Straight-shooting Christianity :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Straight-shooting ChristianityThe March 11, 2003 edition of USA Today reports on a sensitive approach to religious faith in certain churches worship based in the values and mores of the American West. Straight-shooting emphasis on Christianity spurs a growing trend, reads the newspaper headline (Grossman D1). A church named, with no needed irony, Cross Trails is reported to baptize new believers in an 8-foot circular, blue plastic horse trough (Grossman D1). This is a token to belief that is stripped-down, back-to-basics, a religious attitude that reflects the lives of the ranchers and farmers it appeals to. Cathy Lynn Grossman writes This is cowboy church - straight-shooter, sinner-saved-by-grace theology throwing a rope out to the lost, the lonely and those who long for an unvarnished faith. No examine duds. No politicized preaching. No denominational hair-splitting. Its come as you are in spirit, spurs and Stetsons. Its bucking bulls and plumbing Bibles in a dusty arena or dro pping a hard-won dollar in a boot on the back table after a punchy sermon. (D1)The notion Grossman sculpts in her article is surgical incision Frederick Remington, part Sea of Galilee. Indeed, fundamentally, its an attitude, whether you ride a bronc or a computer keyboard (Grossman 1D). The cowboy church movement seems to cut in on a growing herd of believers in America who seem to think that the values of the church as it should be are undermined by the precise urbanity, the very sophistication that has come to characterize modern life and popular culture. They seek their solace in The West, in a picture - however mythological it may be - of a simpler way of life. This is a phenomenon, after all, that exists simultaneously with ranchers who hang cell phones where their six-shooter used to be, who use multi-tools to mend fences and all-terrain vehicles to run down drop livestock. It is an attitude more than anything else. But that attitude is not without some provenance. Grossma n quotes pastor Perry Smith, the leader of Living for the Brand, a cowboy church next to the fairground arena in Athens, Texas The cowboy walk in life is parallel with the lifestyle of Jesus - doing right and living by your word (D2). Likewise, cowboy churches themselves seem to be fulfilling the equal roles that Jesus did to his followers. The cowboy church movement, for instance, packages its message especially for its audience, much in the same way Jesus used parables because they seeing see not and audition they know not, neither do they understand (Matt.