Not metaphorical.

Holy.

You learn to watch a man’s hands, not his skin.

His heart, not his heritage.

His character, not his color.

You learn that the real measure of someone is whether they stand with you when it’s dark, when it’s dangerous, when the cops roll up or the paycheck runs out.

And when you see people of every color protecting each other, feeding each other, fighting for each other —

that will preach louder than any church sermon.

Christ said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

On the streets, a peacemaker isn’t a gentle soul whispering “let’s all get along.”

A peacemaker is the one standing in the middle saying:

“Not today. Not here. Not to him.”

That’s what I saw.

That’s what shaped me.

That’s where my Christianity sharpened its teeth.

Response — Why Working-Class Solidarity IS the Gospel

A Christianity that doesn’t break down racial walls is not Christianity.

It’s country-club religion in a Jesus costume.

Christ built a movement on:

fishermen farmers tax collectors zealots the poor the outcasts the ones Rome ignored

In other words:

Christ built His Kingdom on the very people modern churches look down on.

My trad skinhead upbringing taught me something the American church forgot:

The gospel is supposed to be a working-class revolution of love.

Not a culture war.

Not a purity contest.

Not a political weapon.

A revolution of solidarity —

where the Mexican dishwasher, the Black forklift driver, the white roofer, and the Haitian nurse stand as kin before God, refusing to let the empire divide them.

Because Babylon always divides to conquer.

But the Kingdom unites to restore.

Traditional skinhead life taught me the Sermon on the Mount before it taught me to Skank.

It taught me that the Light doesn’t hide.

That courage is communal.

That justice is practical.

That love is a verb with steel-toed boots.

And here’s the truth nobody likes to admit:

Working-class interracial solidarity is closer to the original church than anything happening in America’s megachurches today.

That early church — the one we romanticize —

looked like a union hall more than a cathedral.

It looked like a potluck of cultures, not a monoculture of fear.

It looked like SHARPs before it looked like suburban evangelicals.

The Charge — Boots on, Heads Up, Light On

If your Christianity can’t survive diversity, poverty, or the smell of sweat —

then it’s not Christianity.

If your gospel collapses the moment someone from another background walks into the room —

then your gospel is too small.

But if you’ve ever stood shoulder-to-shoulder with people from everywhere,

if you’ve ever seen love stronger than fear,

if you’ve ever fought for your brother without asking what he believes or where he’s from —

then you already know the Kingdom.

You’ve already touched the Light.

You’ve already lived the gospel most Christians only read about.

We are the working class.

We are the ones Christ built His church on.

We are the ones empire fears.

And to the brothers and sisters still holding the line —

boots laced, hearts open, racism rejected, solidarity unbroken —

hear me:

You are closer to God than the comfortable will ever understand.

And the world we’re building?

It looks a lot like Revelation.

Now let’s build something better.