Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping is a radical performance community based in New York City. The Stop Shopping Choir is accompanied by a comic preacher, Reverend Billy, portrayed by performer William Talen. The philosophy of the Church of Stop Shopping surrounds the imminent "Shopocalypse", which assumes the end of humanity will come about through manic consumerism.[1]

The Stop Shopping Choir accompanies Reverend Billy and stages guerrilla theater style actions, singing on the property of the Disney stores,[2] Monsanto facilities,[2] and Trump Tower,[3] among others. In 2007 they were featured in What Would Jesus Buy? a film produced by Morgan Spurlock. They are often considered part of the Culture jamming movement.[4]

The group uses the content from their direct actions to create songs that are performed on concert stages and in cabarets. The director of these shows is church co-founder Savitri D.

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir routinely perform at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in New York City.[5] In 2024 they joined Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their Love Earth tour across the country.[6]

In 2024, George Gonzalez, a sociologist and scholar of religion, published The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism, which is a serious scholarly treatment of the group's quarter-century of arts-based public pedagogy.

Origins of Reverend Billy

The character of Reverend Billy was developed in the early 1990s by actor and playwright William Talen. His family was Dutch Calvinist,[7] from the Christian Reformed Church, a conservative protestant denomination.

Talen grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. He left home at 16, moving east with Charles and Patricia Gaines, a writer and painter who encouraged him as an artist. Talen began to perform his poems and stories, hitch-hiking from Philadelphia to New York to San Francisco.[8]

Talen's chief collaborator in developing the Reverend Billy character was the Reverend Sidney Lanier, a cousin of Tennessee Williams.[7] Lanier was vicar of The St. Clement's in the 1960s, an Episcopal Church in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan.[7] In an effort to increase attendance at St. Clement's, Lanier had torn out the altar and pews, inviting actors to perform scenes from plays by Tennessee Williams and Terrence McNally, and founding the American Place Theater.

Savitri D, church co-founder and theatrical director

Savitri D (née Durkee) is the co-founder and director of the Church of Stop Shopping, as well as Talen's partner.[15] She was born in Taos, New Mexico in 1972 and raised at The Lama Foundation, one of the earliest and longest lasting intentional spiritual communities in the US, founded by her parents, Steven and Barbara Durkee.[16]

Savitri D began dancing and performing at the University of Montana, studied at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and co-founded a dance collective called The Zen Monkey Project.[17] After moving to New York City in 1997, she staged her play SKY/NO SKY at 57 Walker Street.[18]

In 2000, she was a producer at The Culture Project, a theater in the East Village, where Talen was staging early Reverend Billy performances.[8]

The Stop Shopping Choir

The Stop Shopping Choir is a 35-member ensemble that performs an array of original gospel songs in theater performances and alongside Reverend Billy in public spaces during campaigns.[22][23] The choir began accompanying Talen's sermons at concert shows shortly after the September 11 attacks, adding a musical influence to Reverend Billy performances.[8] Led by musical director Nehemiah Luckett,[22] the choir members are volunteers who rehearse weekly at the Lower Eastside Girl's Club in the East Village.[24]

The Choir often write songs that draw attention to the environmental and consumerist campaigns championed by the Church of Stop Shopping. They have accompanied Talen into the lobbies of multinational banks such as JP Morgan Chase or research facilities belonging to

Direct action campaigns

In addition to protest performances throughout a given year, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping have organized various campaigns focused on consumerist or environmental issues, often highlighting a particular company they feel best symbolizes the issue. The group stage actions in public spaces near the targets of their actions, or in the lobbies, halls, and plazas of the building owned by the companies they protest. Their sermons and songs routinely draw the attention of police and security forces assigned to those spaces, leading to arrests and significant media coverage. Talen and Savitri D have been arrested more than 50 times during their actions, though their charges are almost always reduced or dropped.[8]

Filmography

• Culture Jam: Hijacking Commercial Culture, directed by Jill Sharpe.[50]
• Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, by Dietmar Post and Lucia Palacios, produced by Play Loud! Productions.[51]
• Preacher with an Unknown God, 2005 documentary by Rob VanAlkemade, Honorable Mention in Short Filmmaking[52] at the Sundance Film Festival
• The Last Televangelist, series on Free Speech TV.[53][54]

Bibliography

• What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Is in My Store.[56]
• What Would Jesus Buy?: Reverend Billy's Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse.[57]
• The Reverend Billy Project: From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with The Church of Life After Shopping.[58]
• The End of the World.[59]
• The Earth Wants YOU.[60]

Discography

• Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.[61]
• The Shopocolypse. 2008.[62]
• The Declaration of Occupation of NYC.[63][64]
• Earthalujah![65]
• The Earth Wants You.[66]

External links

• Official YouTube channel of Reverend Billy, The Church of Earthalujah and The Stop Shopping Choir