Reverend Billy: Repent, New York!



(Photo by Arnoldius)

Although Reverend Billy’s is now the “Amen!” heard round the world, he is still most closely associated with the sidewalks of New York.

In fact, without the inspiration of his New York City mentor (the Reverend Sidney Lanier, then-vicar of St. Clements in Hell’s Kitchen), there might have been no Reverend Billy as we know him today.  It was Lanier who helped actor Bill Talen to direct his considerable theatrical talent towards evangelizing Manhattan’s masses.  Together, Lanier and Talen created a character which Wikipedia describes as “a hybrid of street preacher, arguably Elvis, and televangelist called Reverend Billy.”

Some distinctly New York causes that Reverend Billy and his Church of Life After Shopping (now Church of Earthalujah) have undertaken are the support of Coney Island’s amusement parks, the preservation of Union Square’s public park, and the protests against the Disney Store on Times Square.  These causes reflect this portion of Talen’s “Statement of Belief”:  We forget that we share many resources, public spaces, libraries, information, history, sidewalks, streets, schools that we created laws and covenants and governments to protect us, to support us, to help us…  The subjugation of these resources and these laws to the forces of the market demands a response.

Because of beliefs like this, Reverend Billy has also focused upon “exposing the relationship between unsustainable consumption and climate change.”  While other preachers might condemn a company like Victoria’s Secret for all-too-obvious reasons, Talen instead condemns it for its dirtiest secret of all – the fact that the millions of Victoria’s Secret catalogs that are distributed each week inevitably end up in landfills.  The good Reverend also points out (in strident tones) that the supplier for these catalogs is the International Paper Company, which is known for its clear-cutting of Canadian boreal forests.

Therefore, Reverend Billy is not about to let New Yorkers (or anyone else) forget that there is most definitely a heavy price to pay for rampant consumerism (as well as for what he calls its “twin” -  militarism).

And that price may be as high as the heavens themselves…  

Resources

http://www.revbilly.com/about-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverend_Billy_and_the_Church_of_Life_After_Shopping

http://revbilly.com/press/2007/11/what-would-jesus-buy

http://revbilly.com/campaigns/ecologically-sustainable-futures

Copyright August 28, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved