Before there was Reverend Billy, there was Bill Talen, born and raised in Minnesota, in the midst of conservative Dutch Calvinism, a faith he rejected as a teenager. He became a playwright, performer, and producer, working for years in San Francisco before he moved to New York City in the mid-1990s. “Rev. Billy,” Talen’s alter ego, was created in 1997, when Talen/Billy began street-corner preaching near the new Disney Store in Times Square, using the cadences and mannerisms of a TV evangelist to decry the chain-store commercial excesses of gentrification.
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Given that there is a long tradition of prophetic theater and theatrical prophets, we asked eminent biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann to examine whether and how Rev. Billy might relate to the prophets of the Bible. —The Editors
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AFTER HEARING HIS disc of preaching and music and reading his two books—What Should I Do If Rev. Billy Is in My Store? (The New Press, 2003) and What Would Jesus Buy? Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse (Public Affairs, 2006)—I have no doubt that Rev. Billy is a faithful prophetic figure who stands in direct continuity with ancient prophets in Israel and in continuity with the great prophetic figures of U.S. history who have incessantly called our society back to its core human passions of justice and compassion.

Advent Conspiracy is an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption.