With 80 degree weather looming into the autumn months, New School students are more worried than ever about the effects of climate change on Earth. Many are feeling anxious and lost about their part in helping to reduce the impacts of global warming, but one group of students found a way to channel their fear into activism. They turned to the Earth Chxrch, a radical performance group using song as a tool of environmental activism and community building. 

On Nov. 4, the Earth Chxrch announced the closing of their East Village space on Instagram. As the space has been a home of hope and collaboration, students feel it’s important to share its message and morals despite its closure.

Started by the satirical preacher and activist William Talen — more commonly known as Reverend Billy — the church opened its East Village space in 2022. Since then, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir of over 35 members have hosted weekly Sunday services there, singing about loving the Earth and campaigning against the harmful effects of consumerism.

Many New School students were first introduced to the Earth Chxrch as a community center. Communiversity, a student-led, anti-capitalist group founded by New School students in 2022, have previously used the space for their own community projects. 

Bella Catanzaro, a fourth-year student at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts studying environmental studies and interdisciplinary sciences, said her first encounter with the Earth Chxrch was at a poetry swap event hosted in the East Village space. “I had known about the activism that Earth Chxrch had done with Reverend Billy before then. I’d always been curious of the space but was welcomed into it for the first time in one of those side projects,” said Catanzaro. 

Catanzaro believes the Earth Chxrch’s work with community activism and use of performance is what makes them different from other environmental activist groups. “It is a production, and yet they’re all so real about what they’re doing and what their activism is while also being emotional themselves,” she said. “It is a tiring thing to do and I think being able to have honesty in that space allows everybody to just treat everyone with such kindness and patience.” 

Communiversity founding members Jackie McVorran, a third-year liberal arts student at Eugene Lang, and previous New School student Bucky Baldwin, have been a part of the Earth Chxrch for two years. Baldwin’s grandfather and Billy met while working as performance artists in San Francisco. When Baldwin moved to New York, his grandfather introduced him and Jackie to Reverend Billy, his wife Savitri Durkee, and the choir.

“It’s kooky,” said McVorran. “It’s definitely something that I wouldn’t initially see myself being so diehard passionate for, but now I’m here every Sunday, and I think it’s because they just bring that awareness. I’m not just being entertained, I’m being fully brought into the reality of life.”

For Sage Stuart, a fine arts student at Parsons School of Design, it was McVorran and Baldwin who introduced them to the space. They began to attend the Earth Chxrch’s Sunday services regularly last summer. When talking about the church, Stuart said, “They’re starting with change within ourselves, within the subjective self and trying to get us to blow love into ourselves again and into each other as well. And I think this love methodology is sustainable.” 

Isabella Cooper, a fourth-year student at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and another founding member of Communiversity, is very involved within the church and was the group’s videographer on their Love Earth National Tour this past year. For Cooper, documenting the church’s actions of community care and mutual aid are things she is passionate about. “I think [the Earth Chxrch] heals the community through song, and [music is] one of the earliest forms of storytelling,” said Cooper. 

Stuart recalled a time they witnessed the power of Earth Chxrch’s music: at a climate protest this summer, the Stop Shopping Choir sang around a Chase Bank, with a line of police officers surrounding them. “They linked arms in front of [the police officers] and started singing, ‘Do you hear the Earth? She’s crying’ on a loop,” Stuart said, “And then the police officers, three out of maybe ten, a good amount of them, started crying.”

Like Cooper, Stuart and many other New School students are involved within the organizing and production of the Earth Chxrch. Stuart began actively working for the church this past summer by helping with street postering. “Reverend Billy wanted a radical street art initiative. He was dreaming of televisions off of trees, probably splendoring his words, but we resorted to pasting flyers.” 

Catanzaro started working alongside Stuart this summer, helping to organize and send out packages to people on the church’s mailing list. The packages consisted of the new edition of the Earth Chxrch’s publication, the Earthaleujah Manifesto, as well as updates on what the church had been doing in the community. Stuart recalls sending out over 500 packages. “We were handwriting notes and we had little pictures. It was all very cute and quaint and crafty. It was wonderful because Billy’s main value was to get the message out regardless if it paid off in terms of money,” said Stuart. 

The packages also included a letter asking for donations to help keep the East Village space open to the public. “They were trying to fund that because it’s a pretty expensive rent that they are in,” said Catanzaro about the Earth Chxrch’s financial struggle to remain open, reaching its unfortunate end with the community center’s recent closure.

The last performance at Earth Chxrch’s 36 Avenue C location will be on Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. While the group will no longer be located in the East Village, their performances and community action will still continue all around New York City. 

“The power of art. The power of music. The power of love. It does a lot,” Catanzaro said of Earth Church’s holistic impact, living on through its members and the future of the group.