Reverend Billy's visit a call to arms against MTR

 CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Reverend Billy Talen realizes he might not be able to get you to stop shopping, but he'd sure like to get you to try. Reverend Billy and the Mountain Top Gospel Choir are coming to town to spread their message of post-consumerism, responsible living and joy.
The New York City-based group, part of The Church of Life After Shopping, will be at the Culture Center at 8 p.m. Saturday for a little song, a little dance, a few laughs and a big message.

"We don't believe that consumerism is any way to structure a society," Talen said.

Founded by Talen 14 years ago, "the church" has grown from a one-man performance artist preaching about the evils of consumerism on the sidewalks of New York City to a 35-person multi-national choir and a seven-piece band. Some of the members of the choir, he says, are from West Virginia, Kentucky and other Appalachian states.

There's also a stage show and a film about what they do called "What Would Jesus Buy?" produced by West Virginia native Morgan Spurlock.

Talen's message is huge: America's obsession with buying and selling is destructive and ultimately unsustainable. It's actually too big, he says, to take in all at once.

"So, every year or so, we break it down into a manageable campaign. For a while, we were taking on Starbucks, with their unfair trade product and their attempt to take over our neighborhoods."

They staged "retail interventions," blocked shoppers from entering Macy's on the day after Thanksgiving, practiced exorcisms on sweatshop companies and implored people not to shop.

This year, since Talen's unsuccessful bid to replace Michael Bloomberg as the mayor of New York City, the group has focused its attention on mountaintop-removal coal mining.

"The question really begs not how we came to choose mountaintop removal," he said, "but what took us so long to respond? Mountaintop removal is consuming mountains. It's the biggest earth-moving operation in the history of the world, and the people of Appalachia are trying to live through it."

So far, the church has focused its efforts in New York, drawing attention to the practice and how people in New York are part of the problem.

"It is said that one-third of Times Square is supposed to be lit up by dirty coal. How do you stop that? How do you stop the air conditioners, the computers and the gadgets?"

Even Talen doesn't know, but he thinks, for everybody, it has to start with reducing consumption and accepting some responsibility for the damage being done.

Over the past several months, Talen and the church have tried to raise awareness by taking earth and debris taken from the Coal River Mountain in Rock Creek and from Ground Zero in New York and sculpting it into mountains in the lobbies of JP Morgan-Chase, a bank partnered with coal operators who practice mountaintop-removal mining, including Massey Energy Co.

Reverend Billy even personally cast out demons from the bank's ATM machines.

Like the church's other stunts, it drew a lot of attention, but didn't seem to be affecting policy.

"We were like a mosquito in the tent," Talen said. "Not very powerful, but annoying and insistent."

Their actions have sometimes landed them in jail. Talen was in jail on Easter Sunday, the day before the Upper Big Branch Mine exploded. After that, he says, things changed. Suddenly, everyone was looking at Appalachia and coal mining.

A little over a month later, JP Morgan Chase, at its shareholder meeting, agreed to stop underwriting mountaintop-removal mining.

Originally, Reverend Billy and The Church Of Life After Shopping were coming to Charleston to rally and to rail against mountaintop removal. Because things are different now, they're looking at it as more of a celebration and a call to arms that there's still a lot to be done.

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5195.