The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism: Combatting Consumerism and Climate Change Through Performance

González (sociology and religion, CUNY Graduate Ctr. and Baruch Coll.; Shape-Shifting Capital) opens his book with a wholesale attack on the flourishing capitalist marketplace in the United States. Western society, he asserts, has been ritualized through endless shopping, which represents a neoliberal capitalism that in itself fuels consumerism and environmental degradation. Led by Reverend Billy and Savitri D, the grassroots religious activist performance group known as the Church of Stop Shopping demonstrates through parody and dynamic actions the ways in which consumers are ritualized into accepting capitalism. González argues that consumers are coerced, not unlike Eve in the Garden of Eden, by the promises of immediate consumables. Some readers may find this read challenging because of its academic-heavy jargon and tone. Note also that the ideas of “church” and “religion” are also radically redefined here in ways that aren’t always easy to comprehend. This book is BISACed under religion but might be a better fit in social sciences collections.