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}]}}