Zack Exley

Interview with Church of Stop Shopping 13 December, 2007

I was living in New York City in 1999 when performance artist Bill Talen started invading Starbucks and other retail chains as wild-eyed, anti-consumerist preacher “Reverend Billy.” I went along once or twice, as we had some mutual friends. I never imagined that the act would persist, let alone grow into a community.

“Supersize me!” director Morgan Spurlock has now made a film about the Church’s Christmas tour from last year called “What Would Jesus Buy.” It’s showing at theaters across the county. As I’ve reported here frequently, many (actual) Christian preachers have been on an anti-consumerist kick for quite some time. (Check out Advent Conspiracy for the best example of anti-consumerism as a broad movement in the church.)

Now, the film is connecting many Christian churches to the Church of Stop Shopping. Imago Dei Church in Portland invited Spurlock over to church for a pre-semon interview (which you can watch here). Our local church in Kansas City has now sent out two emails about the film, as it dovetails nicely with their local version of Advent Conspiracy called “Rethinking Christmas,” and are organizing a viewing this week. I’m pretty sure hundreds of other churches around the country are too. Perhaps a little unexpectedly, no Christians seem to be offended by what could be taken as a parody of their culture (Way to go Christians!).

After I left New York way back in 2000, I kept hearing about Reverend Billy. “Is he still doing that?” I’d ask.

“Yes, and it’s become a real church!” was the answer.

But how did that happen? When I got an email about the film from Savitri D, the director of the Church of Stop Shopping, I asked for an interview and she said OK. So here it is:

Revolution In Jesusland: One thing I’ve heard about, but that didn’t really come across in the film, is that the Church of Stop Shopping has in some ways become a “real church”? Can you tell us about that?

Savitri D: After 9-11 we felt an increasing demand for sincerity from the community. The irony fell away and Reverend Billy began to pastor to a fairly traumatized group of people, many of whom had abandoned “religion.”

We are not Christian but we love Jesus. Can we be a real church if we are not Christian? I don’t know. We gather together and concentrate our efforts on making the world a more just place, and our own actions more just. I think we are praying.

RIJ: Who were the people in the community? Was it a regular audience? The choir? People in the activist community who sought out Billy after 9/11?

SD: Billy and I started going to Union Square everyday after 9/11. Like so many people we didn’t really know where else to go. I was back at work at the theater on September 12 and all that week Billy would come into my office and grab me by the arm and we would run up there. It was a very democratic environment, everyone was talking, and most people were listening (at least in those first few days).

Billy had been preaching for years by then, so his instrument was strong and he was able to articulate what so many of us were feeling: that we, as New Yorkers, had an opportunity to teach the whole world about forgiveness right away. Billy, in his punk rock way, could say this without being sentimental.

How does a community demand something of a person? Well I noticed a lot of people stopping Billy on the street to ask him what he was going to do.

At first he was approached mainly by the younger activists, the bike people, garden people, anti-globalization people but then, increasingly, by more middle class lefties, and finally—and a little less directly—by the ironists and hipsters. Of course we were all asking each other what to do.

But Billy’s answer was simple. He always just said, “Forgive!” And I would shout, “Radically!” over his shoulder. And what really set the whole thing down the path we are on now was the weekly show we put up right away—within just a few weeks of 9/11—just as the bombs started falling on Afghanistan. It was called The Church of Stop Bombing and actually wasn’t a very good show. It was kind of a mess, but it was a way for people to get in the room together and just hope for the best. All kinds of people came to those shows, and many of them are still around. These days, I’d say there are about 300 people in regular attendance.

Just at the time Billy was getting “real,” the choir sort of fell apart and it wasn’t until the autumn of 2002 that we really got the choir going again. Those who returned from the pre 9/11 days found Billy quite changed, more direct, and clearer about his role. I think he had to literally leave the comedic performance of a church behind and start fresh from this realized, sincere position.

RIJ: Have you been surprised by the extent of anti-consumerist organizing inside evangelical churches, like Advent Conspiracy for example? Did you come across that stuff on the tour?

SD: I am heartened by the level of anti-consumerism in the evangelical movement, but not at all surprised. I think Jesus was an anti-consumerist. Of course it is impossible to imagine where this country would be without the amazing work of churches amongst the abolitionists, inside the labor movement, at the helm of the civil rights movement….so its no surprise that the fight against consumerism would happen there too.

I wish there was a way to broadcast the strength and size of that movement to non-Christians, or non-evangelicals. We know that people take things more seriously and are more likely to get engaged if they know lots of other people do too.

We met some wonderful people on our trip across the country, and were housed on several occasions by Christian groups, Evangelicals, Quakers, Catholics. Its encouraging to overcome the largely fabricated divisions between so called progressives and so called conservatives. Obviously there are some key issues where there is a real ideological divide, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon the affinities we do have. That leaves us all paralyzed and isolated in our own particular culture/ideology.

RIJ: The film showed you and Billy feeling that you were voices in the wilderness—that no one was listening. At one point, you were exhausted and said, “I don’t know if anybody hears us—or if they hear us, they so don’t want to hear us.” Did the tour change the way you think about how to change people’s minds and behavior?

SD: One great reason to work within a community, as any active church member will tell you, is that the community holds you up when the going gets tough. The first thing I do when I feel despondent about our work is to turn around and look into the amazing faces of The Stop Shopping Choir.

Being on the road is hard because you are dislocated, you are a stranger in every town, every deli, every rest stop—and you never get to stay long enough to really feel the effect you are having. The report does catch up though, we get emails and phone calls and letters from people who encounter our work -workers and shoppers who are present in stores where we sing or who catch it on the local news, or who hear about it from a friend—and we absolutely feel like we are gaining traction.

The truth is most people sense that something is out of balance in our culture. I have yet to meet an individual who argues FOR more advertising or FOR more shopping—even those who support globalization and the politics that made shopping the central pillar in our economy will mostly agree that the consumerized life is far less satisfying than its promise.