"The First Job of a Church is to Save Souls": Political Ecology, Performance, and the Ritual Activism of the Church of Stop Shopping

Since the dawn of the new millennium, the NYC-based but internationally recognized radical performance community, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Church, has occupied, excavated, and politically exploited the discursive space between art activism and religious community in order to advance its sophisticated anti-capitalist critique. Over time, the group has traded in its early parody of the religious character of American capitalism for a mode of “eco-sincerity” and has evolved its anti-consumerism into a broader political ecology. Today, the group centers what they call “Earth Justice” and continue to partner with activist groups and allies around issues of anti-racism, immigration justice, and queer and feminist struggle. Based in six years of in-person and digital fieldwork with the Church of Stop Shopping, this paper analyzes the group’s “post-religious” religious saving of consumer souls, a project that also directly implicates the scholar’s imaginary in a battle for the soul of society.