What Would Jesus Buy?
With Christmas shopping right around the corner, this edgy new documentary merges "Christian" forms with an anti-consumerist message.
by Brett McCracken | posted 11/14/2007
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"The Shopocalypse is coming! Who will be $aved? Let me exorcise your credit cards! Changellujuah!"
So go the pithy exhortations of "Reverend Billy"—the charismatic, feather-ruffling rebel at the center of the new documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? The film, which opens in limited release this Friday, takes a unique look at the epidemic of over-consumption in America, most egregiously evident during the Christmas shopping season—which begins in earnest next week. Reverend Billy and his "Church of Stop Shopping" are on a mission to apply the WWJD ethos to our shopping habits—forcing audiences to consider the implications (for themselves and for the world) of what they consume.
Lest the name confuse you, it should be made clear: Reverend Billy is not an ordained minister and doesn't even call himself a Christian. The preacher persona is simply a stage name for Bill Talen, an actor-turned-activist from New York City (via San Francisco). Talen grew up Dutch Calvinist in Minnesota but left the faith as a teenager. He adopted the "Reverend" title in 1997 as a way to creatively protest America's increasingly excessive consumerism and corporate homogeneity (with Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Disney being his version of the "axis of evil"). What began as his solitary street "preaching" in Times Square (the "Stonehenge of billboards") soon became a "ministry" of sorts—the Church of Stop Shopping.
The "Church" is really more of a performance art/activist group—a volunteer nonprofit community comprised of fifty singers and an eight-piece band. Though several members of the "gospel" choir are preachers' kids, the group does not claim Christian orthodoxy. The songs they sing may sound like holy ghost-inspired Jesus jams (complete with robes, swaying, and hand raising), but the lyrics are more about slamming Starbucks than praising God. Even so, the passion that is evident in the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir is contagious and admirable. Many Christian churches could learn a few things from this secular outfit.
What Would Jesus Buy? documents the Stop Shopping Choir on their cross-country bus tour in the month prior to Christmas 2005. The film, from director Rob VanAlkemade and producer Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), is adapted from VanAlkemade's 2005 documentary short, Preacher With an Unknown God, which won an honorable mention award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. WWJB uses the choir's trip—with protest stops at The Mall of America and a culminating "protest parade" in Disneyland on Christmas Day—as the narrative engine to drive a broader examination of out-of-control consumerism.
Morgan Spurlock
I recently chatted about the film with Spurlock, who says it's a wake-up call for all of us who bow at the altar of consumption: "We've become blind to what's important in our lives. We've lost sight of the true message of Christmas."
The film intersperses clips of Billy and the Choir with interviews and commentaries from experts and everyday consumers. Featured talking heads include academics, authors, psychologists, "shopping addiction therapists," and a few clergy like Rev. Jim Wallis (who provides some of the most sensible commentary in the whole film). Young children are interviewed about their Christmas wish lists ("an Xbox 360 and a disposable cell phone!"), teenage girls are challenged to find out where and how their favorite clothes are manufactured, and adults are shown recklessly maxing out credit cards the day they receive them in the mail.
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