Rachel Wagner

Rachel Wagner is Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Ithaca College. Her latest book, Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah (NYU, 2025) charts the myth of the “good guy with a gun,” connecting America’s frontier beginnings with visions of the end of the world.

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Religion

March 13, 2025

Donald Trump, MAGA and the Logic of the Gun

Trump’s image as a vigilante “peacemaker” reflects the religiously-tinged violence of the American frontier

Rachel Wagner, Religion Dispatches

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