{"id":1267,"date":"2009-10-29T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2022-01-26T16:30:17","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T20:30:17","slug":"reverend-billy-the-fake-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2009\/10\/reverend-billy-the-fake-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverend Billy, the “Fake Leader”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Especially when it comes to religion, the line between reality and performance can be very hard to draw. No one reveals this more than Reverend Billy, a New York-based performance artist who uses a televangelist act to preach against the evils of consumerism. In the city election next Tuesday, Billy\u2014using his “real” name, William Talen\u2014will be on the ballot for mayor under the Green Party ticket. This month I got the chance to spend some time with Billy, learn about what brought him to where he is, and explore the brackish between religion and political theater. The result is a video at Killing the Buddha<\/em><\/a> (produced with Matthew Fishbane) and an article at Religion Dispatches<\/em>, “Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

During the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack, Reverend Billy began to cross the line from performer to actual pastor. This happened not in an official sense\u2014\u201dI think it would be a mistake for Reverend Billy to be ordained in organized religion,\u201d says Talen\u2014but through an organic process. While many turned to traditional religion in that period, those who felt outside of it gravitated to Billy. \u201cPeople whose New York journey to spirituality had been irony, or the arts, or sex, or something, something after religion,\u201d says Talen, \u201cthey gathered with us after 9\/11.\u201d Reverend Billy\u2019s church set up shop in the city\u2019s theaters, many of which had closed their doors in the wake of the disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of people who were not religious, who didn\u2019t have a community per se, and didn\u2019t know how to heal,\u201d remembers Savitri Durkee [Billy’s wife and producer]. Many of the people who came were Gen-Xers who instinctively questioned authority. \u201cBilly was perfect in that moment because he\u2019s a fake leader,\u201d Durkee says. \u201cBecause he\u2019s not a real leader, we can go for it. We can trust the situation somehow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Especially when it comes to religion, the line between reality and performance can be very hard to draw. No one reveals this more than Reverend Billy, a New York-based performance artist who uses a televangelist act to preach against the evils of consumerism. In the city election next Tuesday, Billy\u2014using his “real” name, William Talen\u2014will be on the ballot for mayor under the Green Party ticket. This month I got the chance to spend some time with Billy, learn about what brought him to where he is, and explore the brackish between religion and political theater. The result is a video at Killing the Buddha<\/em><\/a> (produced with Matthew Fishbane) and an article at Religion Dispatches<\/em>, “Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

During the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack, Reverend Billy began to cross the line from performer to actual pastor. This happened not in an official sense\u2014\u201dI think it would be a mistake for Reverend Billy to be ordained in organized religion,\u201d says Talen\u2014but through an organic process. While many turned to traditional religion in that period, those who felt outside of it gravitated to Billy. \u201cPeople whose New York journey to spirituality had been irony, or the arts, or sex, or something, something after religion,\u201d says Talen, \u201cthey gathered with us after 9\/11.\u201d Reverend Billy\u2019s church set up shop in the city\u2019s theaters, many of which had closed their doors in the wake of the disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of people who were not religious, who didn\u2019t have a community per se, and didn\u2019t know how to heal,\u201d remembers Savitri Durkee [Billy’s wife and producer]. Many of the people who came were Gen-Xers who instinctively questioned authority. \u201cBilly was perfect in that moment because he\u2019s a fake leader,\u201d Durkee says. \u201cBecause he\u2019s not a real leader, we can go for it. We can trust the situation somehow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,86,26,31,100,82,69],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-becoming","tag-celebrity","tag-new-religious-movements","tag-new-york-city","tag-performance","tag-politics","tag-utopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5523,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/5523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}