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.

Godwired offers an engaging exploration of religious practice in the digital age. It considers how virtual experiences, like stories, games and rituals, are forms of world-building or cosmos construction that serve as a means of making sense of our own world. Such creative and interactive activity is, arguably, patently religious.

This book examines:

• the nature of sacred space in virtual contexts
• technology as a vehicle for sacred texts
• who we are when we go online
• what rituals have in common with games and how they work online
• what happens to community when people worship online
• how religious worlds and virtual worlds nurture similar desires.

Rachel Wagner suggests that whilst our engagement with virtual reality can be viewed as a form of religious activity, today's virtual religion marks a radical departure from traditional religious practice - it is ephemeral, transient, rapid, disposable, hyper-individualized, hybrid, and in an ongoing state of flux.