Would Jesus take a bailout?

Confronted with the once-in-a-century opportunity to remake the financial system, the reformers in Washington have a choice: Succumb to the temptation of serving financial supermarkets or lift up community banks and street-level economies.

Enter Reverend Billy Talen, the New York-based street preacher, performer and activist who -- along with his flock, the Church of Life After Shopping -- believes government has a moral obligation to support communities before big banks.

"I've been trying to drive people out of their institutions," Reverend Billy says. "Their institutions aren't working."

It's hard to imagine Timothy Geithner taking advice from an iconoclast dressed in a white suit, clerical collar and Elvis-inspired hair, but the Reverend Billy may be on to something.

In place of a system where big banks and corporations enter neighborhoods only to profit from them, Reverend Billy wants to empower small banks and credit unions that hold a stake in the communities they serve by offering incentives and making it harder for big finance to undercut local business.

It's hard to argue against the system he envisions.

Think for a moment about what community finance could mean for the nation: Neighborhood banks would lend to local businesses. Profits could stay in the community.

Simply knowing who your customers are and living near them could bring common sense -- the most basic and sound form of risk management -- back to banking.

Sure, it sounds kind of dreamy, but such systems are already in place in the neighborhoods large and small. Small businesses thrive, but they are often at the mercy of big banks who giveth and taketh credit according to shifts in economic cycles.

"The Wall Street experience is parallel and equal to the destruction of neighborhoods through chain stores," Reverend Billy says.

Basic economics are on the Reverend's side. For every dollar spent at a chain store, studies show only 50 cents stays in that community. By contrast, 90 cents of every dollar spent at a local business remains in the local economy.

"It's a little reductive, but people recognize there's a truth in it," Reverend Billy says. "Neighborhoods are economic powerhouses."

Despite his anticorporate stance, Reverend Billy, whose father is a small-town bank chairman, isn't bashing Wall Street right now. (However, he's previously led some disruptive and amusing protests against corporate retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Walt Disney Co.)