What Would Jesus Buy?

by Nicole

Barbie 2007 Holiday Collector Doll: $37.88, 8 GB iPhone: $399.00, 60 GB PlayStation 3: $ 584.99, a debt-free life and peace of mind: priceless.

In their spirited new documentary producer Morgan Spurlock and director Rob VanAlkemade follow the self-proclaimed Reverend Billy as he takes his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir and his Not Buying It Band on a cross-country crusade against the commercial supersizing of Christmas. A street performer with a mission, Rev Billy (aka Bill Talen) takes his mobile ministry from its humble roots on the streets of New York's Times Square to the ultimate temple of corporate America, The Mall of America, his journey culminating on Christmas Day at the street of false dreams where the Devil with big ears lives in Disneyland.

The Church of Stop Shopping's vocation is to get us to question our buy-now-pay-later society that damns most of us to a future of eternal debt. We spend about one hour per week doing spiritual activities and an average of 5 hours a week shopping. Our nation now has a savings deficit, meaning we're walking through life in the red. The mostly unnecessary stuff we buy takes us further into the darkness of debt, the momentary pleasure of acquisition often being at the cost of abusive labor practices in far off lands - and jobs at home.

Of course we can't completely cease to shop, we even see Rev. Billy sheepishly buying gas after his vegetable oil bio-fuel freezes overnight at a particularly cold stop on his tour, he's just asking us to pause before we purchase. And through the subjects interviewed in What Would Jesus Buy? we begin to understand why. We see a generation who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing: a young male who's feelin' the Christmas spirit by buying a brand new set of rims, and a teenage girl who dreams of living in a mall.

By the end of the film Rev. Billy's crazy evangelical antics start to look sane against our own frenzied consumerism. You won't find peace of earth in a shopping mall, so take a break from buying, avoid the shopocalypse and give the gift of your time and your love this holiday season. Hallelujah, or change-a-lujah as the good Reverand would proclaim.

| 11/22/07 | Enlightenment