westerns » Baggas’ Blog

21st May 2008

Cowboys & Christians

You know the old taboos that used to abound in Christian circles (and still do in some ultra-conservative or fundamentalist groups) - like no playing cards, no dancing, no alcohol at all, no going to movies etc? Well according to the following quote from a book I’m currently reading, this sort of thing might be directly attributable to the excesses of the American Wild West! Who would have thought that all that stuff we know so well from old cowboy movies could have such a big impact on the 20th century church?

The origins of the dos and don’ts in American evangelicalism go back to the revivals in the frontier days of the nineteenth century. All of us have seen the western movies and the depiction of life in the western spread of the American frontier. The center of town is a bar with it’s heavy drinking, gambling, card playing, and lewd women. As Christianity spread west in the revival tradition, it was imperative for Christians to distinguish themselves from the crude, boisterous, drinking, smoking, dancing, card playing, gambling, and lascivious crowd. Christians, therefore, swung the pendulum to the other side and insisted on a cleaned-up life as a demonstration of a converted life and a spiritual walk with God. In time these outward expressions of a cleaned-up life turned from sin became the external marks of the spiritual life. While abstinence from wordly practices was a genuine choice of an original generation of Christians, the dos and don’ts became for the second and especially the third generation of Christians an imposed structure of spirituality. The inner convictions that generated the original choice to refrain from wordly practices was lost. In it’s place now stood a legalistic ethos, that is, restraint from wordly practice became the sum and the substance of the spiritual life.

Unfortunately these dos and don’ts oten get in the way of seeing the real ethics of Christian spirituality such as the growth of character, the concern for justice, and the care of the poor and needy.

~ Robert E. Webber - “The Divine Embrace” p81