Cowboy Church Article

In regards to the article "Where Prayers Come With a Twang"

I wrote:

I read a reprint of this article in the Los Angeles Times, and was glad that cowboy churches were getting the exposure.(I don't attend a cowboy church myself, but I am familiar with them, having attended a few before.)

Initially I was frustrated, though, with the repetitive use of both Christian and "cowboy" cliches in the article, at the best, naive towards both cultures, at the worst almost disrespectful. I re-read the article here online, and then realized that the Times had edited it some for length, unfortunately weakening the article and leaving some rather broad statements unexplained.(Which, of course, you have no control over!) I asked my father, a well-known religious news journalist, if it was common for papers to do that, and he said yes, but was surprised that they did so considering that it was placed in the front section!

As for the original article by Torriero printed here, I realize that a journalist wants to be interesting and clever and readable, but I did roll my eyes at the statement "Hamson strikes the fear of God in his parishioners..." That is a strong statement, which is not the impression that I get from the description of Hamson in the article--that he's some fire-and-brimstone type of preacher. This, and other Christian cliches inappropriately used in the article (perhaps unintentionally) paint pastors and lay evangelical Christians as hokey, insincere, stupid, and/or subversive (all too common images in the press), and tend to spin what is a serious commitment for these people as a novelty. As a Christian I guess I just get tired of hearing these types of phrases coming from professional news agencies, who are usually careful and successful at treating other religious groups with respect--this protocol should include refraining from worn-out puns.

I work for the Autry National Center's Museum of the American West (so you know where I'm coming from with all of this) and I also get tired of so many ancient Western cliches. I can understand a few, but it seems like they fill this article, reinforcing the Hollywood version of the West over the real one. One point I don't understand is the section about religion in the "Wild West" (not exactly a technical term, but we get the point!). What was said is true, but then Torriero (or the article's editor) then jumps to the claim that contemporary cowboy churches embrace more of "entertainment's" version of the (mythic) West than "cowboy lore." What I don't understand here is not in inclusion of the historic change in the religious landscape of the West, but the lack of acknowledgement that cowboying is a job that, though at its greatest prominence in the 1880s, is still being done--it is a LIVING tradition, and Hollywood and Nashville don't own the trademark. Sure, the "cowboy" image extends far beyond wage-laborers on cattle ranches (and the broadening of that image into popular culture goes back to the 1880s! So, really, was it EVER possible to completely separate the two...), and it serves today as a broad icon for the Westerner, but my point is many of the people in this article ARE Westerners and/or are horsemen, farmers, etc. They ARE cowboys in the broad sense of the word, so how is this LIVING tradition defined or qualified by its earliest years or by Hollywood? In other words, why are modern-day cowboys (ranchers, horse people, rodeo performers, etc.) treated as second-rate, drugstore versions of the "real" thing? The cowboy isn't dead and what these people do IS cowboy culture--today. I'm just saying...

Thanks, again, for your article!