The rise of the Cowboy Church in modern decades has been a notable “Texas-centered” phenomenon in the contemporary history of the United States.  It is an unprecedented surprise in many ways.  First, cowboys were not traditionally known in American culture as religious. In his celebrated “Ten-Gallon Hero” essay in 1954, David Davis noted about the Cowboy: “He is a “figure of friendly justice, full of self-reliance, a very tower of strength.  What need does he have for a god?”  Secondly, the movement grew in an era when there was little public enthusiasm for cowboys. As Ben Pivoz notes in his history of Cowboy Westerns, the great heyday of Gene Autry and John Wayne ended around 1970, and there was and is no real revival in sight.  Kai Bird, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has congratulated the United States for turning its back on “Cowboy Triumphalism,” as expressed in the dismal war experiences under Texan Presidents Johnson and Bush in Vietnam and Afghanistan. A rising Cowboy church after 1970 thus makes little sense. Nevertheless, the 441 established Cowboy Churches in the 254 counties of Texas give a constant testimony that this new church has become an established church and that the Texas religious environment has been an important incubator of its success nationwide. Rather than share in the national mood of contraction known to Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, the Cowboy Churches in the Age of Cowboy Unpopularity are on the upswing.

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Carl Stuart Hamblen was the pioneer of the “never-should-have-been” archetype in the Cowboy Church movement. He was born on October 20, 1908, to James and Ernestine Hamblen in Kellyville, Texas, a town now labeled a ghost town with an unknown population due to the lack of people. Much of Hamblen’s childhood happened while traveling throughout Texas due to his father’s pastoral work. In West Texas, Hamblen’s father preached at the Methodist church in Hamiln, in Jones County. Hamblen became exposed to lore and folk music from fieldhands and cowboys working on farms around Jones County, which led him to become involved with the cowboy culture of riding and roping. While working in the rodeos during his teenage years, he had some success as an amateur singer. In 1925, he enrolled at what is now McMurry University in Abilene to study in the teaching field. In 1926, country music became his true passion, and he became radio broadcasting's first real "singing cowboy" after landing a spot on KFYO in Abilene. 

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Hamblen’s early songs provide clues as to how cowboy singing became possible and how a Cowboy Church later would even be conceivable.  In the 1920s, it was still uncertain that the idea that cowboy songs could catch on as a genre. Other occupations did not feature such songs.  But Hamblen made the cowboy idiom work.   In his non-cowboy ballads, Hamblen’s “I gotta feelin',” “Wrong Keyhole,” and “A Sailor’s Farewell” all debuted as love stories out of thin air. These songs didn’t stick; instead, seeming like typical, anonymous love songs. “Wrong Keyhole” especially conveys a very narrow character who somehow fancies himself a connoisseur of women.   “Texas Plains,” “By the Sleepy Rio Grande,” and “My Brown-Eyed Texas Rose,” on the other hand, all came with the backstory of a cowboy who knows the land, is fascinated with nature, and has been roaming miles away from his sweetheart.  From the first line of Hamblen’s  cowboy songs, there is a sense of drama and description that the merely romantic songs could not match.

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Still, in the early years, Hamblen lived the life of a David Davis cowboy and had nothing to do with Jesus or the Bible.  He loved getting drunk and enjoyed the chance to chase elusive, beautiful women.  Tall and dark in his early days, he was not a bad catch either, though, by his late-30s, he was showing signs of turning gravely and harsh.  In 1932, still only twenty-five, he spotted a girl named Suzy Obee getting off a bus and bragged that he would be the one to get her.  For over a year, Obee wanted no part of him.  But as Hamblen became more famous and sent expensive gifts, she finally gave in.  But no sooner had he married Suzy, he was out looking for other women.  As a matter of course, he would come home to Suzy late on weekend nights, completely drunk.  Once she noticed that he was out cold with $10,000 in his pocket, she took it from him, believing he would lose it in any event.  

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Somehow, even as he moved to California and became an even worse libertine, she stuck it out with him.  One key to their continued marriage was that she could write music, and Hamblen kept producing cowboy hits. Still, her exasperation levels reached desperation. In 1949 she begged, pleaded, and henpecked him to go to a Billy Graham rally near Los Angeles. Hamblen, at this juncture, was the best-known radio cowboy on the West Coast. As such his patronage at Graham’s rallies was very important in explaining the latter’s success. Later, Graham frankly acknowledged this and invited Hamblin to lead the singing of a few of his rallies. But rather than follow George Beverly Shea, Graham’s most noted crusade singer, into the golden southern oldies, Hamblen became a precursor of the Cowboy Church itself.

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Most surprising was his Hamblen’s radio show called “Cowboy Church in the Air” in the early 1950s. It was created after Hamblen became inspired by Graham to stop gambling and drinking. The radio show paved the way for the Cowboy Churches known worldwide today. The structure was set up so that Hamblen could sing about giving his life to Christ and then tell a story relating to the song. Preachers in the Cowboy Church use this tactic today to keep it real with the audience and let them know they are one and the same. It was broadcasted nationwide until Hamblen refused to air a beer commercial, so the sponsors canceled the program. That episode caused the Prohibition party to recruit Hamblen to run for President of the United States under their campaign. Hamblen set a record of votes for the Prohibitionists, though he ran fourth to Dwight D. Eisenhower. After running for President, Hamblen and his wife, Suzy, ran a local television show and traveled to prisons, reformatories, and youth organizations to share the gospel through songs and cowboy stories, much like cowboy church preachers do. Hamblen continued to compose creatively.  Some of Hamblen’s most jaunty all-time hits, such as “This Ole House” and “It is No Secret (What God Can Do),” came later in the Christian phase of his life. 

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The 1970s became a time of funerals for the greatest cowboy television shows of all time—The Virginian (1971), Bonanza (1973), and Gunsmoke (1975). But it was this same decade that the Cowboy Church movement took off. In March of 1973, another longshot of cowboy religiosity appeared--Glenn Smith. Smith, like Hamblen, was a handsome man. Though Smith’s hair grayed sooner, his appearance in a tall white cowboy hat, with dazzling white teeth, was more notable. Unlike Hamblen, Smith was in the contracting business and simply enjoyed rodeos on the weekend. Suddenly, one day, in late 1972, he felt God was trying to communicate with him. What followed in the months ahead was a series of remarkable visions.  In the first century, St. Paul reportedly saw a nondescript man from Macedonia who told him to come to evangelize in Europe.  The text in Acts indicates that the vagueness of the vision might have initially inhibited Paul.  But Smith’s visions were full of cowboys, lassos, and thrown cowboy hats.  Inevitably in these visions, the Cowboys were having complications with their individual sports. This included bull riders who were “hung up,” their hands caught up in the rope, also called a suicide wrap, clowns and other bull riders trying to get the cowboys loose from the bulls, and bronc riders with their feet hung up in stirrups. It was not just the complications that God showed him. It was the flames flickering behind these cowboys that ignited a change in Glenn Smith. It reminded him of when he was a rodeo clown, watching cowboys whom bulls had gored, stomped on, or trampled, being carried out on stretchers to ambulances. Smith had always believed “rodeo is a dangerous sport and a dangerous occupation,” but now, according to him, God was using physical fears to magnify the spiritual fears.  He even had a vision of how one saddle bronc rider got bucked out over the horse's head and got his foot hung in the stirrup. Smith admitted, “it was an awful and sickening sight to see the bronc kick that young man in the head and see the very life flow out of him.” He finally realized that those flames represented hell and that God was trying to tell him that those cowboys did not know Jesus Christ. This was God’s way of telling him to minister to cowboys of every kind and the western world in general. 

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In 1973, cowboys were thought to be people who drank, cussed, chased women, and fought. If you did not act this way, you would not be accepted in the cowboy community, and Glenn Smith stated he would not return to the rodeo as a clown or a cowboy. He realized it was up to him to initiate a new kind of religiosity instead of reaching these unchurched cowboys. In James 1:22, he read, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” He then knew it was time for him to start acting upon what he knew about God’s will for his life. He gave up his successful contracting business, paid off his workers, gave them an extra two weeks' salary, and found every one of them a job with other contractors in Austin. He was now struck with the problem of where the money would come from. He could not simply run from rodeo to home to back to another rodeo; that would cost him too much money. In 1973, there was a big gasoline scare throughout the United States. The gas had to be rationed out, there were long lines at the gas station, and Glenn had a limited amount of money. He needed a way to get to rodeos and stay for a few days to be successful in his ministries. He prayed and believed that God provided the way for him through donors and his own resources to purchase a good pickup and trailer. It was the third week of May 1973 when he felt God called him to the towns of Cassville, Missouri, and Greenville, Texas. Glenn discovered these towns would have rodeos through the latest Rodeo Sports News publication. The Greenville rodeo was the first rodeo he attended as a cowboy evangelist. The first cowboy he ministered to at the Greenville rodeo was a well-mannered man named Hadley Barrett. Barrett had been a Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association member since 1965, and he announced all the big rodeos and a considerable number of the smaller ones across the country. Barrett introduced Smith to many cowboys and got him a job working in the arena where Smith would calculate and exhibit the scores the cowboys were receiving from judges. At the Greenville rodeo, Hadley asked Glenn to open the rodeo with a prayer. Glenn gladly did this and prayed for protection over the contestants and the pickup men. Afterward, one pickup man came up to him and commented that he was the only preacher he had ever heard who prayed especially over them. This gave Glenn the confidence that the cowboys were beginning to listen. 

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The Greenville Rodeo of 1973 could easily have been an embarrassment and a dead-end for Smith.  The announcer could have easily put him off, and the contestants, obsessed with girls and trophies, could have walked away.  Instead, the Greenville Rodeo became the portal to the ministry that Smith thought God wanted him to pursue.  After becoming successful at more rodeos, Glenn Smith and his wife founded Rodeo Cowboy Ministries, also known as International Western World Outreach Center, whose headquarters was in Midland, Texas. Smith’s remarkable successes inside rodeo arenas led to branching out into actual cowboy congregations. In a way, the Cowboy Church was born at the rodeo. Smith preached his first cowboy church service at the National Finals Rodeo with the PRCA Directors' approval in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Smith and his wife also published "The Conqueror" Magazine/Newsletter, which taught people how to overcome challenges. It also became a take-off publication for the planting of cowboy churches.

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Smith’s unlikely story was super-significant.  The “Conqueror” provided early on, some education that was helpful to standardize the cowboy churches.  Beyond that, Smith was able to launch in Midland, Texas, in 2004, the School of Western Ministries.  This institution became the DNA of the cowboy churches, as it educated future ministers in the field.  The seminary came complete with a rodeo arena, barn, horses, and cattle. Smith taught outside, using real-life metaphors to arm future ministers with the best vocabulary to teach the Gospel.  He reminded aspiring pastors, that cowboys are welcomed everywhere, even when he personally was preaching, Western style—in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union before its fall.

Smith’s unusual backstory overflowed into a culture that infused the cowboy churches of the late twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.  He wanted these churches to have a come-as-you-are, nonjudgmental atmosphere. This entailed a unique kind of dress code for the church. People came in the clothes that they were most comfortable wearing. One might come in flip-flops, but another, a trucker with a few big animals in his rural backyard, might wear his cowboy hat, a button-down shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. Others caught on and mimicked this style.  One Greg Long, a Cowboy Church pastor, noted that his church from the beginning received a “boots-and-jeans kind of folks, not suits and ties.” Cowboy churches also operated differently than regular churches. For example, many people wore their hats throughout the service, including the singing and sermon. They only removed their hats during prayer. The music was also different; it was country, western, or bluegrass music performed by a band, which replaced the role of a choir. Pastors like Smith and Long did not initiate altar calls where people usually come to the altar to pray. Instead, they had prayer circles where people could gather around one individual and lay their hands on them to pray. Another difference was how they performed the offering. The Cowboy churches do not normally pass around a collection plate; instead, they have a box or boot located by the door or back of the building for donations to be dropped into. This was so that people would not feel pressured to donate or guilty for not donating, as when a collection plate was passed.

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Hamblen and Smith did not begin as ministers or theologians; they began as cowboy entertainers who knew the cowboy ethos.  One thing a cowboy did not do lightly is challenge the honor of another. Thus, a comfortable religious feeling emerged. It allowed a diverse group of people to be established in the church. The cowboy church movement was made to attract unchurched individuals who related to the western heritage by integrating cowboy culture into the church.  However, the Cowboy Church expanded beyond just reaching unchurched Cowboys. Just as Hamblen had an appeal as a Cowboy rather than a merely romantic singer, cowboy church leaders show a outgoing and friendly attitude through their personalities. Within the cowboy demographic, there were actual Cowboys, Ranchers, Rodeo Professionals, Horse Riders, people who love cowboy activities, and people who enjoy western heritage culture. Since Cowboy churches had a come-as-you-are and nonjudgmental atmosphere, many people, such as blue-collar workers, younger generations, and people with troubled pasts, gravitated toward this kind of atmosphere. Another group that gravitated to the Cowboy Church were people who had had religious trauma in a typical church setting.

  

Cowboy preachers were enjoying significant levels of success, even in non-rural, suburban areas.  In 2000, Ron Nolen founded the Cowboy Church of Ellis County on a lot that was only ten minutes from downtown Waxahachie, Texas. He graduated from East Texas Baptist University and specialized in outreach as a minister in Dallas area churches. He founded this church when his son, who had been competing as a roper in local rodeo events, noted that most cowboys did not participate in church.  Nolen saw this as an opportunity.  He grew a horseshoe mustache, contacted some friends, and started the church in Ellis County. He created what would become the largest cowboy church to date, the Cowboy Church of Ellis County in Waxahachie, Texas. By 2015 it had 5,000 registered members and between 1,500–2,000 people in attendance per service. It is today on a huge campus with a large arena, worship center, and children’s center. It also has a “welcome wagon”—where the congregation greets other visitors. They host different events for people of all ages and multiple services. After Nolan started the Ellis County church, he resigned as senior pastor to focus on creating more churches through the Texas Federation of Cowboy Churches (TFCC). The TFCC is now a national organization known as the AFCC, as they have exchanged the word ‘Texas’ to ‘America.’ They have planted more than 200 Baptist cowboy churches in 16 states.

The unlikely church has faced massive criticism. Many still doubt the movement is Biblical and attack the church for being "niche." A recent article by Jeff Brumley referred to the familiar smirks and jokes generated when talk turns to cowboy churches. Critics wonder about the sincerity of worship occurring in rodeo arenas.  Is a preacher on horseback really trying to preach the Gospel or sell himself as a leader?  Are baptisms in cattle troughs valid?   Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, people had their doubts.  They said at that time that the cowboy church was a fad that it could not last, and in a way, their sense of history was correct.  The history of Christianity does not have many cases of churches arising out of a single occupation and then spawning a whole culture of worship and survival.  But we see here in 2023 that that is not the case. Others observed that the cowboy churches actually excluded more people than they attracted. Interviews with Patricia Richey, Hailee Pingitore, Kara Martinez, and Dwaine Higgins, and other religious Christians who live in the vicinity of a growing Cowboy church all indicated that the surprising novelty of the church was both parts of its appeal and a reason why it is criticized as a “niche” movement.  But these Christian leaders, currently residing in Texas, all have grown to respect the Cowboy Church.  Though cowboy churches seem to be niche, non-denominational churches face the problem of being too broad and diffuse. Many feel that suburban megachurches are not structured and have no real cultural or theological glue to hold them together.   Cowboy churches, on the other hand, unlike the doctrine-based denominations of traditional Christianity, have at least a cultural vibe to center their groups.

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The Cowboy Church, the church that should never be, has reached in 2023 a fifty-year mark since Glenn Smith saw his visions and started his ministry. Despite its lack of strong theological unity, it has not fallen prey to schisms like the United Methodist Church, the Episcopalians, and other bodies. Despite its fellowship that includes former drunks and adulterers like Stuart Hamblen, it has not known the sexual controversies and accusations attending the modern Roman Catholic faith.  Despite the decline in the number of actual cowboys, the movement has grown.  Despite its “niche feel” as a church born in Texas during the wane of cowboy popularity in popular culture, the church has experienced a rapid expansion throughout the United States, and even the growth of some Hispanic churches, and churches outside the United States.