c. 2004 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The holidays bring anticipated changes to Manhattan. They light the tree at Rockefeller Center. The Rockettes put on reindeer horns at Radio City. And the Reverend Billy gets thrown in jail.

“We pick him up every year,” said officer Daniel Nestor as the door of the NYPD police van closed on a red-faced man in a white clerical collar. “Day after Thanksgiving.”

The Reverend Billy is not really a man of God _ not in the conventional sense. But it is not true to say he is just a performer, either. Reverend Billy is the evangelical alter ego of Bill Talen, a New York performance artist who has spent seven years traveling the world, terrorizing demons at Starbucks and preaching against chain stores and the love of retail.

“I pray to God-Who-Is-Not-A-Product,” he says. Talen calls his ministry “the Church of Stop Shopping” and his pulpit is the retail floor. His performances are funny, in-your-face and often rowdy enough to land him in jail. But Reverend Billy is serious about his crusade against the evils of consumerism, materialism and consumption. He performs year-round, but returns to New York City for “Buy Nothing Day,” an offbeat holiday in its eighth year that encourages people to stay home on the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

In the early afternoon of this year’s big day, he stood on the median strip of Times Square, in front of a group of about 30 supporters and curious tourists. Neon advertisements surrounded him in the arguable ground zero of American retail. Talen led the crowd into local stores, cutting a tall figure in a white suit with a matching megaphone.

In front of Virgin Megastore, he pointed to a larger-than-life cutout of Virgin founder Richard Branson, the star of the reality series “The Rebel Billionaire.” The Branson cutout is sky diving, seemingly floating in midair, smiling, his arms outspread toward the street. “This man is not Jesus,” thundered Reverend Billy.

Billy let his gaze travel up to neon billboards for Mountain Dew and Liz Claiborne.

“They keep us looking up instead of at each other,” he said. “Can I hear an amen?”

Though he now travels to perform and lecture against consumer culture around the world, Times Square holds a special significance for Talen. Reverend Billy was born here, inspired by the area’s street preachers back in the seedy days when it needed a different kind of salvation, from drug pushers and prostitutes.

Now Reverend Billy rails against different sins, the sins of supporting child labor in the Third World or destroying the environment. His invective is poisonous. Sometimes it’s hard to know how seriously Talen takes his performances.

“Bill was brought up a pretty strict Calvinist,” said Jim Napolitano, a friend of Talen’s in the crowd. “I think he’s finding some of that religious fervor. It’s very sincere. That much is not an act.”

Times Square still attracts evangelists. As Talen held forth in front of Virgin, a group from the First Baptist Church of Fairfield, Texas, preached the word in front of Toys R Us two blocks away. There were hundreds of children screaming for toys in dozens of languages. But in the shopping frenzy, Jim Sneed from Fairfield handed out tracts and opened a Bible to point out the real story of Christmas.

“There’s the reason for Christmas right there,” he said. “Luke 2.”

It was a rare moment when the far right and the far left were near enough to shake hands. Aiden Enns, who worked for Adbusters, the organization that started Buy Nothing Day, doesn’t find it surprising. “The message appeals to left-wingers and to right-wing folks who find the heart of loyalty to their church is being edged out by consumerism.”

Enns is a fan of Reverend Billy. In March he commissioned his own Buy Nothing performance in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a play to celebrate a Buy Nothing Christmas movement he had created with some Mennonite friends. He soon found that some of his biggest supporters were local churches. With the help of Anglican, Catholic, Unity and Mennonite churches, he was able to get his play, “A Christmas Karl,” seen by more than 1,000 people.

Enns is just one of many inspired by Reverend Billy.

The thousands of shoppers in Times Square have become Reverend Billy’s audience. This year, he led his flock to 47th and Broadway for the day’s swan song. He grabbed some passersby and prayed with them, quietly and intensely, before heading into the Starbucks while cops waited by the door.

The crime that tipped the scale this holiday season was the same one that landed him in the Los Angeles County Jail over the summer: trying to cast out the demons of a Starbucks cash register.

“I try to keep him in the realm of civil disobedience,” said his wife, Savitri Durkee, as the doors closed and the police van drove off with Talen inside.

Durkee called the airlines to change plane tickets to London, where Reverend Billy had been scheduled to appear the next day for London’s Buy Nothing Parade.

“We’ll try to go tomorrow,” she said.

MO/PH END RNS