Cowboy Apocalypse

Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah

Rachel Wagner

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479831630
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State
• Index: Social Sciences

Charts the myth of the "good guy with a gun," connecting America's frontier beginnings with visions of the end of the world

In the midst of widespread mass shootings in America, a common motif stands out: the perpetrators of these attacks often view themselves as vigilante saviors, whose job it is to regulate society in a way that exterminates their enemies.

In this fascinating critique, Rachel Wagner makes the case that this unfortunate phenomenon is best understood through the idea of the cowboy apocalypse. She shows that across much US media, from video games and blockbuster movies to novels and TV, a story arc has been created that provides a complete myth about the end of the world and the future after that. In these stories, the cowboy messiah is envisioned as a good guy with a gun. But he doesn't save the world. He just saves his world: he protects his family and others he deems worthy while embracing the chance to wipe the global slate clean and start fresh, with survivors testing their mettle on a new frontier.

Wagner illuminates the links between Christian apocalypticism, American gun culture, and the romanticization of the white male-dominated American frontier, showing how the vigilante has come to be regarded as a new savior figure, out to protect the world for white supremacy and patriarchy. She also offers ways to respond with other powerful cultural myths, making use of media to tell other stories. Cowboy Apocalypse offers a new means of making sense of how guns profoundly shape American life, and how we might engage with them otherwise.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 13 Ways of Looking at a Gun
• 2 The Bones: Cowboy Apocalypse as Story
• 3 Shooting the Cowboy Apocalypse
• 4 A White Man’s Frontier: The Walking Dead
• 5 “Eat Leaden Death, Demon”: First-Person Shooter as End-Time Ritual
• 6 Witnessing the Future: Doomsday Preppers
• 7 The NRA in the Game: The Man behind the Gun
• 8 Souvenirs of Apocalypse
• 9 Live-Action Role-Play: Real Players, Real Bullets
• Conclusion: Otherwise
• Epilogue: On “Madmen”
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author