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 Gonzalez 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. Gonzalez 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.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Led by Reverend Billy and Savitri D, the grassroots religious activist performance group known as the Church of Stop Shopping demonstrates ... the ways in which consumers are ritualized into accepting capitalism. Gonzalez argues that consumers are coerced, not unlike Eve in the Garden of Eden, by the promises of immediate consumables ... A unique, scholarly take on fast capitalism." (Library Journal) "The first book that I've seen that pushes the critical study of religion and economy in such a reflexive, thoughtful direction. It both implicates contemporary Religious Studies in the neoliberal market logic that scholars often critique and offers a creative example of the new materially-minded directions that scholarship on religion might consider taking in light of the religious impact that consumer capitalism has on all of us in our everyday lives." - Richard J. Callahan Jr., author of Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields: Subject to Dust "Instructs on what is wrong with the economy called capitalism through the Stop Shopping Church prophecies. George Gonzalez learned about this Shopocalyptic age from a radical community that performs religion as the pulpit for consumer criticism. Activism and religious adherence conjoin in this examination of dramaturgy as social indictment." - Kathryn Lofton, Yale University "In his incisive engagement with the decades-long activism of the Church of Stop Shopping, Gonzalez weaves a transdisciplinary analysis of economies, religion, performance, and activism that promises to change each of these fields of study. Gonzalez offers invaluable reflections on how artists, activists, and academics can hone our interconnectedness and our collaborations to stave off the end of the world even as we work to end the world we've come to know all too well." - Melissa M. Wilcox, author of Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody "For decades, the Church of Stop Shopping has challenged audiences to believe that we can make a better world than we have. In this brilliant book, Gonzalez channels the spirit of the Church's performance, inviting readers to stretch the limits of what seems necessary and possible in our neoliberal age. Drawing on rich theoretical material as well as insightful ethnographic work, Gonzalez uses the academic study of religion not only to demonstrate why Americans piously have ritualized consumer society's animating ideas and actions but also to amplify voices creatively working to transform the religion of everyday life." - Daniel Vaca, author of Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America
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ISBN-13
978-1-4798-1774-0 (9781479817740)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
George Gonzalez is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Shape-Shifting Capital: Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project.
