Activist Reverend Billy: First Book

Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping

Revbilly.com Revbilly.com (Cache) -November 2003

The Reverend Billy is a revivalist preacher who leads the Church of Stop Shopping, an anti-consumerist communion devoted to putting the odd into God. Created by the actor Bill Talen, the Reverend first appeared alongside the sidewalk preachers in Times Square during the Giuliani years, bringing his new post-religious theology to eager crowds. In these pages we go inside the Disney Store on 42nd Street (“the high church of retail”) to witness staged dramas against consumerism that employ 800 neurotic Disney characters with their “reeling eyeballs and sky-cracking grins” as the mise en scène.

We encounter the icon-twisting logic of credit card exorcism performed in front of astonished tourists, and listen to a gospel choir made up of “recovering preachers’ kids” singing anti-Starbucks anthems at the cash register of the $5 latte. We watch as the defense of a community garden is turned into an Off-Broadway hit and join with the Reverend as he preaches love and peace to the crowds that gathered spontaneously in Union Square after the attacks of September 11.

Bill Talen is an actor and an activist who, as the Reverend Billy, has appeared regularly on National Public Radio and has been featured in The New York Times and The Observer. He lives and preaches in New York City.

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printed from Activist Reverend Billy: First Book on 2004-06-23 05:33:02