"Cowboy Apocalypse: 13 Ways of Looking at a Gun"

The cowboy apocalypse has been relayed through film, video games, and television shows, as well as through rituals, live events, and scripted practices to produce an imaginary space for devoted fans who buy into its troubling ideology. As a blend of frontier mythology and end-of-the world scenarios, transmediated cowboy apocalypticism provides a simple mythic solution to complex global problems. Violently wipe the slate clean, it says, and let the survivors demonstrate their mettle on a new frontier. The greatest danger, of course, is when the desire for future habitation in an imaginary post-apocalyptic frontier is used to justify real violence here and now.

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Rachel Wagner is Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College. Her essays have been published in CrossCurrents Magazine, Canopy Forum, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Religion Dispatches. Her first book, Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality (Routledge, 2012), is a study of digital religion. Her most recent book, Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah (NYU Press, 2025), charts the myth of the “good guy with a gun,” connecting America’s frontier beginnings with visions of the end of the world.