The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism

Explores the religious activism of the Stop Shopping Church performance group

Since the dawn of the new millennium, the grassroots performance activist group the Stop Shopping Church has advanced a sophisticated anti-capitalist critique in what they call “Earth Justice.” Led by co-founders, Reverend Billy and Savitri D, the Church of Stop Shopping have sung with Joan Baez and toured with Pussy Riot and Neil Young. They performed at festivals around the world, and been the subject of the nationally released documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? They opposed the forces of consumerism on the global stage, and taken on the corporate practices of Disney, Starbucks, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, Walmart, Amazon, and many others.

While the Church maintains an anti-consumerism stance at its core–through performances, street actions, and social activism–the community also prioritizes work for racial justice, queer liberation, justice and sanctuary for immigrants, First Amendment issues, the reclaiming of public space, and in an increasingly central way, environmental justice. In The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism, George González draws on interviews, participant observation, and digital ethnography to offer insight into the Church, its make up, its activities, and in particular, how it has shifted over time from parody to a deep and serious engagement with religion. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping maintain that corporations and their celebrity spokespeople operate in much the same way churches do. González uses the group’s performance activism to showcase the links between religion, the culture of capitalist consumerism, and climate catastrophe and to analyze the ways in which consumers are ritualized into accepting capitalism and its consequences. He argues that the members and organizers of the Church of Stop Shopping are serious theorizers and users of religion in their own right, and that they offer keen insights into our understanding of ritualistic consumerism and its indelible link to the rising sea levels that threaten to engulf us all.