"Stay away from the mall, say Hallelujah!"
http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/19/pf/debt ... /index.htm
The reverend Billy Talen crusades against excessive shopping.
"NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - Preaching from the pulpit of St. Mark's Church in lower Manhattan one afternoon, the Rev. Billy Talen looks and sounds a lot like the evangelists on Sunday morning television.
He's loud. He's passionate. He's backed by a gospel choir. His congregation, rapt, nods at his every word. As his sermon reaches a crescendo, cries of "Praise be!" and "Hallelujah!" ring through the nave. As he brings it home, the group responds in joyous unison, "Amen!"
"But there's a big difference between Reverend Billy and Billy Graham. For one thing, his "reverend" credentials are debatable. And he doesn't promulgate the sort of religion most people practice in church."
"Reverend Billy, you see, is the founder of the Church of Stop Shopping. His congregants are the shopping-afflicted. Talen and others who try to help people control their spending are striking a nerve and find themselves in high demand.
Why? America has a shopping problem. For the first time since the Great Depression, the savings rate has fallen into negative territory. Indebtedness to credit-card companies has reached $9,300 per household, and rising interest rates will only make the problem worse.
"People are walking around in a daze," says Talen, a playwright who dreamed up the church as he watched Manhattan's storied theater district slowly become a mall."
"They're feeling a kind of knowing emptiness and they don't know why. So they keep buying more and more, trying to fill the hole in the soul. We say: Stop shopping and start living."
The message is registering. Talen's cross-country crusade attracts crowds everywhere, from the Mall of America to Times Square. He was recently filmed for a documentary that's set to be released later this year (possible title: What Would Jesus Buy?).
Other religious leaders - including some who have actually been to divinity school - are conducting similar events where they preach the promise of better living through less shopping."
The rest of the article gets into the inner game of shopping. But we know why we do it, don't we?
"He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase:" Ecclesiastes 5:10