Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah

Wagner (Godwired), a professor of religious studies at Ithaca College, explores in this scrupulous study the uniquely American myth of the self-­proclaimed “vigilante messiah” who “performs radical salvation with a gun.” Drawing from Christian apocalypticism and the American frontier myth, the narrative of the vigilante messiah took shape in the country’s earliest days, according to Wagner, and transformed “flesh-and-blood” cowboys who violently subdued Indigenous peoples into “strapping heroes” carrying out the “symbolically important” feat of conquering the West. In prevailing over a dehumanized enemy, the hero ushers in a “purified” society “where faith in God is replaced with faith in oneself,” rejecting communal systems and the modern anxieties they bring, like immigration and resource depletion. Wagner explores how the myth evolved in popular culture and art, from John Wayne westerns to such apocalyptic films as Armageddon, and draws intriguing and disturbing links to American mass shootings and the January 6 Capitol insurrection (whose gun-toting participants, Wagner argues, envisioned themselves as “pious judges trying to bring about a new world”). Ambitious and wide-ranging, this is a thought-provoking dissection of one of America’s founding stories and its lingering effects. (Feb.)