Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir
Repent, brothers and sisters, for the sin of rampant consumerism! Repent, for the Shopocalypse is near!
Reverend Billy is the creation of Bill Talen, an activist and performance artist from New York City. As head of the Church of Stop Shopping, Billy tours with the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir and preaches a message of revival — revival of the days when local merchants were the way people shopped, and when big box retail chains weren’t shutting down main streets all across America and around the world. Borrowing the style of charismatic televangelists, Talen carries the word of the God that is Not a Product forth into the hostile environments of mega-malls and Wal-Mart Supercenter parking lots. He has also been known to exorcise Starbucks cash registers.
If you’re at all concerned with keeping small businesses alive in the face of the big-box juggernaut, Reverend Billy should at least be good for a laugh and a nod of agreement. If you’re of a more activist mindset… well, I understand he could use a few good tenors in his choir.
(Props: AnomalousNYC’s photo entitled Can I get an Amen?)
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Reverend Billy, activism, globalization, consumerism, Wal-Mart, big box retail, humor, protest, televangelists, WTF
Sunday should be a day of rest, everyone needs to stop shopping on Sunday ,so that others can enjoy a day of rest. Children all across the world,need this day to spend with their mothers and fathers. Commercialism is ruining our world.
Comment by Tony Lohnes — September 29, 2006 @ 6:23 pm